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BBC World Service To Provide Radio For North Korea and Eritrea (bbc.com)
Ewan Palmer writes: The BBC World service has announced it will expand to serve the worst countries for press freedom as part of a plan to reach a global audience of 500 million. The British government announced its "single biggest increase in the World Service budget ever committed" and promised to invest more than $128 million by 2017/18 to the service. Along with improvements in countries such as Thailand, Russia and Somalia, they will launch radio services in North Korea and Eritrea who, according to Reporters Without Borders' 2015 World Press Freedom index, are the two worst performing countries in the world when ranked on a number of criteria including media independence, respect for the safety and freedom of journalists, and infrastructural environment in which the media operate.
too bad north koreans can not afford a shortwave radio, maybe broadcast on the medium wave band and airdrop a bunch of crystal radio kits
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I don't know what budget funds this, but I'd be pleased if it were foreign aid rather than the BBC licence fee.
Interesting to see the UK interest in Ethiopia and Eritrea again. Time to rebuild old relationships back into African cold war history?
The "infrastructural environment" was great for the US and UK decades ago.
Warming up Kagnew again? A site that gave the NSA and GCHQ great coverage of Africa and the Middle East (high-speed Morse 1950's), later submarine communications?
That site gave great intercept coverage before Diego Garcia was upgraded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Of course the disadvantage of the influence of the BBC is that all the refugees want to come here as a result...
The North Koreans will listen to the BBC and think, "hey, I don't mind a bit of propaganda but this is too much!"
Shortwave listening was a staple of my childhood. In the 70s and early 80s roughly a third all portable radios were shortwave-capable and a great many people listened to programmes from other countries on a regular basis. Of course you were listening to the raw output of world governments, but you knew this and they made no bones about it. Shortwave is expensive and power-intensive, and yet the airwaves were crowded. People were listening. James Careless has also written this informative shortwave lament which gives much needed backstory for the younger generations.
When I surf US news sources today I can spot the bias from a mile away, and even when they strive for balance of viewpoint the result often comes off clumsily, buried in hedge-words and apologetic disclaimers as if the commentator is, well, feeling a bit insecure. I miss the clarity of sifting world news as portrayed by world governments, assembled and delivered for an English speaking audience in five minutes.
For example, one of my daily listens was Vladimir Posner on Radio Moscow World Service with his daily talk. At a time when US News networks portrayed Russia as a cold-hearted military threat intent on world conquest and our own President Reagan seemed incapable of anything beyond an infantile level of Cowboys 'n Indians... Posner's commentaries were thoughtful and reflective viewpoints on our cultural differences and similarities. You could even 'read' between the lines and glimpse the areas in which Russian society would later reform.
I was lucky to grow up in a time of sunspot activity. Then you could bop over to the BBC for world news (they still cover it best) and then tune at random. You'd hear pan pipes, Romanian lover's laments and even classical music --- tortured as it was by AM bandwidth and fade --- had a certain magic to it, especially at 3 O'clock in the morning.
Tie a long thin wire to a rock and toss the end over a tree or your neighbor's roof, pull it tight and connect it. You're listening to Tokyo, broadcasting from Tokyo. No infrastructure in between except for the ionosphere.
Of course the Internet --- that incredibly, almost laughably fragile construct that relies on stable grid power between you and your 'station', with its hidden single points of failure like DNS and relies on an awesome amount of cooperation and due diligence of faceless corporations and governments to ensure that every little packet will arrive safely and unfiltered... is better, for everything, right?
Sure it is. Until the very day and moment it is not better any more.
Any number of things could happen. It could all be over in minutes.
It would be wise to acquire at least one good shortwave radio.
If something goes wrong with the world, you might be the only one who knows what's going on.
While you're at it, go ahead and toss that rock and give a listen.
We're past the heyday of shortwave broadcasting but there are still voices out there.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Interesting to see the UK interest in Ethiopia and Eritrea again. Time to rebuild old relationships back into African cold war history?
I doubt it. More likely this is so they can tell the Eritreans not to bother illegally emigrating to the UK. They seem to think it is a mythical land of milk and honey, when really it is just a reasonably dysfunctional western european country with terrible weather.
The BBC would not be at the top of my list of examples of "media independence".
You are welcome on my lawn.
indeed, this is the feeling in parts of Scotland (which is a separate country within the governance of the United Kingdom) where the BBC played a huge part in last years independence campaign. Unsurprisingly, the state broadcaster, funded by the tax payer, took the side of the "no" campaign instead of being unbiased in their reporting and this is causing huge ruptures in Scotland right now and calls are being made to revolutionise the BBC in Scotland. There has been a lot of reporting on this situation here and even before the referendum here and here.
Many in Scotland think that the BBC was a major force in swinging the vote in the final days before the referendum vote when both sides were close to 50/50 of the vote. This caused quite a few protests at BBC Scotland (although, these were played down by the state media).
Whilst it is obvious what the role being played by the BBC in NK and Eritrea is; bear in mind that it is a state broadcaster and will even attempt to exert power over residents within the UK.
Huge ruptures? I don't think so. And the BBC is quite a long way from "state media", GTF. Major force? That's just Salmond -- who repeatedly fucking failed to fucking make his fucking case -- whining as usual.
If anything influenced the vote you should be grateful. Imagine how unliveable Scotland would have been if it'd been a scarcely more than 50:50 result in favour of independence. And you can't really claim reliable polls any time close to the vote that showed an unassailable majority for independence; there simply weren't, ever. Plus, polls have a margin of error that votes do not; you can't ever know for sure the optimal situation was much better than the outcome. People talk to pollsters in aspirational terms, but they vote cautiously.
Next time round -- when the 'tests' for a new poll are met, which will be soon because let's face it no one is going to wait a 'generation' -- the results will CERTAINLY be more conclusive in your favour and it'll all go to plan. In the meantime, thank goodness it wasn't resolved on a knife-edge.
Signed,
An englishman who wishes Salmond had made his case properly so this could be settled properly for all of us whichever way you choose, because whichever way is GENUINELY FINE WITH ME but SURELY you could have run a better campaign than that
Plus, look on the bright side with the following ten points:
1) you now have Nicola Sturgeon, who is incredible, not Alex Salmond, who was very often fatuous, stupid and dismissive
2) the oil price collapse would have fucked it all up
3) Schengen is going to collapse before Scotland next tries independence, which will rule out that (no matter how you pretend, very significant) hurdle
4) Natwest and HBOS will be in better health for when you take them over
5) there actually is now an almost unassailable nationalist majority in Scotland on which to build a much better pitch for independence
6) pretty soon nobody in Europe will blame you for not joining the Euro
7) no more Alex Salmond
8) no more Alex Salmond
9) no more Alex Salmond
10) no more Alex Salmond
> BBC World Service To Provide Radio For North Korea
No, they won't. They will be emitting, but the DPRK will promptly jam them with a few hundred kilowatts' worth of white noise, made by big, old soviet-made vacuum tube systems. Therefore, no service will be rendered.
Honestly said, I side with the DPRK here. Experience shows, anybody who makes concessions to the imperialists is promptly killed. Remember how Gaddhafi was ritually sacrificed on live TV just a few years after making peace with the NATO. Remember how Saddam hanged and how his sons were hunted with missiles. Look at how Assad is besieged as a result of the very reforms he had introduced in Syria. DPRK still stands because of their simple nukes + uncompromising stalinism. It is also absurd to expect regime change until US military (and with nukes) is stationed in South Korea. That is also an existential threat to the mainland China.
Restore Gaddhafi's only surviving son to lead Libya, stop trying to topple Assad and pay reparations to Syria. Restore Saddam's only surviving nephew to lead Iraq, pay reparations for the nation's stolen oil and then there can be talk about DPRK reforming to a degree.
When you live in Eritrea, "a reasonably dysfunction wester european country" is a land of milk and honey.
The North Koreans will listen to the BBC and think, "hey, I don't mind a bit of propaganda but this is too much!"
I'd be interested to hear your idea of a more balanced and neutral service than the BBC.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Ah yes. Just like providing aid to India in the hope that it just goes all Raj
yeah - here in Scotland it is all kicking off about the BBC - but you would never know that because it is not reported... on the BBC ... !! Scotland has had a strange move towards online away from BBC and newspaper media.
I do agree with what Anon says below about most things. Not so sure about the oil price because it was never part of the annual spend calculations for an independent Scotland. They were going to create an oil wealth fund with any revenue so the effects would not have been seen for a decade or more (ref: Scotlands Future). Scotland's GDP per capita is higher than anywhere in the UK & NI except London - but the overall wealth figures are lower largely due to Scotland subsidising other parts of the UK (which is OK by the way).
Eritrean Revolutionary people and North Koreans they don't want to listen fake news.
Good idea, BBC. Let's topple whatever dictatorship currently running Eritrea so that it becomes an extension of Somalia. After all, one of the factors in Eritrea's secession from Ethiopia was that while inland Ethiopia is largely Eastern Orthodox Christian, Eritrea is majority Muslim. And now, w/ democracy being encouraged, it's not long before they go the way of Libya or Tunisia
I'd be interested to hear your idea of a more balanced and neutral service than the BBC.
The Iraqi Information Minister.
When you set the benchmark so low I could name pretty much anything.