By Ted Jeory
THE BBC’s impartiality was questioned last night after a Sunday Express investigation revealed it has been pocketing millions of pounds in EU aid money.
Its little-known international development arm has picked up £15.5 million in EU grants since 2007, cash that boosts BBC’s global brand and helps employ hundreds of staff in London and overseas.
The money has been handed to the BBC World Service Trust, a charity set up to run the corporation’s massive overseas aid operation.
BBC-backed projects funded by the grants include a £2.3 million EU handout to “assist the digital switchover in Serbia” last year.
One particularly obscure project was “unblocking the cocoa value chain in Eastern Sierra Leone”.
The European Commission said: “Through this programme we plan to reach 14,000 farmers and potential farmers increasing their knowledge on cocoa farming and the cocoa sector.”
The charity is described in job adverts as the corporation’s “international development agency”.
Although part of the BBC empire, it says it is independent, even of the World Service, and its remit is to promote journalism, human rights and education around the world. It plans to change its name by next April but, using the BBC World Service brand, it has delved into controversial subjects, such as using environmentalist Jonathon Porritt to promote climate change theories as unchallenged fact.
Despite cuts elsewhere, the charity has ballooned in size since it was established in 1999. With an annual budget of £28million it employs 600 staff and even owns a broadcasting company in Iraq, although few details of what it does have been disclosed.
The fact that the Trust is helping with EU projects has raised serious questions over BBC impartiality.
Ukip deputy leader and MEP Paul Nuttall said last night: “By accepting money from the EU in any way, the BBC compromises its neutrality on the most important issue facing this country: our membership of that organisation.”
A BBC spokesman said: “To conflate the work of the BBC World Service Trust and the BBC’s coverage of the EU in this way is completely absurd .”
WHY IS THE BBC FUNDING SOMALI RADIO STATION
ReplyDelete23.10.11, 8:28am
A potentially interesting article, but it's a pity Ted's article doesn't answer his own headline.
As I understand it, the reason the EU is funding this aid project is to help restore political stability to a dangerously unstable part of the world. Has Ted forgotten that it's only a few weeks since a British tourist was murdered, and his wife kidnapped, in neighbouring Kenya by presumed Somali bandits? Has Ted noticed that hardly a day goes by without some report of a ship being attacked by pirates in the waters off Somalia?
The sooner this region can be returned to a stable state the better for all of us. Or else we'll have another Afghanistan on our hands. And good that the EU has the foresight to fund this sort of thing.
• Posted by: Sage • Report Comment