MUMBAI: The BBC World Service is suspending its FM programming to the Sri Lankan national broadcaster SLBC from Tuesday due to what it terms ‘deliberate interference of its broadcasts by the Sri Lankan network’.
BBC programmes and individual news reports in the English, Sinhala and Tamil languages have been blocked by SLBC and have not been broadcast to listeners in Sri Lanka, says a BBC release.
The BBC says it has noted 17 instances of interference to BBC Tamil and eight similar instances to BBC Sinhala broadcasts between 27 November and early January 2009. Sometimes, whole current affairs segments of BBC programming were not broadcast on SLBC, the BBC release says.
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The BBC expressed its concern directly to SLBC Chairman Hudson Samarasinghe in a series of letters and meetings throughout December and early January and made it clear to SLBC that such interference and blocking meant that BBC programming was being editorially compromised by SLBC’s actions and this was contrary to the BBC’s contractual agreement with SLBC.
Despite the warnings, last week there were several further instances of interference to BBC programming in all three languages being broadcast on SLBC. There have been three instances of interference on BBC Tamil output, one on BBC Sinhala and two instances on the English language programming in the past 10 days, the release adds.
BBC World Service Director Nigel Chapman says, We are dismayed that the BBC’s programmes in the English, Sinhala and Tamil languages have been interrupted on the SLBC network. We are equally disappointed to see that our programmes continue to be interfered with even after our representations.
We have no choice but to suspend broadcasts until such time as SLBC can guarantee our programming is transmitted without interference,… he says.
In order to cover news events in the most comprehensive and balanced way for our audiences, the BBC adheres to specific editorial values that include impartiality, editorial independence and seeking a relevant range of views on any topic. In this way we can meet our audiences’ high expectations and maintain our reputation as the world’s most trusted international broadcaster….
The BBC’s services in all three languages remain in Sri Lanka via short wave; on bbc.com/news, bbcsinhala.com and bbctamil.com via the Internet; and news bulletins in English are available via the Sri Lankan commercial broadcaster MBC.
