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BBC News in the United States: a
‘super-alternative’ news medium emerges
Douglas Bicket
STJOHN FISHER COLLEGE, ROCHESTER, NY
Melissa Wall
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
This article focuses on BBC News in the United States, where recent devel-
opments suggest that a new, powerful ‘multifaceted’ BBC is emerging – one
that integrates the many elements of this venerable yet still-dynamic modern
institution. Thanks to its unique combination of historically derived institu-
tional credibility, solid non-commercial funding base, and a newly acquired
‘cool’ cachet, the BBC brand in the United States can now be presented in
multiple ways, using its many ‘faces’ to attract new audiences while retaining
the loyalty of existing audiences, both in news and entertainment. This influ-
ence is not confined to the BBC – it can also be seen in other UK-originated
news outlets. But it is the BBC that provides the anchor role that underpins
the influence of these other institutions.
The accumulated impact of the BBC in Britain and around the world – includ-
ing America – over the past 80 years has been immense. The institution, and the
social responsibility/public-service broadcasting model it embodies, has become
intimately associated with the very idea of Britain. The BBC controls one of the
biggest news organizations in the world, with 3700 news employees and 41 over-
seas bureaus – more than CNN, far more than even the biggest US newspapers
and the networks (Robertson, 2004).Yet it also maintains its role as a prominent
producer and sponsor of all types of entertainment programming.
This article argues that the news function of the BBC, a traditional state-
supported public-service broadcaster in Britain, operates differently in the US
context. As the BBC has weakened its public diplomacy function within North
America, and shifted its focus there from shortwave broadcasting to the internet
and domestic cable television, its role has begun to resemble that of a domestic
Media, Culture & Society © 2009 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New
Delhi and Singapore), Vol. 31(3): 365–384
[ISSN: 0163-4437 DOI: 10.1177/0163443709102711]
US alternative news source – albeit an alternative source with enormous
resources and high credibility. This development has been spurred by world
developments since 11 September 2001 and the onset of the Iraq War.
US audiences for British media, post-9/11 to the war in Iraq
It is clear from recent events that the BBC and other UK news sources have dra-
matically increased their exposure to American audiences – a development cer-
tainly hastened by widespread access to new media technologies such as the web
and broadband internet access. However, it was the 2003 invasion of Iraq – and
the run-up to that war – that greatly increased America’s exposure to BBC News
(as well as other UK media outlets such as The Guardian, The Independent and
the Financial Times newspapers, and The Economist magazine). In particular,
US cultural elites, including elements of the population opposed to war, who
were looking for alternatives to mainstream US news, turned to non-domestic
sources such as the BBC, which they perceived as offering a more nuanced, less
biased news product.And this small yet significant opening to contra-flows from
outside the United States is happening at a time when a once-seemingly unthink-
able global phenomenon is quietly taking place: the decline of the United States’
economic and cultural global dominance, as the luster of US soft power loses its
shine around the world (Tunstall, 2008; Wallerstein, 2003).
Some pertinent factors need to be considered in distinguishing mainstream
US media coverage of the war in Iraq from that of the UK in the years since
the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks:
•The continuing resonance of 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ in the American
public imagination.
•The success of the Bush administration in successfully framing the post-
9/11 response to Al Qaeda and Iraq as part of a ‘War on Terror’, rather than
(as it is largely seen in Europe), as a struggle framed in a legal-criminal
investigation paradigm (Porch, 2004; Scheuer, 2004; Woodward, 2002).
•The ability of the Bush administration, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, to
successfully frame that war as one of necessity, tied directly to the broader
war on terrorism and a vital search for WMDs (Packer, 2005; Pitt and
Ritter, 2002). Long before this frame started to be seriously questioned in
the US mainstream media, it had been comprehensively rejected by large
majorities of the public in most other countries – including Britain (Pew
Research Center, 2004).
•The tendency for American news media and the American public to show
greater deference to their president as commander-in-chief in time of
366 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
war – though that dynamic had clearly reached its limits by 2005 (‘Brits
vs. Yanks’, 2004; Massing, 2005).
•The rightward drift taken by US media in the early years of the 21st cen-
tury, with talk radio, Fox News, the Washington Times, Clear Channel
radio stations, syndicated columns, and other outlets forming an effective
media ‘echo chamber’ for right-wing opinions and positions that whipped
up pro-administration, anti-pacifist sentiments; these positions were
effectively introduced into an increasingly compromised mainstream
media system, which became less able to facilitate a genuine, broad-based
national debate (Alterman, 2003; McChesney, 2004).
•The sharp loss of confidence by the US public in the credibility of their domes-
tic news media (‘State of the News Media’, 2007; Pew Research Center, 2005).
•The greater level of skepticism among the British public about the need for
war in Iraq – not to mention UK participation in that war – even as British
public opinion was generally better disposed to the US than that of most
other nation-states (Naughtie, 2004; Pew Research Center, 2004).
•The greater level of skepticism about US motives in the ranks of the British
polity – particularly in the ranks of the governing Labour Party, but also in
other major political parties, including even the normally staunchly pro-
US Conservative Party (Cook, 2004; Naughtie, 2004; Stothard, 2003).
•The tendency of the British news media to index themselves to the wider
array of opinions over the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terror’ voiced within
the British political system, thus providing access for Americans to a range
of debate not typically seen in US politics.1
While these developments have been changing the broad political landscape in
the United States, the diffusion of new technologies and changing social-
cultural conditions are precipitating fundamental shifts in news consumption
trends. As a major study on the state of America’s news media puts it: ‘We are
witnessing conflicting trends of fragmentation and convergence simultane-
ously, and they sometimes lead in opposite directions’ (‘State of the News
Media’, 2007: para. 3). That study notes the possible emergence of ‘pro-
sumers’who are replacing the traditional notion of news consumers. According
to this concept, citizens as pro-sumers ‘simultaneously function as consumers,
editors and producers of a new kind of news in which journalistic accounts are
but one element’ (‘State of the News Media’, 2007: para. 7). A small yet
increasing segment of the US market – consisting of more highly educated,
well-to-do Americans (sometimes called the ‘cultural’ or ‘creative class’) – is,
it seems, prepared to seek news and information from external sources, even
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 367
when their country is at war (Wall and Bicket, 2008). These so-called cultural
creatives are less inward-looking than other Americans, and more accepting of
opinions and information from a range of sources (Ray and Anderson, 2001).
Their appearance can be said to reflect the rise of ‘micro-spheres’, or sub-
publics, emerging within the broader public sphere (Volkmer, 2002, 2005).
From the preceding it is clear that by the second or third year of the 21st cen-
tury the prerequisites were in place – the ‘pull’factors, if you like – for the broad-
ening of the US public sphere to allow greater input from non-US media as a
result of the events following 11 September 2001, and the US media’s response
to those events. The introduction of these media from a trusted source – primarily
the BBC but also other UK-based media – has arguably led to the expansion of
the US public sphere into a putative transnational US–UK public sphere.
In the run-up to the Iraq War and during the war itself, non-US news sites
saw sharp increases in web traffic from America. This trend became apparent
soon after the World Trade Center attack. Alina Tugend, writing only weeks
after the attack, noted:
Increasingly, those hungry for a broader and less American-centric perspective of
the situation have turned to foreign media outlets, in particular the BBC, Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation and British newspapers, such as the Guardian – which
experienced a huge jump in Web site visitors after September 11. (2001: 24)
While news sites from other English-speaking countries – including those
from Canada and Australia – were popular, the majority of this traffic went to
UK news sites. While the BBC was the prime beneficiary of this develop-
ment, other, non-BBC-related UK websites also saw substantial increases in
US traffic. This was particularly true of The Guardian and, to a lesser extent,
The Independent,The Economist and other ‘quality’ UK news media.
By early 2003, on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq, American traffic
to such sites was rising sharply.The GuardianUnlimited site – a blanket web-
site for The Guardian and The Observer newspapers – saw a heavy spike in
US traffic during this period, coming second only to the BBC in terms of US
access to UK news sites (Kahney, 2003). The surge of US interest in The
Guardian continued after the initial ground invasion: in August 2004 The
Guardian reported that approaching half of its 9.6 million users originated in
the US (Teather, 2004).2Overall, the majority of internet traffic from overseas
has gone to UK news sites, which have retained their popularity in the years
following the Iraq War (Boyd-Barrett, 2007; Thurman, 2007).3
The top news media performer in the United States, however, has consis-
tently been the BBC. With its large (publicly funded) budget and cross-
promotion from its BBC World Service News, plus its widespread name
recognition, the BBC has clearly been at the forefront of the rapid spread of
British-sourced news in the US. Since 2001, the BBC’s web traffic has
increased rapidly, to the point where, by mid-2005, the BBC’s website was
368 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
coping with some 3 million users per day, with its main global web server
hubs split between London and New York (Hinde, 2005). Today, the BBC
attracts greater numbers of American users than such important domestic
US news outlets as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today
(Thurman, 2007).
Increasing numbers of Americans – primarily but not exclusively those who
have greater access to the internet – have thus been seeking news from alter-
natives to the traditional mainstream media. British news sources make up a
major component – certainly the major non-US component – of these alterna-
tive sources. However, such sources also need to be considered within a
broader universe of access to many different sources of news on the web. They
include innumerable weblogs and sources such as commondreams.org and
AlterNet.org, which act as clearing houses pulling news from multiple sources,
including, to a significant extent, from UK news sources. In fact, at least some
of the rise in US web traffic to UK news sites can be attributed in part to the
fact that stories appearing on the UK news sites are often linked to from US
alternative media sites. This provides a doorway for eager and news-hungry
US web surfers to further explore UK news sites.
The rise in access to non-US news was not limited to the web during this
period. In early 2002, a contributor to Columbia Journalism Review, a US trade
publication for American journalists,was noting that ‘Americans’interest in the
news is up, of course, since September 11, but not only in theAmerican version
of it. British news organizations have seen increased US interest’ (Parks et al.,
2002: 56). By early 2002, 27 National Public Radio (NPR) stations had added
BBC broadcasts, for a total of 283 stations in the United States. This was in
addition to the hundreds of Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) stations that
were carrying BBC World news broadcasts. Audiences for BBC World news
bulletins, aired on public television stations in the US, rose 28 percent during
the first weeks of the Iraq invasion (Robertson, 2004). This rise has
continued unabated through much of the decade (Thurman, 2007).
It is also worth noting that the rise in interest in the BBC has gone hand in
hand with a sharp upturn in the audience for another type of news program-
ming that could be considered ‘alternative’ within the US paradigm: PBS and
especially NPR. Both British and US public broadcasting organizations have
been working more closely together, particularly in terms of delivery of hard
news (Parks et al., 2002).
Contrasting styles of coverage
So what is it that makes the culture of British journalism so different – and so
refreshing – to large numbers of Americans? What is it that American news
consumers yearn for and find in British coverage? This section considers
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 369
elements of journalistic practice and culture common to a number of British
news organizations.
One clue to the inherent differences between the two countries’ contempo-
rary approaches to news is to be found in a fascinating pair of interviews pub-
lished in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2004, comparing British and
American styles of journalism through the lens of two editors of comparable
newspapers in the UK and US: Leonard Doyle, the foreign editor at The
Independent of London and the Washington Post’s Michael Getler. While
Getler defends both his paper and US print journalism in general, Doyle is
harshly critical of the US elite press’s performance over Iraq, noting the debil-
itating effect of so-called ‘objectivity’ on the American mainstream press.
From Doyle’s point of view, the mainstream US media failed to challenge a
neoconservative elite that drove the US into an ‘illegal’ war (‘Brits vs. Yanks’,
2004: 47).While praising the high standards of professionalism amongAmerican
news workers, he nevertheless blames ‘the structure of US print journalism,
where big media organizations like the Los Angeles Times,The New York Times,
and The Washington Post’ have become complacent in a media environment in
which they still face little direct competition (though that is changing). The result,
Doyle argues, is ‘an overcautious press that has fantastic resources at its disposal,
but frankly disappoints when it comes to exposing the administration to rigorous
scrutiny’(‘Brits vs. Yanks’, 2004: 47). What’s more, in drawing parallels with Iraq
War coverage and what he calls ‘their limp-wristed coverage of dirty wars of the
CIA in El Salvador and Nicaragua’, Doyle suggests that these failings are deep-
seated and systemic, and that, in spite of their undoubted professionalism and
integrity, the US media’s greater trust of and deference to their government
remains a deep flaw (‘Brits vs. Yanks’, 2004).
Turning from print to televisual media more evidence emerges of differences
in the approach of British and American TV news outlets – where most
Americans still get their news, either from the networks or their local stations.
Both the BBC and, to a lesser extent, its commercial counterpart, ITN, have
over decades built up enviable reputations for credibility and impartiality in
their reporting. In the 1980s, the corporation famously refused to hold to the
spirit of a Conservative government ban on broadcasting the speeches of IRA
terrorists or their political representatives. Television news pieces would
include an actor’s voiceover of an IRA source, synchronized with the picture of
the source speaking. At the start of the ‘War on Terror’, Jane Kirtley (2001)
favorably compared British TV news practice with the US networks’ submis-
sion to a Bush administration ‘suggestion’ that they should not run tapes by Al
Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden or broadcast his voice. When the British gov-
ernment made a similar request of the BBC and competing TV news operations
ITN and Sky, they all rejected that request. And, as Kirtley comments, these UK
organizations ‘don’t even have a First Amendment to protect them’ (2001: 66).
More recently, when democracy protests took place in Burma in the fall of
2007, audiences for CNN were told that monks were demonstrating in Yangon,
370 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
Myanmar (the names chosen by military dictators), whereas BBC audiences
were informed about the events in Rangoon, Burma (the names used by oppo-
sition groups who were democratically elected for a brief time in 1990).
There is also a financial component to consider. BBC News is not under
the same commercial, profit-seeking pressures that afflict US news outlets
(though this too is starting to change) and British television news generally is
less dependent on expensive ‘celebrity’ anchors. Richard Sambrook, director
of global news for the BBC, addressed this point in an interview:
In Britain the networks still basically spend their budgets on newsgathering, while in
the States they increasingly spend it on the talent. The wager is that personality mat-
ters more than program substance. ‘Katie Couric is a fantastic news presenter’,
Sambrook said, ‘but is she really worth $60 million? One wonders what could be done
with [news] content if she was making $40 million, or $20 million.’ (Kunkel, 2002: 4)
More broadly, there is a critique present in the BBC and other UK news organ-
izations that centres on the inherent and sometimes stultifying conservatism of
most US mainstream news organizations. While it is rare to find senior BBC
executives going on the record overtly criticizing US news media, other less
senior staff are occasionally freer with their opinions. Jon Friedman’s (2004)
interview with the BBC’s Rachel Atwell, who heads the BBC’s TV news oper-
ation, elicited a rare degree of candor. Notes Friedman: ‘As blunt as a spoon,
[Atwell] indicated that the American media veer between acting downright
ludicrous and mind-numbingly illogical, though she was far too polite to come
right out and use those words. Still, she wasn’t shy about calling the American
media “extraordinarily self-obsessed”’ (2004: para. 2). In reiterating what
Atwell regards as the ‘big difference in how the European media and their
American counterparts cover the news of the world’, Friedman notes that she
‘can’t get over the American media’s fixation with writing and speaking about
the candidates and the questions of religion and patriotism …’ Noting that
there are ‘flags everywhere’ in the US media’s coverage of events, Atwell said
the preoccupation is ‘absolutely incomprehensible’ (2004, para. 21).
Unlike the publicly funded BBC, British newspapers are privately owned
institutions with a dual commitment to making money and preserving the
practices and traditions of what might be called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or Anglo-
American journalism, which includes a strong support for freedom of expres-
sion. In this, they can be considered as counterparts and equals of many other
mainstream quality titles in the English-speaking world – those that presume
to represent the public sphere of their state- or nation-based polity.
However, there are still key differences that separate both the British
quality print and broadcast media from their US counterparts. For one thing,
British journalists are by inclination less deferential to their country’s leaders
and office holders than journalists in the United States. This extends to senior
cabinet ministers and even to the British prime minister, who is grilled much
more severely than the President of the United States. And again, this can be
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 371
indexed to the more antagonistic and partisan nature of British politics – per-
haps most clearly epitomized by the weekly clash of parliamentary politics
known as ‘Question Time’.
British TV interviewers have long been characterized by a take-no-prisoners
style that would likely bring them rebukes in the US. This is a tradition epito-
mized by the BBC’s (late) Sir Robin Day, who in 1982 famously caused the
then-British Minister of Defence, John Nott, to walk out of an interview after
Day called him a ‘here today, gone tomorrow politician’. More recently, Jeremy
Paxman, a host on BBC2’s flagship Newsnight program and in many ways
Day’s spiritual successor, won a journalism award for taking Michael Howard
(then Home Secretary and later leader of the Conservative Party) to task, press-
ing him on an issue by asking him the same question no fewer than 14 times
(Graff, 2005; Robertson, 2004). Paxman is the man who has famously been
quoted as saying he’s always thinking during an interview, ‘Why is this lying
bastard lying to me?’ (Graff, 2005; ‘Interview: Quest for an Answer’, 1990).
The Paxman style of political interrogation has become de facto the standard
to which many British TV interviewers – including David Dimbleby, John
Humphrys and James Naughtie – hold or aspire. Interestingly, BBC America is,
from February 2008, airing a weekly version of Newsnight in the United States,
with Paxman prominently featured (Clarke, 2007).
Furthermore, in any clash between UK media and its government, the
government often appears in a less favorable light in the eyes of the British
public. This was highlighted by the events surrounding the release of the 2004
Hutton Report. This report had investigated the details surrounding the appar-
ent suicide of a former Iraq weapons inspector, David Kelly, after reporting
by the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan led indirectly to the government’s apparent
identification of Kelly as the probable source of information damaging to the
government. Lord Hutton’s report more-or-less exonerated the British gov-
ernment and placed almost all the blame on the BBC – directly for contribut-
ing to Kelly’s suicide and indirectly for its procedures in challenging the
veracity of government pre-invasion claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction (the infamous ‘dodgy dossier’). Even though the report forced the
resignation of then Director-General Greg Dyke and the chairman of the
Board of Governors, its findings were not fully accepted by the British
public; contemporary polls revealed that most Britons believed their govern-
ment was being dishonest and that the BBC was in fact telling the truth
(Curtice, 2004a, 2004b). Subsequent revelations indicate that the BBC’s posi-
tion likely was closer to the truth than the government’s had been (Morris,
2008; Prince, 2008). As a result, the government has since trodden more war-
ily in criticizing the Corporation over its news activities.
The war in Iraq highlighted very real differences in how each country’s
news media perceived their effectiveness in covering a conflict in which both
countries were directly involved. In general terms, the British news media
came out of the conflict in better shape than their US counterparts. Thus, for
372 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
example, while the BBC was criticized in some popular and academic quar-
ters for being too supportive of the government in the initial invasion stage
(Lewis, 2006; Pilger, 2003), there was little of the hand-wringing in the
British news generally, or the BBC specifically, that was comparable to the
US media’s general post-invasion navel-gazing (Kurtz, 2004a). There was no
UK press equivalent of the widely reported critical report by the Washington
Post’s Howard Kurtz (2004b) of his paper’s handling of the war, or the mea
culpa produced by the New York Times, whose editor’s note acknowledged
that its coverage of the WMD issue ‘was not as rigorous as it should have
been’ (‘The Times and Iraq’, 2004: 10). More broadly, the US news media in
the first years of the 21st century have come under a steady torrent of public
criticism over ethical lapses and laxness in their handling of numerous major
news issues, from the stock market bubble to poverty in America and other
stories of major significance that seemingly get ignored or under-covered. But
of all the stories that the US news media have been accused of mishandling
during this period, none has had the importance or resonance of the Iraq War,
its genesis, and its subsequent evolution into insurgency (Massing, 2005).
From a specifically US perspective, one more key indicator of British jour-
nalism’s privileged reception in the United States is its quiet integration into
America’s alternative media system. In recent years UK journalists and UK
media outlets increasingly have been used as credible sources by US alternative
and progressive media. British-originated news stories are regularly republished
in alternative online news sites, while British journalists such as Robert Fisk
and Andrew Gumbel have become frequent contributors to prominent alterna-
tive media outlets such as The Nation, Znet and Amy Goodman’s ‘Democracy
Now’ radio and television shows (Wall and Bicket, 2008). This informal coali-
tion of UK mainstream media reporting and US alternative media promotion
and dissemination should not be underestimated. Under certain circumstances,
it can propel an under-reported news story into the national mainstream and
sustain its salience – at least for a period – even in the face of mainstream media
resistance. This was clearly shown in the US coverage of the ‘Downing Street
Memo’ story in 2005 (Bicket and Wall, 2007).
The BBC as a unique non-US news institution in America
The first part of this article reviewed the various ‘pull’ factors that have made
non-US-originated news so appealing to a wider array of audiences in the
United States; in doing so, it holds that British news organizations in general,
and the BBC in particular, have been in a uniquely strong position to take
advantage of this appeal. The second part of this article turns to the institution
of the BBC itself, to show how its size and nature places it in by far the
strongest position among British news organizations to take advantage of this
growing demand in the US for non-US news. Key to understanding its success
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 373
in the United States in recent years is the BBC’s manipulation of its institu-
tional strengths – its ‘push’ factors. These strengths can be characterized as
four institutional-cultural ‘faces’ the BBC presents to the world, plus a fifth
‘face’ that is currently more specific to the BBC’s emerging role in the United
States and its operations in that country – though this new face suggests an
approach that could well be replicated in other parts of the world.
The range of institutional-cultural activities represented by these faces
(outlined in more detail below) is impressive: they range from the BBC as a
public-service broadcaster and global media powerhouse, to the BBC as a
‘super-alternative’ news medium in a US context. As these institutional-cultural
faces have developed over time, they have each tended to reinforce and mag-
nify the resonance of the others. As the BBC now expands its news (and enter-
tainment) presence in the United States, each of these faces allows the
corporation to broaden its reach across multiple fronts. Taken together, they
give the BBC a uniquely influential role (for a foreign media operation) in shap-
ing US public opinion. Again, this influence is not monopolized by the BBC –
it is evident in other UK-originated news media such as The Guardian and The
Independent.Yet it is the BBC that anchors the influence of these other institu-
tions. The Corporation’s resonance and adaptability explains its continuing
strength and adaptability. Almost alone among traditional nation-state public-
service broadcasters, the BBC is making a profitable transition from public-
service broadcaster to hybrid public-commercial entity. This evolution can be
seen in perhaps its most advanced form in the United States, where the BBC
has made its presence felt in three ways: through its website; through rebroad-
cast of its programming on cable networks and on public radio and television;
and through BBC America, a commercial joint venture with the Discovery
Network (part-owned by Liberty Media Corporation). BBC America has
become increasingly successful in recent years, and is now available in almost
40 million households (Robertson, 2004). BBC America features not only
entertainment programming, but also a regular BBC News round-ups as well as
World News Today, a commercially funded morning news show for American
viewers. It is also one – but only one – of the many venues now available for
American audiences to receive BBC News.
The BBC has also run several marketing campaigns such as their fall 2005
initiative, ‘News for a Nonstop World’, which promoted its website and radio
programming using RSS feeds and instant messaging, with the former appear-
ing as banner advertisements on the New York Times and the Washington Post
(Morrissey, 2005). In 2007, the Corporation launched a campaign to urge
American audiences to start requesting that US cable companies make BBC
News more available. Billboards in Los Angeles encouraged passers-by to
‘See the world you’ve been missing’ (Gold, 2007). BBC sources insist they
have identified a gap in the US market, as CNN provides domestic audiences
with less international news and more talk shows than in the past, while the
morning network ‘news’shows provide little to no news at all – at a time when
374 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
opinion polls showed an increased desire for international news (BBC Factor,
2005; Christensen, 2004; Gold, 2007).
The multifaceted BBC’s global role: its
institutional-cultural faces considered
Over the course of its first half-century or so, the BBC evolved the first three
of the institutional-cultural faces it presents to the world. From the 1920s, the
BBC’s developing role as a domestic public-service broadcaster provided a
public-service broadcasting model that was later replicated throughout the
world. Then, beginning in the 1930s, the BBC emerged as a key medium of
imperial public diplomacy through the inauguration of international short-
wave radio broadcasts, beginning with the Empire Service (Thussu, 2007).
For most of the 20th century, these were the two main faces of the BBC.
The third face that emerged is more abstract and ideological, yet no less
powerful for that: the BBC as a type of cultural ‘time capsule’ for British
values that appeal to other countries such as the US. Long before the BBC
started trying to self-consciously brand itself and specifically market its
‘Britishness’ overseas (really a 1990s phenomenon), the BBC had built up for
itself the role of a prime interpreter of British values to the world. The cor-
poration did this both institutionally, as the aforementioned model for a very
British approach to public-service broadcasting, and in content terms, as the
producer of news and entertainment content that subtly or not-so-subtly artic-
ulated these so-called British values and British identities (the class system,
fair play, stoicism, reverence for history, etc.), both to domestic audiences and
to the wider world. Incidentally, these institutional and cultural values were
also mimicked by Independent Television (ITV), the BBC’s commercial com-
petitor in Britain; but around the world, they are almost universally identified
with the BBC (Briggs, 1985).
All three of these older institutional-cultural faces operated together in cre-
ating a particular role and myth for the BBC and what it stood for, especially
in the post-Second World War period. The two newer faces to emerge in
recent years play off their older siblings, but take account of changing tech-
nological, social, cultural and ideological factors, both in the UK itself and in
global media.The first of these newer faces has become almost as universal
as the other three: this is the BBC as a commercial, for-profit entity, promot-
ing global news coverage and entertainment in competition with other trans-
national media entities. However, crucially, in presenting this new face to the
world, the BBC retains its reputation for quality and credibility.4Perhaps the
clearest expression of this new direction for the corporation is BBC World
Service Television, which in 1995 split into the following two entities: BBC
World, a 24-hour commercial international news and current affairs TV chan-
nel that is challenging the dominance of global TV news leader, CNN
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 375
International (Hachten and Scotton, 2002); and BBC Prime, the BBC’s gen-
eral entertainment TV channel in Europe, Africa and the Middle East (‘BBC
Worldwide Annual Review’, 2005). What’s more, the BBC’s international
television services are funded commercially, in sharp contrast to the BBC’s
World Service radio, which remains funded by a direct Foreign Office grant
(Thussu, 2007).
A new face for the BBC in America: a ‘super-alternative’ news medium
This leads to consideration of the BBC (and by extension other, less promi-
nent UK-based news media) as an alternative medium within the context of
an expanding national public sphere in the United States – or even as part of
an emerging transnational geocultural public sphere or ‘microsphere’, incor-
porating key elements from its operations in the United States and Britain.
This might seem an unusual proposition to make, given the BBC’s massive
size and global importance. But, as the following makes clear, the BBC’s role
in the United States – regardless of its impact elsewhere – has long stayed
clear of the ‘mainstream’ tag.
The term ‘alternative media’ is used in this context to define ‘media pro-
duction that challenges, at least implicitly, actual concentrations of media
power, whatever forms those concentrations may take in different locations’
(Couldry and Curran, 2003: 7). However defined, the label ‘alternative media’
has traditionally been used to encompass media outlets that lie outside the so-
called ‘mainstream’ media – or more specifically, the corporate-owned main-
stream media. This has allowed the term to be applied to a wide range of media
outlets, from The Nation magazine to the Village Voice to community radio and
television. More recently it has been expanded to incorporate countless blogs
and alternative news websites. The United States has seen a significant rise of
the reach and impact of alternative media of all types in recent years.
Of course the United States has a long tradition of such media. Since the
early 20th century, the alternative press, variously defined, has been a con-
stant feature of the US media landscape, albeit subject to rising and falling
popularity. These media emerged initially from a primarily (though not exclu-
sively) radical-left tradition of muckraking and dissident writing (Kessler,
1984). From the 1960s, the alternative press re-emerged as a significant force,
linked to (mostly) weekly print newspapers such as the Village Voice,L.A.
Weekly and Seattle Weekly, as well as radical magazines such as Z Magazine.
More recently, however, the onset of the ‘War on Terror’ and the war in Iraq
has coincided with not only an expansion of the alternative press in the print
medium (Shaffer, 2003), but also the maturation of the internet as an online
home for alternative media on both sides of the political spectrum.
All the same, the ‘alternative’ tag remains fuzzy, and there is little agree-
ment about what constitutes alternative media – beyond self-identification by
media outlets claiming this status. As the alternative Z Magazine points out:
376 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
If the Village Voice calls itself alternative, for example, but is virtually identical in
its structure, finances, and decision making with non-alternative institutions, and,
moreover, has no intention of making any changes in these aspects, it is still alter-
native, because the Voice’s CEO says it is. (Alpert, 2004: para 2)
The BBC of course does not typically describe itself as an alternative
medium, in the United States or elsewhere. However, in terms of its role
and impact in the country as a whole, it is arguably analogous to, say, the
Village Voice’s role in New York political and cultural life. Returning to the
Couldry and Curran (2003) definition, the BBC does represent a production
center ‘that challenges, at least implicitly’, concentrations of traditional
media power in the United States.
Most obviously, the BBC’s non-standard (for the US) financing arrangements
set it apart from the dominant pattern of US commercial news. Partly as a result,
the BBC’s media practices do clearly still fall ‘outside the mainstreams of
corporate communication’ in the US. BBC leaders like to contrast their position
with that of mainstream commercial media – whether in the UK or the United
States – which invariably are subject to significant and at times debilitating influ-
ences from the marketplace. For example, in an April 2005 interview on
Hypergene MediaBlog, Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News,
argues that, in its move toward a participatory media model, the Corporation’s
public funding enables it to ‘concentrate on quality and reach’, whereas com-
mercial competitors are forced to take account of profitability. ‘That probably
means we can afford to take risks, by focusing purely on the public value of a
news service, that a commercial broadcaster can’t’ (Willis and Bowman, 2005:
para. 67). Crucially, the BBC’s resulting placement in the alternative ‘camp’ is
also recognized and accepted by key audience segments, such as ‘interpretive
communities’ of self-identified activists in the United States surveyed on the
alternative media’s role in opposition to mainstream media (Rauch, 2007). The
BBC has retained this oppositional cachet in spite of the recurring debate back
in the UK over whether, and to what extent, the Corporation truly challenged the
UK government in the period surrounding the 2003 Iraq invasion (Lewis, 2006,
Pilger, 2003; Tumber and Palmer, 2004).
Returning to the alternative media literature, we find that studies of alternative
media identify such media as representing voices that offer advocacy, opposi-
tional, or even dissident views (Kessler, 1984; Streitmatter, 2001). They do so
because they so often perceive mainstream media as biased and operating in
the interests of the powerful as opposed to minority or other less empowered
voices – in particular because of their financial structures that cause them to be
advertising driven and thus dependent on business interests and because their
owners are part of these same elite classes (Armstrong, 1984; Streitmatter, 2001).
As for whether the BBC itself practices an alternative or left-wing bias: that
is certainly a perception held by some on the right of the US political spectrum.
However, given the general conservatism of the United States in comparison to
Britain, the further shift to the right experienced in the United States in recent
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 377
years – at a time when political conservatism in the UK has been in marked
retreat – and the concomitant rightward shift of the US media, it seems
inevitable that the BBC would appear more liberal or left-leaning by compar-
ison. But such an assumption emerges not from the BBC’s professionalism
and news ethics, but instead from the manifestation of a broader ideological
shift – to the right – among significant sections of the US polity. In this con-
text it is worth recalling the comments of Nick Higham, a special correspon-
dent for BBC News 24. Higham’s comments focus on the Iraq War, but one
could apply the reasoning more broadly to at least one component of the
changing national culture in the United States:
I think Americans, particularly conservative Americans, have a problem with the
BBC approach because impartiality, which is the BBC’s fundamental watchword, is
itself a liberal notion.… And our commitment to impartiality comes out of what is
fundamentally a small ‘l’ liberal culture, liberal media culture, in which objectivity,
impartiality are thought to be good in themselves and achievable.… The impression
I get is that a lot of Americans just don’t get that…. And to them it’s much more
important that the news media are supportive of the national effort, particularly
when you go to war. (Robertson, 2004: 50)
Although the BBC does not engage actively in advocacy journalism it cer-
tainly does promote a wide variety of political views, and often dissident
views, especially when compared with the narrower range of political and
ideological debate typically heard in the US mainstream media.
Conclusion
This article has re-examined the role of the BBC in the United States – partic-
ularly in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.
Within the broad context provided by these geopolitical developments, the role
of the BBC has begun to resemble that of a domestic US alternative news
source, filling in the vacuum left by an American agenda-setting press that
appeared to cease ‘doing its job properly’ in the crucial run-up period to
the Iraq War, and for at least two years afterwards. We can thus effectively
apply – at least in the case of the United States – the alternative media label to
news outlets, such as the BBC, that are not traditionally considered to be ‘alter-
native’ in their home country. The same label can be applied to a number of
prominent UK-based news media using the same process. However, the BBC’s
size, influence and multifaceted nature allows it to be considered, effectively,
as a ‘super-alternative’ news and infotainment source in the United States –
contributing to a high level of credibility that sets it apart from US mainstream
news media.Yet the BBC also brings to bear its massive newsgathering oper-
ation and reputation for honesty and credibility built up from generations of
global broadcasting. The BBC ‘brand’ carries name recognition and an aura of
respectability and quality that carries over from its news to its entertainment
programming, available on multiple US cable channels in addition to BBC
378 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
America. And in fact, BBC America has expanded its BBC World news cov-
erage, both on weekday mornings with a three-hour block, and weekday
evenings with an expanded one-hour news special broadcast from Washington,
DC. And, in a first for the BBC, BBC World now cablecasts its content on a
Long Island cable system reaching 2 million subscribers. And BBC World’s
Richard Sambrook is negotiating with other US cable companies (Hansen,
2007). No other non-US media organization currently has the credibility, legit-
imacy and the deep pockets necessary to take on this multi-faceted role. All in
all, it’s a powerful combination for influencing US public opinion.
In general, the quality British news media – based in a country where the atti-
tude toward US motives and actions in the ‘War on Terror’has been more critical
(in spite of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ardent support for the US-led
coalition) – have maintained a more combative attitude toward the United States
and the Bush administration. Even so, these outlets’ categorization as foreign
media and their still-marginal status in the US media market currently insulate
them both from mainstream public pressure in the US and from overt political
pressure from the US government (though this is starting to change). This free-
dom allows them to be much more critical of, and even antagonistic to, adminis-
tration foreign policy than is the case with their elite US-based counterparts. Yet
the reputation for integrity and quality they generally enjoy as English-language
news outlets representing a key American ally enables them to be considered
appropriate and acceptable sources of information among large segments of the
US audiences.
From among the set of non-US media organizations operating in the US,
the BBC is exceptionally well positioned to adapt to the new combination of
‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors now provided by a dynamic mix of new technologies
and social, cultural and political developments. The BBC’s evolving, multi-
faceted identity puts it in a near-unique position – for a foreign news organi-
zation – to respond to the demand of millions of disaffected US ‘pro-sumers’
seeking new sources of credible, legitimate information. It is these American
pro-sumers, rapidly increasing in number yet still tied to Western news
norms, who are the likely advance guard of a fundamental shift under way in
news consumption patterns. Meanwhile, the increased presence of BBC News
on NPR and PBS services provides a powerful complementary ‘push’ factor,
seeking out new audiences of people who may not necessarily have been
seeking alternative news, but who might in any case appreciate such a source
if it is presented to them. At the same time, the BBC brand carries name
recognition and an aura of respectability and quality that carries over from its
news to its entertainment programming, now available on multiple US cable
channels in addition to BBC America. In the process, the BBC, it could be
argued, has been expanding its public-service function from one national pub-
lic sphere to another – in effect contributing to the creation of a transnational
public sphere or microsphere, linking the United States to the UK. However,
in so doing, the BBC is also contributing to a fundamental change in the
nature of that public sphere.
Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 379
If the BBC has become de facto a form of alternative media in America, it
is because that ‘alternativeness’ has been created by the specific nature of
BBC News operations in the United States, combined with the reception of
the content by US audiences who perceive themselves as unable to get the full
story from their own media – particularly liberals and those against the war,
whose voices fail to appear or resonate within the US media sphere.
This does not necessarily mean that the BBC will retain its alternative tag in
the United States – it is, after all, a global media giant, with strong commercial
ambitions in the world’s richest media market. It is equally likely that this ‘alter-
nativeness’ is a temporary condition, made possible by a confluence of larger
changes in international relations, global journalism, and communication prac-
tices and patterns. Yet experience of the BBC’s global operations to date indi-
cates that it can retain its multifaceted nature, preserving a strong brand identity
even as it develops its new faces and moves ahead aggressively with new serv-
ices and into new arenas. BBC News may well preserve some of its ‘alt cool’
even as it becomes steadily mainstreamed into the US news sphere.
Finally, the rise of the BBC in the United States also suggests a new twist
in the reshaping of media and cultural boundaries in that country. Now that
the era of purely national centrifugal news (defined in America by the for-
merly dominant network news) is gone or going, the BBC is positioning itself
to be a significant player in the fragmented, centripetal news microsphere that
will likely replace it.
Notes
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Intercultural and Development
Division at the May 2007 conference of the International Communication Association
in San Francisco, California.
1. Bennett’s (1990) indexing theory can be applied usefully to news media cover-
age in both the UK and the US. This approach examines the extent to which media
professionals ‘index’ the range of voices and viewpoints in their news coverage ‘to the
range of views expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic’
(Bennett, 1990: 106). The theory, together with subsequent refinements (Althaus
et al., 1996; Livingston and Eachus, 1996; Zaller and Chiu, 1996), takes a significant
step forward in helping us understand how the press actually functions in covering
political news. Its emphasis on the role of source–journalist relations – and particu-
larly on the power of government sources – is revealing.
2. Leander Kahney, in an article for Wired.com, quotes Jon Dennis, Guardian
Unlimited’s deputy news editor, who points out that American readers are ‘visiting his site
for the range of opinions it publishes, and to engage in vigorous debate. Media outlets in
the United States, he said, are not presenting the issues critically’(Kahney, 2003: para. 10).
3. Interestingly, more conservative business-oriented UK publications such as The
Economist and the Financial Times of London have also seen sharp increases in their
US circulation in recent years (Hansen, 2007; Jacobs, 2004; Parks et al., 2002). By
late 2004, The Economist’s weekly sales in the United States had reached 450,000 –
three times the UK sales figure and 45 percent of the magazine’s worldwide circula-
tion (The Economist, 2004).
380 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
4. This is not to suggest that commercial values and quality news are incompatible –
of course, they are not. But their forced merger in the context of the BBC was difficult,
to say the least. The radical institutional changes brought about by the BBC’s reorien-
tation in the 1990s (under Director-General John Birt’s Producer’s Choice program)
were painful – and Georgina Born’s anthropological study of the BBC during the late
1990s, Uncertain Vision (2004), provides plenty of evidence for that. But the BBC
nevertheless seems to have weathered that era with its global reputation fairly intact.
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Bicket & Wall, BBC News in the United States 383
Douglas Bicket is an Assistant Professor in the Communication/Journalism
Department, St John Fisher College, Rochester, New York. His current research
focuses on the recent impact of British media in the United States. Address:
Department of Communication/Journalism, St John Fisher College, Rochester,
NY 14618, USA. [email: dbicket@sjfc.edu]
Melissa Wall is Associate Professor of Journalism at California State
University – Northridge. Her research interests include international news and
new media. Address: 18111 Nordhoff St, Northridge, CA 91330–8311 USA.
[email: melissa.a.wall@csun.edu]
384 Media, Culture & Society 31(3)
