Originally posted by Wikinews.
Wikinews content appears under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license
except where specified. As these articles are static snapshots of news
items that may be later updated, they may not represent the latest or final
revision of that article, and posted information may be only preliminary.

BBC World Service to drop five languages
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 27, 2011
Original URL: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/BBC_World_Service_to_drop_five_languages



According to the BBC News website, five languages are to be cut from the
BBC World Service's coverage. Albanian, Macedonia & Serbian are no
longer going to be used on the global radio station, and Portugese will
no longer be used in African regional programmes, nor English in the
Carribean. Seven undisclosed languages are also going to be scaled back.
The cuts mean that approximately 650 jobs will be lost in order to save
around £65bn. The cuts were officially announced at a staff briefing
today.

The BBC's director of global news, Peter Horrocks, said that the cuts
were "not a reflection on the performance of individual services or
programmes", and were cut due to a "need to make savings", after the
Government's grant-in-aid funding was cut. The BBC took over funding the
World Service in October 2010, having previously been funded by the
Foreign Office. The move comes just days after announcements that the
funding for the BBC website is to be slashed by £34m as part of 25% cuts
across the spectrum of services offered by the taxpayer-funded
broadcaster.

The National Union of Journalists protested the "drastic cuts" outside
the World Service headquarters today, stating that the loss of the
language editions "severely damage the national interest of the UK".

== Sources == 

* http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ir7BSmsIJC3EZoQ2DB_sNnD-kc7A?docId=CNG.9206a7235d83f0c6db5be9511c4da400.521
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12265173
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12277413