A Critical Look at BBC World Service in Kashmir, India

Abstract

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster, headquartered at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. The privately owned BBC was the world's first national broadcasting organization and was founded on 18 October 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays. Mainstays of the current BBC World Service schedule include the news programmes The World Today, News hour and World Briefing, and the daily arts and entertainment news programme The Strand, which started in late 2008. The BBC bureau in Kashmir started in the 1980s. BBC's headquarters observed that the region was becoming increasingly unstable, and therefore decided that the organization needed a permanent presence in Kashmir. The critical analysis of the work of BBC along with the content analysis in the year of 2005 (jan to may) has been documented in this study. The results are a collection of mix responses in the reporting of news and events. The issues of controversies related to BBC are also important specially when it comes to reporting in the sensitive atmosphere of Kashmir.