Speech by Liliane Landor, Senior Controller for BBC International Services and Director of BBC World Service

Hi, this is very gracious of you, thank you and thank you to the organisers for inviting me. I gather that I am the last speaker and I hope that I will still have all your attention because it’s an incredible opportunity to share this platform with all of you.

But as said I’m talking to you not just as a senior leader in the BBC, Director of the World Service and international services. I’m talking to you first and foremost as a journalist, as someone whose life and identity has been defined by the importance of fair, open, transparent and impartial journalism and this journalism matters more than ever.

It matters because of the political, legal and economic pressures on independent media, which are growing by the day globally and we’ve heard a great deal about this, it matters because of the trust our audiences have in us. They trust us to be accountable, they trust us to be accurate, they trust us to be impartial, to speak truth to power and importantly, to be fearless.

Bear with me if I talk to you from the perspective of our journalists on the ground. We in the BBC deliver news and news content in 42 languages including English to a weekly global audience of 456 million - that’s a tiny bit short of a half a billion. We have journalists and bureaus in 58 countries and 74 cities. Now, our mission may be clear, to provide trusted, impartial news and information to global audiences, but it is not simple and it is not straightforward.

Over and above the pandemic - which has disrupted our work in so many ways and exacerbated the online misinformation trend, creating what the World Health Organisation has called an infodemic - we have witnessed regular interference with our global operations and journalism in the last few years, often and simply as a direct result of our reporters doing their jobs. Of course, reporting from conflict zones has always carried physical risks but we now face a different challenge altogether.

Today I am announcing that the BBC has filed an urgent complaint against Iran with the United Nations over ongoing harassment and sanctions against BBC News Persian journalists and their families in Iran. There have been death threats, online harassment, family members brought in for questioning and told that their relatives should stop working for the BBC, gendered attacks on women journalists and asset freezing - all of this must stop. Our journalists have to be able to carry out their jobs without fear of threats of intimidation towards them and their family.
Later today the head of BBC Persian Rosita Lofti will join a panel to talk about our colleagues but I will say just this - that the pattern of harassment intensifies when our journalists report on significant events in the country, most recently our coverage of Iran’s handling of the Covid pandemic, and it is not just Iran.

The list of countries where it’s harder to operate as a journalist has expanded hugely. In recent months we’ve watched events in Afghanistan unfold. It has always been difficult to be a journalist in Afghanistan and tragically we have all lost colleagues in that country over the years. But the return of the Taliban has brought with it new challenges including restrictions on media freedom, freedom of movement and especially women’s freedom of movement.

In Russia we’ve heard from Dmitry Muratov, Russia we consider now as a hostile environment for our journalists. Many independent news organisations have closed down and 90 individual media outlets and journalists have been designated foreign agents, including our own journalist Andrei Zakharov, our correspondent Sarah Rainsford has also been expelled from the country.

The situation is not much better in Hong Kong and China. The BBC World News TV channel has been banned in China following our reporting on Coronavirus and the Uyghurs. The BBC World Service in English and in Cantonese has been removed from the airwaves in Hong Kong and a China correspondent who exposed the Uyghur’s re-education camps including sexual violence against Uyghur women has had to move to Taiwan following pressures and threats from the Chinese authorities. I can talk to you about Myanmar, where following the coup the authorities have been making it incredibly difficult for journalists and international media to operate inside the country, they’ve shut down the internet and have taken the licenses of media companies.

In Ethiopia - the list goes on and on I’m afraid people – in Ethiopia the government has issued a decree effectively banning all war-related coverage, they’ve also accused the BBC, CNN, AFP and Reuters of disseminating false news and analysis in order to allegedly assist rebels from the Tigre People’s Liberation Front. Of course we stand by our journalism and by our coverage of the situation in Ethiopia and in Tigre.

That’s a very quick round-up, I know I’ve missed quite a few countries, but I do want you to give me two minutes extra to talk about online abuse and tackling misinformation. This pressure, these arrests, these detentions, these campaigns of harassment and intimidation against journalists are not, unfortunately, not exclusive to restrictive regimes and war zones. Many journalists here in our countries face incredible pressure and abuse online and these attacks are often aimed at women and journalists of colour. They include racial slurs, threats of sexual violence, indecent images with one purpose; which is to push them out of the debate and belittle their journalism.

There is no justification whatsoever for any journalist to be treated in this way so, this is what we have done. We have set up a working group to look at journalist’s safety online. We have invested in content to counter disinformation. We have specialist teams in London, in Lagos, in Delhi who do fact-checking, verifying, unpicking who is spreading what rumours for what purpose and what impact – that’s what they focus on. And importantly we have founded the trusted news initiative which is a partnership with other content publishers, global tech organisations and platforms to tackle the problem of disinformation and promote trusted sources of news.

Our journalism needs everyone’s support, it is only by working together that we can ensure effectively the safety of our journalists, which is fundamental to any democracy. We have to be able to work unhindered, free from threats and free from abuse.

Thank you all and thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this with you.