BBC Trust

On 25 November 2013, the BBC Trust held the second in its series of impartiality seminars, this time focusing on the BBC's reporting on Africa.

The purpose of the seminar was to facilitate a discussion with BBC staff from the domestic service, World Service and others from Global News along with external interested guests and speakers about the impartiality of the BBC’s English language news and current affairs coverage of sub Saharan Africa for UK and international audiences.

In July 2011, the Trust committed to strengthening its work in ensuring that the BBC’s standards of impartiality are being met - and are seen to be being met. As part of this the Trust announced the introduction of regular impartiality seminars that look at emerging and current topics.

Unlike the existing impartiality reviews carried out by the Trust, these would not be based on reviews of BBC output, but would instead enable the BBC to consider how to approach current and topical issues, which pose difficulties for programme makers, with due impartiality.

BBC Trustee for England and Chair of the Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee, Alison Hastings, has written on the discussion that took place at the seminar and the Trust has also published a list of attendees.