BBC World Service

BBC World Service is the international sector of the British public communication company BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). It is kept by UK’s Television Financing Tax and by the office of international affairs (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) of the United Kingdom’s government. It is also kept by the profits of BBC Worldwide Ltd., a BBC subsidiary that operates the commercialization of the brand, of the company’s information and products.

BBC was created in 1922. It has, in the United Kingdom, 9 TV stations, 10 national Radio Stations and 40 local ones as well as a globally relevant news portal. The World Service broadcasts information through different media in 27 languages.

BBC’s action in Brazil has three big phases, according to Laurindo Leal’s book “Vozes de Londres: memórias brasileiras da BBC” (‘London Voices: Brazilian memories of BBC’): the first brought to Brazil the current and precise information of WWII; the second crossed the information blocking imposed by the military dictatorship; the third and current would be characterized by following the technological transformations and keeping, in Brazil, the BBC standard of information and culture.

BBC has a renowned image in the journalistic field, also due to the recommendations and norms that attribute positive parameters to the independent agency of its professionals. It was used as a reference for the constitution of a public communication system in Brazil, when Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC) was created, in 2007. However, even such image cannot escape criticism. Researcher Tom Mills, author of “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service”, argues that BBC is not independent or “non-biased”, and that its structure and culture were profoundly compromised by the interests of powerful groups in British society, and that they shape what we hear and read from BBC.

BBC is responsible for the news portal BBC Brasil, that has its own teams in London and in São Paulo producing national and international news in Portuguese.