BBC Trust seminar on impartiality and the BBC's reporting on Africa

Do journalists reporting on Africa swing too easily between 'troubled continent' and 'Africa rising' stereotypes?

Should the work of NGOs and the extent of their influence on the media agenda receive greater scrutiny?

Does the BBC disproportionately cover some African countries more than others?

These were just a few of the thorny issues discussed at a BBC Trust impartiality seminar this week. A gathering of BBC staff from the domestic service, World Service and others from Global News joined external interested guests and speakers to debate how well the BBC achieves impartiality when covering this vast and complex area.

Why does impartiality matter?

Because the BBC has understandably high commitments to deliver impartial news across all its networks - and it’s critical in retaining the trust of audiences at home and abroad.

The Trust rightly focuses much of its editorial work on impartiality: we carry out full scale, evidence-based reviews on topics such as the Arab Spring, Science, and Breadth of Opinion.

But we have also supplemented these with half-day seminars where we bring together relevant BBC staff and external guests to shine a spotlight on a specific topic.

Our first seminar last year was on economic reporting and the next will be in the spring on arts coverage.

But this week we focussed on Sub Saharan Africa because of the many challenges facing the media in covering the broad range of stories from this part of the world. Africa has six of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies, and an emerging middle class fuelling that growth. By 2035 the continental African labour force is projected to be bigger than that of China. Its growing importance in terms of strategic resources and land available for food production earns it a prominent place on a news agenda often dominated by economic stories.

On the day debates included whether the continent a) gets as much coverage overall as it deserves, b) when it is covered is it primarily through the lens of trouble, conflict, famine or even wildlife programmes, c) is there enough context given to the political nuances of crisis, d) do Africans recognise themselves on BBC output?

Questions also arose of the balance between using local reporters on the ground, and the ongoing training they need, with the more traditional BBC correspondent who is dispatched by London depending on the news agenda. With 54 countries, and a mass of interesting news stories, the answer from the audience was clearly that there is a role for both.

The two-and-a-half hour seminar was a passionate, honest, occasionally critical, and thought-provoking discussion. It shone a light on some of the tensions felt by audiences (represented by our guests) about the BBC, and other media's, reporting of Africa but also acknowledged that the Corporation's coverage of Africa has come a long way since it began broadcasting from and about the continent in 1932.

The Trust's Editorial Standards Committee will get an update from the BBC executive in the new year on how ideas which emerged from the seminar are progressing.