THE BBC
Hey look! That's me over there in the Illinois pullover at the BBC in the picture to the right! Yep, I'm Stephen! Going for a tour in the British Broadcasting Corporation, or the BBC, was a very enlightening experience for a young college journalist like myself. Not only was the tour very hands on since I got to entertain the tour group with a short news broadcast and some of us also got to perform a short radio play, but I learned about a lot of the differences between journalism in the United States and in Europe, especially England.
One big difference that I noticed was that broadcasters in the BBC report and write all of their own scripts -- even for the nightly and afternoon news broadcasts. While I don't know what other news outlets throughout England the Europe are like, I felt that journalists are held to a much higher standard in their approach to ethics on the other side of the sea. Instead of having the talking-heads on television be just that -- talking heads -- more on-air news reporters, a job I aspire to have one day, are actually held accountable to doing all of their own news and scripts. Another aspect that I learned about the BBC while in London was that the BBC is owned by the government and paid for through TV licenses. Having a news station tied to the government can be a dangerous preposition, leading to propaganda supporting the British government, however I didn't get the vibe that this is a common factor with the BBC. While news organization is the US are likely to be for-profit (besides stations like PBS), the BBC is more focused on telling the news since they're not as concerned with gathering viewers and profits. |
The world's largest news gathering organization…..
The majority of the BBC's staff 3,500 are journalists - some 2,000 primarily in London and across the UK but 250 BBC foreign correspondents can be found in 50 foreign news bureaus. BBC TV channels and radio stations broadcast around the globe 24/7 in 27 languages and reaching an estimated audience of 350 million people. The BBC's website is one of the UK's most popular and reaches about 14 million readers every month.