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Tag: BBC World Service Group

  • Fast Forward India season with live filming of Global Questions and Click Live

    BBC leads fight against fake news with media literacy events

    By A Correspondent

     

    This September, BBC News kicks off several months of special Indian coverage, asking whether India can become the next global superpower, and putting forward its own solutions to the country’s building fake news crisis.

     

    A special week of coverage opens a season which will culminate in November with a series of events on fake news and global media literacy, linking young Indians with audiences around the world to share ideas and explore solutions for the future.

     

    BBC News will host a global event on 12th November where teenagers from Delhi, London and Nairobi will be brought together in a live broadcast. It will include a showcase of BBC outreach projects in Indian schools, building on the BBC School Report in the UK and helping young people identify the challenges of sharing news on chat apps. Then on 14th and 15th November, a Hackathon event in Delhi will link India’s top computer science students with tech companies to explore how technology can help stop people inadvertently sharing fake stories.

     

    In addition, BBC News has pledged to carry out daily fact checks during India’s general election next year and BBC Reality Check, a service dedicated to verifying news, will look at the big claims and stories at the heart of the campaign.

     

    It is the latest step in an unprecedented expansion of BBC News in India as part of the World 2020 project. This significant investment has included launching news services in four Indian languages – Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu – and an expanded news bureau in Delhi with two new TV studios. The bureau is now the BBC’s largest outside the UK, becoming a video, TV and digital content production hub for the whole of South Asia.

     

    Jamie Angus, Director of BBC World Service Group, says: “The BBC’s historic investment in journalism in India means we are better placed than ever to tell India’s story to the world, and for Indian audiences to hear how the world sees India’s continuing growth and development.

     

    “The provision of trusted and high-quality news in English and multiple Indian languages is at the heart of BBC World Service’s mission; we want to work in partnership with local organisations and India’s young people to find the best solutions to the challenges of fake news. Our editorial season this autumn will raise up some of India’s great success stories, while helping to find solutions to the problems of global media literacy which are as relevant here as they are around the world.”

     

     

  • The data shows the BBC's weekly global news audience has risen by 8 per cent to 346m

    India third biggest market for BBC

     

     

    The BBC is reaching a record weekly audience of 372m around the world, a rise of 7 per cent year on year, new audience figures reveal.

    These figures – the Global Audience Measure (GAM) – show how many individuals the BBC reached weekly with its news and entertainment content in the year 2016/17.

    The data shows the BBC’s weekly global news audience has risen by 8 per cent to 346m, with TV, audio and social media driving the increase. Weekly audiences in India have gone up by 25 per cent across the BBC’s international news services, giving a total audience of 28m, and making India the third biggest market for BBC News internationally.

    The BBC World Service has seen an increase of 9% since last year, taking its total audience to 269m. Global News Ltd, which comprises BBC World News television and BBC.com, now has an audience of 121m, an increase of 12 per cent with weekly BBC World News TV viewers rising to 99m. The number of listeners accessing World Service English through internet audio has shot up by 147 per cent to 21m.

    The GAM figures show the BBC is on track to achieve the target set by the Director-General of a 500m weekly audience by 2022, the BBC’s centenary year.

    Said Francesca Unsworth, Director of the BBC World Service Group: “In a turbulent year for international news, with mounting concern about fake news and social media ‘filter bubbles’, more people than ever before are turning to the BBC for reliable, impartial information they can trust.

    Added Tim Davie, Director of Global and CEO of BBC Worldwide: “It is encouraging to see that BBC branded services continue to be the trusted go-to platforms for audiences across the globe.”