Sadly I tend to agree with the previous posting. When I was overseas in the 1970s and 1980s, I found nothing but respect for the BBC World Service. In Thailand it was the only source of real news during a series of coups and counter coups. In fact during a brief flowering of democracy after 1973, a Thai Television and Radio service was set up modelled on the BBC. It was the first service attacked and shut down in a counter coup. In the late 1980s before Indo China had opened up, while talking to a Lao Minister of Health, I realised that he listened to the World Service, and again, in Viet Nam driving to a project with Government officials, the car was stopped and we all listened to the World Service news. A cameraman working for the Iranian National TV service during the Iranian revolution, said the only way the crowds would let him film the demonstrations was to put a sticker on his camera saying BBC. Then he was safe, otherwise he would have been lynched!

However, now the English version of Al Jazeera TV seems to have a broader view of world news than the BBC World News TV service which is very repetitive and constantly advertises programmes that you could if convenient timewise see in the future but at any one time there is only a narrow range of items. The radio version of the world service is slightly broader in scope, but who knows how unbiased it really is.

Since the Hutton Report, the BBC national service seems to have been completely cowed. We have the Radio 4 World at One telling us some national news and then possibly something about Iraq and Afghanistan, or, if there are enough deaths some particular crisis elsewhere, but often it is recycled government spin.

Yes, for democracy's sake we lose a really unbiased well funded BBC at our peril.