´óÏó´«Ã½

Compliance and accountability

Freedom of information

Like other public bodies, ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service is subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act. Twenty-four requests for information were lodged under the terms of the Act during the year ended 31 March 2009. This represented a significant increase on the previous year's figure of nine requests. Requests for information covered such topics as international offices, ethnicity, employment information and operational costs. All but one were responded to within the deadlines laid down in the Act. The Head of Governance & Public Affairs conducted a further three internal reviews of information requests made to other parts of the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

Data protection

´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service received one request under the UK Data Protection Act. During 2008/09, 180 ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service staff attended face-to-face training sessions on the Data Protection Act. A further 1,520 staff completed a data protection online training module. During the year under review, one handheld mobile device was lost, with the resultant risk of a data breach. The device was immediately disabled remotely.

Complaints

´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service wants to be open, responsive and accountable to its audiences. The handling of complaints demonstrates its commitment to these principles. The complaints handling policy operated at ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service is the same as that for the wider ´óÏó´«Ã½. ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service receives a lot of feedback, both negative and positive, but considers something to be a complaint if it is a specific criticism of ´óÏó´«Ã½ editorial judgment or controls that expects a response and, implicitly or explicitly, would like things to be changed. Complaints are also handled which deal with non-editorial issues such as audibility.

Depending on the nature of the complaint, replies are sent from the relevant department or a senior ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service editor.

During the year, ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service handled 49 complaints on a wide range of issues, including allegations of political bias, factual errors or inaccuracies on websites, poor use of language and excessive or insufficient coverage of news events.

Fifteen of these complaints were upheld and in these cases editors were made aware of shortcomings and required to make sure lessons were incorporated into future output. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ decision not to broadcast the DEC/Gaza aid appeal generated some negative reactions from contributors, international audiences, online users and the international press. More than 16,000 people contributed to an online debate on the subject via the World Have Your Say programme. The impact of the decision was most acute in the Arab world, affecting perceptions of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Arabic.

Complaints alleging a serious breach of ´óÏó´«Ã½ editorial standards may be escalated to the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s independently run Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU). Finally, an appeal may be made to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust's Editorial Standards Committee (ESC). Four complaints were handled by the ECU (two upheld, one rejected, one partially upheld), three appeals were subsequently taken by the ESC.

One involved a piece of inaccurate text not having been removed from ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service websites.

Another, which was not upheld, concerned an article carried on the Russian service website, bbcrussian.com.

The third concerned an edition of Outlook on the English Network, alleging one-sided presentation of a controversy about Sharia law. In this case the committee acknowledged the real difficulties of conveying complex positions in a short item; however, it found that additional context was needed and that the item would have benefited from a broader range of voices and had therefore breached the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s own impartiality and accuracy guidelines.

´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service is represented on the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Complaints Management Board, which takes regular reports and promotes the learning points arising from them.

Further information about the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s complaints management process and a selection of responses is published on . The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust publishes appeal findings on its own website, .

Donations and gifts

´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service does not make political donations or gifts. The Financial Memorandum with the FCO does permit ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service to make gifts of equipment subject to no single item exceeding £50,000. Government accounting guidelines on gifts must be followed. However, no gifts of equipment, services or cash were made during the year.

click Back to top