MUMBAI: This September, BBC News kicks off several months of special Indian coverage, asking whether India can become the next global superpower, and putting forward its own solutions to the country’s building fake news crisis.
A special week of coverage opens a season which will culminate in November with a series of events on fake news and global media literacy, linking young Indians with audiences around the world to share ideas and explore solutions for the future.
BBC News will host a global event on 12th November where teenagers from Delhi, London and Nairobi will be brought together in a live broadcast. It will include a showcase of BBC outreach projects in Indian schools, building on the BBC School Report in the UK and helping young people identify the challenges of sharing news on chat apps. Then on 14th and 15th November, a Hackathon event in Delhi will link India’s top computer science students with tech companies to explore how technology can help stop people inadvertently sharing fake stories.
In addition, BBC News has pledged to carry out daily fact checks during India’s general election next year and BBC Reality Check, a service dedicated to verifying news, will look at the big claims and stories at the heart of the campaign.
It is the latest step in an unprecedented expansion of BBC News in India as part of the World 2020 project. This significant investment has included launching news services in four Indian languages - Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu – and an expanded news bureau in Delhi with two new TV studios. The bureau is now the BBC’s largest outside the UK, becoming a video, TV and digital content production hub for the whole of South Asia.
Drawing on the BBC’s extensive news and programme-making teams in India and the UK, the Fast Forward India season in September will provide thought-provoking insight and analysis on India’s economic growth to audiences around the world. From car manufacturing to fashion, BBC journalists will tell the story of the country’s extraordinary development, the technological innovations taking place and how they are helping to modernise the country. The month-long season includes the live filming of two BBC World News programmes in New Delhi, the highly respected current affairs programme Global Questions, presented by Zeinab Badawi, and the BBC’s flagship technology programme Click, presented by Spencer Kelly.
BBC World Service English will also record a special live edition of its new podcast Kalki Presents: My Indian Life, in Mumbai on September 11th. Presented by Bollywood actor Kalki Koechlin and aimed specifically at young adults in India, the podcast is about being young and Indian in the 21st century. And the following week, BBC News Marathi plans to launch BBC Vishwa as part of an innovative BBC partnership with the Jio TV app.
Jamie Angus, Director of BBC World Service Group, says: “The BBC’s historic investment in journalism in India means we are better placed than ever to tell India’s story to the world, and for Indian audiences to hear how the world sees India’s continuing growth and development.
“The provision of trusted and high-quality news in English and multiple Indian languages is at the heart of BBC World Service’s mission; we want to work in partnership with local organisations and India’s young people to find the best solutions to the challenges of fake news. Our editorial season this autumn will raise up some of India’s great success stories, while helping to find solutions to the problems of global media literacy which are as relevant here as they are around the world.”
