Annual Review 2007/2008

The team of 50 journalists aboard the MV Aboshar – which included staff from 17 language services at different times during the month-long trip – could not have had a more vivid demonstration of the impact of extreme weather on people in Bangladesh. The aim of their journey had been to meet communities affected by climate change.Two weeks after setting out from Dhaka on their ambitious river journey, Cyclone Sidr hit. The most destructive storm in the country for more than a decade, it killed more than 3,000 people and left millions homeless.

The Bangladesh by River tour was a vivid and moving highlight of Taking the Temperature, one of the year's major programme seasons, which explored the global impact of climate change. During the year, BBC World Service's special coverage looked beyond the day-to-day headlines to provide insights into global trends and offer a fresh perspective on countries from Afghanistan and Iraq to China and Russia. New interactive technologies brought issues to life for audiences in ways that had never been attempted before.

In Bangladesh, plans to highlight the impact of climate change on local communities were rapidly changed as BBC journalists left the planned route to witness Sidr's devastation and assess the effectiveness of the relief effort.They were among the first broadcasters to reach communities affected.

"We abandoned our journey in the north of the country and went back down south," says Sabir Mustafa, Head of BBC Bengali, who advised broadcasters from all parts of the BBC. "Two days after the cyclone, our reporters were back in the same villages they had visited ten days earlier. Those programmes are most vivid in our minds."

"We abandoned our journey in the north of the country and went back down south," says Sabir Mustafa, Head of BBC Bengali, who advised broadcasters from all parts of the BBC."Two days after the cyclone, our reporters were back in the same villages they had visited ten days earlier. Those programmes are most vivid in our minds."

Before the cyclone, thousands of people came out to greet the adapted tourist boat as it travelled from Dhaka to the edge of the Bay of Bengal and into the heart of the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans. BBC teams spoke to villagers whose homes were disappearing because of land erosion. BBC Bengali broadcast live discussions with local people and co-produced special editions of the interactive TV, radio and online programme Bangladesh Sanglap (Dialogue) with the BBC World Service Trust.

The vessel was equipped with solarpowered recording equipment and a number of solar panels that provided light and power to the eight 'hot desks', satellite phones and other portable equipment. The solar power enabled the team to record and broadcast from the boat without the engine noise in the background and reduced emissions and saved valuable fuel. The latest interactive technologies made it possible for audiences to track the boat's journey. They could follow an interactive map, view and tag pictures on the photosharing website flickr.com and find out what journalists were doing through the social networking site twitter.com. Journalists from four of the country's main television channels as well as newspapers in the UK also joined the boat, generating publicity and interest. It was the depth and innovation of the team's approach that won the Bangladesh by River project Gold in the 2008 Sony Radio Academy's Multiplatform Radio Award category.

"The river project lifted the profile of BBC Bengali in Bangladesh and created a lot of excellent programming on climate change," says project manager James Sales. "It showed our strengths as an organisation and what we can achieve when we work together – we achieved all of our aims and more."

China Week

The last time BBC World Service ran a week of special programming about China, it focused on this huge nation's dramatically changing role in the world. In 2007, a week of programming on China was scheduled to coincide with the 17th Party Congress of the Communist Party, presenting an unprecedented opportunity to explore the internal political processes.

"We thought, how often have these processes been explained? The Congress is not democratic but it sets the stage for decisions," says Senior Commissioning Editor Anne Koch. "So we had people such as James Reynolds inside the Congress hall explaining what was going on and using it as a way to talk about politics in the country." Teams in Beijing, Shanghai and central China added to the breadth of coverage. Jill McGivering's reports focused on the voices of those migrating from country to city.

Among the week's highlights were the BBC Debate: China's Growing Pains, chaired by Nik Gowing from Dalian, and Assignment: China's Long Arm on the spread of China's economic influence. Many language services took part in the season but BBC journalists from the Mandarin service were refused visas to report on the Congress.

Russia Week

"Reporting elections is nothing new: we do it all the time. Reporting an election which looks more like a selection is a different story," says Olexiy Solohubenko, Executive Editor, Americas and Europe, of the BBC World Service Russia Week. "We wanted to show how the country has changed in eight years of the 'Putin Project'."

Scheduled in the run-up to the election of President Putin's successor, the week's focus on Russian issues was BBC World Service's biggest yet. Programmes ranged from a review of Putin's policies and the role of the FSB security service (successor to the KGB), to the booming film industry, the music scene and the state of the nation's health. A BBC World Service-commissioned global survey revealed that a majority of citizens in G7 countries regarded the outgoing president as a "negative influence on democracy and human rights in Russia". Reporting from Russia throughout the week, and co-presenting with Konstantin Eggert of BBC Russian, the BBC's former Moscow correspondent, Alan Little, concluded that the big question, whether Russia is a democracy, remained open. "The Putin circle calls the new Russia a sovereign democracy – a democracy defended against hostile foreign meddling," he said. "But the odd – and very Russian – paradox is this: that this retreat from the democratic experiment in the 1990s seems genuinely popular."

Iraq five years on

"It was five years since the invasion of Iraq and we looked at how those years have impacted on the United States, Iran, the Arab region and Iraq itself," says Liliane Landor, Editor World Service News and Current Affairs. Five half-hour programmes culminated in special coverage on the day of the anniversary.

Iraq is now the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. Around 280 are believed to have been killed, many of them Iraqis. BBC Baghdad correspondent Jim Muir met Fatima Salloumi, Director of the Islamic Press Centre, whose husband, also a journalist, was killed. She now presents her husband's programme."We can't give up and leave the field to those people in Iraq trying to silence the truth," she told Muir.

Africa Cup of Nations

BBC World Service's coverage of the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations from Ghana was the most ambitious and comprehensive yet. Match commentary and special reports available on radio and online captured all the excitement. Audiences in Africa could follow the tournament in Arabic, English, French, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Portuguese, Somali and Swahili. At internet cafés in the four host cities fans could try out the website, bbcworldservice.com/africanfootball, and compete for a virtual trophy by playing a fun online game.

A record number of more than 40 FM partner stations across Africa carried live coverage and updates. "We had a lot of innovative programmes tailored for them," says Editorial Coordinator Vera Kwakofi of BBC African Productions. "The Swahili Service was crucial for East Africa because they provided the only programming serving Swahili listeners.We helped out a lot of people by keeping them in touch with one of the biggest stories on the continent."

Coast to coast in Spanish

Reporters Jose Baig and Carlos Ceresole from BBC Mundo took to the road from the east to the west coast of the United States to see if it would be possible to do so speaking only Spanish. They produced online video, still pictures, text and audio in addition to filing a blog and sharing material on flickr.com and facebook.com.

Their journey attracted crowds and widespread media coverage. "It was a very successful interaction with the US community, which generates key traffic to bbcmundo.com," says Hernando Alvarez, Current Affairs Editor for the site.

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