The BBC World Service - Alan Johnston

Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 10:50 AM

I am a self confessed radio fan. Indeed the only thing I miss about the UK apart from the proper broadband bandwidth at affordable prices is BBC Radio 5 Live a talk radio station from the BBC that focused on news, politics and sport, yeah it’s like they built it for me. 5Live is not broadcast outside the UK unless you listen online so I’ve converted to the BBC World Service.

The BBC World Service is, in my opinion, Britain’s best export. It is certainly one of the widest exports, in every part of Kenya you can catch the BBC World Service on a local FM signal although some people seem to only tune in for the football updates! This is one of the reasons why the BBC World Service is not funded from the compulsory license fee that every British household pays but instead receives direct funding from the British government.

If you have ever lived in a war zone where news is restricted or indeed anywhere that has a less than independent media or a single media source you learn to appreciate it more. In Ethiopia in the 1980s everyone had one of those short wave radios where you can catch radio stations from around the world and everyone started their day with the BBC World Service. It was a routine, 6am switch on the World Service for the news. Then after that some would turn to hear what Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale or Portuguese news stations had to say, but you started with the BBC. You also hear of many resistance fighters/warlords/revolutionaries that refuse to speak to anyone apart from the BBC because they believe that only the BBC will report what they say accurately.

For a few years I used to call CNN’s Inside Africa programme “Inside South Africa”. It seemed like every other story was on South Africa. South Africa economy, South African art, South African music, it seemed like the rest of the continent got around 5 minutes. These days things are different although to be honest I have watched an episode of Inside Africa or indeed an hour of CNN since I moved back. When listening to the BBC World Service these days I am sometimes tempted to call it the BBC Nigeria and India and a little bit of the rest of the world Service. I have learnt more about Nigerian and India in the last 6 months than I have in the last 20 years. But since a lot of the comments and calls seem to come from those two countries I guess it is only fair. Which came first eh? The chicken or the egg?

Alan Graham Johnston is a BBC World Service journalist. He was born just down the road and across Mount Kilimanjaro in Lindi, Tanzania. He was kidnapped by an unknown group of gunmen in Gaza on March 12, 2007. Some feel that with all that is going on in Kenya and in Africa it can be hard to give a toss about some mzungu journalist that was captured gallivanting across the Middle East. I however appreciate the work these journalists do bring us stories from many different places. I also appreciate that this world is truly becoming a global village, and what would be the point of me having a blog if I did not engage with issues outside my daily routine and life? I also remember how bloggers and activists from all over the world rushed to help the Kenyan blogosphere publicize the attack on the Kenyan media by official thugs led by the so called Artur brothers. The Alan Johnson button will go up on my blog, I hope you put it up on yours too.

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