Comments on: Where does the BBC have bureaux and why?

By: The Latin America news gap: what do you think? | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:36:22 +0000

[...] Nuria Leon, a journalist and postgraduate student at the University of Westminster, recently demanded an explanation from BBC director-general Mark Thompson regarding the lack of varied BBC news content from Latin America. You can listen to the encounter here. [...]

By: Nuria Leon

Nuria Leon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:20:01 +0000

Hi Judith,

You can contact me at:

leonnuria09@gmail.com
n.leon@my.westminster.ac.uk

Please don’t hesitate to send me more information about this topic. I am basically doing a research about it.

All the best

Nuria

By: Judith Townend

Judith Townend — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:11:28 +0000

Hi Nuria,

I’m really glad you found this as I didn’t manage to speak to you at the event, or get hold of your contact details. I thought it was a great question. As you can see from the comments above, I asked the press office about South/Central America more generally, and these were the only examples given to me:

- Regional offices (with sponsored fixer and producer): Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Havana
- Individual stringers: Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica

I’ll follow up and check if these were just examples and if they have additional regulars in the other Latin American countries. Please do drop me an email and keep in touch (judith at journalism.co.uk)

By: Nuria Leon

Nuria Leon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:47:49 +0000

Hello,

My name is Nuria Leon, and I am the Latin American Journalist who made the question to Mark Thompson. I come originally from Ecuador… So you mentioned that ehy have stringers in ‘Colombia, Peru, Venexuela, Chile and Jamaica@ what about Ecuador and the rest countries of Latin America? Did you asked them about this countries and how is their production process with them? Kind Regards. Nuria

By: Judith Townend

Judith Townend — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:44:07 +0000

And for anyone interested, this link gives a good breakdown of the Latin American countries: http://lanic.utexas.edu/subject/countries/. UN information on the Americas region here: http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm#americas (UN classifies Mexico as Central America.)

By: Judith Townend

Judith Townend — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:15:41 +0000

Thanks for your feedback Keith. I debated whether to use Latin America as this was the term the original questioner specified, but the specific point put to Thompson and Boaden (about halfway through the audio) was how many ‘South American’ bureaux do they have, and this is what I picked up on, rather than on the initial points in the question. I asked the BBC press officer about South and Central America.

The point on the use of ‘continent’ is a fair one, and will be corrected. These were the places specified as examples by the press office – I shall make that clearer in the text. The spokesman’s full quote: “There are bureaux in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Cuba. They are staffed by sponsored stringers who are BBC staff on attachment for a 3 year postings. In addition we have regular freelancers in Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica. They are all non hub bureaux.”

By: Keith Mundy

Keith Mundy — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:49:43 +0000

The pertinent term here is Latin America, not South America.

And this is gibberish: “Other individual stringers cover the rest of the continent, including Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica”.

It’s an interesting topic, though. For comparisons, see how many Latin American cities are served directly by British airlines. It’s a handful, literally, i.e. five.

Both fields illustrate the minor importance Britain gives to Latin America.