Epress.am News from Armenia
Journalists at the British Broadcasting Corp. walked off their jobs Friday to protest planned job cuts as a result of lower government funding, reports The New York Times.
About 3,000 journalists who are members of the National Union of Journalists took part in the one-day strike, which caused some disruption to the programming.
In a statement on its web the BBC said it was “disappointed” that the strike went ahead and apologized “to our audience for any disruption to services.” Some programs, including its flagship radio news program “Today,” were cut short and the BBC was forced to run repeats of old shows in Britain and on the World Service.
The statement said that “industrial action does not alter the fact that the BBC is faced with a number of potential compulsory redundancies following significant cuts to the central government grants that support the World Service and BBC Monitoring.”
The strike is the second in less than a year at the broadcaster. About 4,100 BBC journalists went on a 48-hour strike last November to protest planned cuts to pensions.
BBC said at the beginning of this year that it would need to cut costs by £3 million, or $4.8 million, over two years, following a cut of £1.4 million by government funding in April 2010. It already announced 360 job cuts at its online operation and 480 jobs would be eliminated at BBC World Service. The Albanian, Macedonian and Serbian language services would be shut.
Michelle Stanistreet, the union’s general secretary, said Friday that the situation was “hugely frustrating for members.” The union demanded that last year’s decision by the government to freeze the licensing fee paid by the taxpayer for the broadcaster should be renegotiated.
It claimed that the cuts in state funding were a result of “a shabby deal done by BBC management and the government behind closed doors.” It added that “Rupert Murdoch and News International executives were exerting huge influence on key government figures.”
News International, which effectively controls BSkyB, and other private broadcasters in Britain have long charged that the BBC’s public funding gives it an unfair competitive advantage.
The BBC press office declined to comment beyond the statement on its web site.