United Kingdom: The British Broadcasting Cooperation, popularly termed as BBC, has developed and participated in several questionable partnerships with global tech companies. Huawei, a Chinese tech giant sanctioned by the United States in 2019 and prohibited the 5G network in the UK in 2022 because of security concerns, was one of the participants.
As per the recent updates, BBC has been going through a rough time as an organization as there has been a number of challenges and problems in front of its management, such as tight budgets, leaving stars, and uncertainty of the future licence fee. In addition, with such in-house issues, BBC has been acting desperately to plug some holes in which it has developed severe accusations for itself.
According to the reports, since the partnership with Huawei, the controversial company has been alleged and accused of working and helping the Chinese authorities build mass surveillance technology specially designed to target the minority population of the country’s Uyghur.
Furthermore, more than all such activities is needed to deter the BBC, which is currently taking monetary funds from Huawei to sponsor its overseas journalism and media research, said reports. In addition, this week BBC.com show has adverts which are paid for and presented by Huawei talking about the “New boundary of education”.
Moreover, the advert further conveyed, “How can the education gap be filled and attract bright young minds towards the digital future and technology?” The gush of such advertisements focused on how ‘UNESCO and Huawei are certainly focused on putting a stop to the digital divide’ while writing impressively about tech initiatives taken by Huawei.
Notably, the content is only available for people living overseas as the readers from the UK to the site are greeted with a message which says, “We’re Sorry! This site is not available from the UK as it is not funded by the licence fee and not a part of our international service.”
“The content was made by the content team StoryWorks which the BBC sponsors,” noted reports. “Three years ago, when the partnership was first announced between BBC and the Chinese state, the employees and reporters were horrified, with one telling Buzzfeed’ I nearly threw up,” the reports added.
On his part, BBC’s current employee spoke on the condition of anonymity and took to steer-pike and expressed that they were shocked about hearing that BBC was still taking funds from a company with such a close relationship with Chinese authorities.