Highlights from the conference keynote address delivered by Richard Sambrook, director of BBC News. Since September 11, 2001, many Americans have discovered the British Broadcasting Corporation's international news reporting. As the world's largest broadcast newsgathering organization, the BBC has more than 250 correspondents stationed around the globe. BBC World, a 24-hour news and information service, is distributed to 200 million homes worldwide. Its international radio service broadcasts in 43 languages.

Today the BBC World Service is making inroads into the American market. BBC World newscasts air on over 80 percent of U.S. public television stations, up from 60 percent before September 11, 2001. They are also available on most of the major digital cable channels and via direct broadcast satellite. BBC World Service radio broadcasts now have 2.6 million U.S. listeners, and the World Service website has eight times the traffic it had in August 2001, with more than half of the hits coming from the United States. The BBC has also entered into cooperative arrangements with several U.S. media companies such as the Discovery Channel, ABC News, Public Radio International, and National Public Radio.

RICHARD SAMBROOK, DIRECTOR, BBC NEWS: As a child growing up in Britain in the 60's, the first TV news images I can recall came from America: the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, the moon landing (perhaps the ultimate in foreign coverage!), and later, Watergate. As a young producer, the scale and professionalism of American network news when I came across it in the field was awesome. Indeed, those are the things that inspired me to become a journalist and enter the world of broadcast news. I believed it was important work.

Forty years ago, Edward R. Murrow could famously and confidently declare that: "The new medium of television had the potential to educate, illuminate, and inspire. However, it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely lights and wires in a box." That was the age of patriarchy, when producers and editors were an elite who knew what was good for their audience and gave it to them. And the audience, in the Cold War and with little choice, was grateful for it.

Broadcasters understood that their ability to control what was transmitted through that box constituted an enormous power and an enormous responsibility. For the mass population, their knowledge and understanding of the wider world came, in large measure, from the news broadcasts they watched.

So much has changed. Now we're in the midst of the information revolution. More sources of news, information, and more data than ever before. Five hundred channels and the Internet to choose from. If the audience doesn't like what you're offering, they switch and switch again and in this new environment, news and public affairs content doesn't do so well.

Awash with information, but perhaps not with knowledge.

In Britain more people under the age of 35 voted in a TV show to choose their pop idol than voted in the general election. It seemed, in Neil Postman's phrase, we might be set to "amuse ourselves to death."

Then came September 11.

September 11th was an occasion when the world needed news in a way it hadn't for more than a decade. People turned to us desperate to understand, in search of clear, accurate information to help them make sense of those horrifying events. They were looking for some stable points in what suddenly appeared to be a terrifying world. I think all broadcasters and press rose to that challenge and deserve much praise.

Trust was crucial. These days it's sometimes hard to know what is real and what is not. But news broadcasters' reputation rests on truth. And that's why people turned to us then.

However, it left them asking some awkward questions: Why didn't we know this was coming? Why haven't we heard of al-Qaeda? What has been going on in the Middle East? Why didn't we know about the Taliban? And if we did, why didn't you explain why it mattered?

We know from the Pew research, among others, that the key block for audiences in understanding foreign news is a lack of context and explanation. But you can't give that as a one-off. It demands a commitment to reporting long-running and complex issues over a period of time.

And I believe there's a lesson for the media conglomerates: Invest in reporting the truth and you will earn the trust and loyalty of audiences. Not just for one overnight rating, but for the long game. Fail them when they need you and you may lose their trust and support -- for good.

For a precious few months, the money tap was turned on and the broadcast news organizations brought back images and analysis of the events and forces which are shaping our world. Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather were guests of choice in every living room.

Three weeks after the attacks, Dan Rather told the Columbia Journalism Review:

"I think it's a great moment in American journalism. Now, whether we can make this moment last, and how long we can make it last, these are the open questions." He also predicted an early return of the mindset which says, as he put it, "You just can't survive, much less thrive, without dumbing it down, sleazing it up, going lighter, going softer."

And so, nine months on, Disney tried to replace Nightline with Letterman; according to the Tyndall Report, news programs have returned to a softer agenda; audiences have settled back to a disappointing low; and hardly a week goes by without, even in London, another article predicting the end of network news.

To me, this has all the hallmarks of a crisis.

As someone who is passionate about news-who believes that reporting on the extraordinary events that affect millions of real people's lives around the world every day is one of the most important things we can choose to do, who believes that news and factual programs should be amongst the most enthralling things we offer-I want to know how we ended up here.

Because somewhere between my view (and I suspect your view) of news, and the view of much of the audience and our owners looking at the bottom line, something has broken. Something has gone awry.

Putting it right is the major challenge for my generation of news directors, editors, and leaders.

Schedules and programs determined by focus group have led to a crisis of confidence and failure of imagination by producers in the name of giving the public what they want.

We rush to give people what they want on television, to maintain ratings and profits. But we are not inspiring or capturing their imagination and we're no longer illuminating the world in the way Murrow talked about.

Far from leading our audiences, we fear them-fear that anything complex, anything unfamiliar will be a turn-off. We, the producers, have become micromanagers in what, to paraphrase Dick Morris, is "small-bore television."

But, of course, the genie won't go back into the bottle. Viewers will vote with the remote control. So is there no way back?

Perhaps we need to work harder not only to hear what the audience says they want, but to try to understand what might inspire them to want what they don't know.

Focus groups tell us that the under-35s aren't interested in foreign news. And yet, they are the generation that backpacks around the world, e-mails across continents, listens to music from Africa, Asia. We live in increasingly multicultural societies where many, many people have connections overseas. Don't tell me they're not interested. Maybe they just don't like the way we tell it.

We all conduct mountains of audience research, particularly on the under-35s. But too often we end up patronizing them. Believing what they seek is entertainment, attitude, "cool." Our re-search, specifically to develop a news program for those generations for a new digital channel, came to some different conclusions. What they want is straight news. Modern, contemporary in style and tone, yes, but not skewed in its agenda and not patronizing. They care about the world. They want to hear about it in a way that is straight, unmediated, and with some depth and explanation.

You may say it's easy for a public service broadcaster like the BBC to preach about foreign news. Do I appreciate the difficulties facing the broadcast industry in the U.S.A.?

Well, yes, I do. We face the same problems.

The BBC is paid for by the British public. Not through the tax system or through government but through a licence fee on every household with a television set. That fee essentially represents a contract between the BBC and the viewing public to deliver a broad range of high-quality programming. If the majority of people don't believe they get value for money from the BBC, we're in big trouble. So ratings matter.

We also face intense competition, just as the American networks do, from a myriad of cable and satellite channels. Ratings for individual shows have declined, but two-thirds of the population still turn to the BBC for news.

We consider it our responsibility to place a high priority on international news coverage. And this applies in the programs we produce for our British audiences, as well as for BBC World Service Radio and BBC World Television. Last year we reported from 160 different countries.

For me, the coverage we have been able to offer all our audiences since 9/11 has been a vindication of that ethos.

Above all, we put a very high priority on firsthand reporting. There is no substitute for a trusted reporter saying, "I went there, I saw this." And audiences, particularly the elusive younger ones, re-spect that too. They recognize its integrity in a crowded market. To be able to say, "We know because we were there and saw for ourselves"-that's gold dust.

The BBC's master of location reporting is John Simpson, who, as one commentator observed recently, has "been there and done that a hundred times, literally."

On 9/11, John had just emerged from Afghanistan-his dozenth visit-and was able to give firsthand analysis of the possible bin Laden connection and the likely consequences for his Taliban protectors. As the story developed, John and three colleagues walked into Kabul ahead of the Northern Alliance forces and most of the rest of the international media. Contacts and experience and commitment to the story paid off.

We've invested heavily in new technology and mobile newsgathering. On this occasion the determination of the newsgathering team was so strong that, finding the road through Northern Afghanistan impassable, they loaded the satellite dish onto a posse of 30 mules and scrambled for five days through the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush. They arrived in Kabul as it was liberated and we were broadcasting live within 30 minutes. That's the kind of dedication and commitment I really admire.

What I hope I'm giving you a sense of here is a long-term, committed, planned, financially supported approach to international news reporting. I don't believe world news is something you can pick up and drop when it suits, or when the need arises.

What we are trying to do day in, day out over many years is follow a course that puts foreign news at its heart-not just in the big stories we cover but in the smaller, apparently less significant ones, all of which feed our understanding of how the world works and how what happens in one place directly or indirectly affects those of us watching or listening elsewhere. 9/11 was the clearest example of that "connectedness," but it is by no means the only one.

The impact of 9/11 is unclear. Has there been a fundamental change in the level of interest in international news or is this just a blip on the road to overall decline? Is it a "wake-up call" to news organizations, and if so will they heed it?

I wonder whether this commonly held view that the American public is not interested in international news is really true, or how much it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Tell them less about the world and small wonder that eventually they cease to ask about it. And they are ceasing to ask about it. I am always struck by how much of what passes for international coverage here is actually about American interests abroad. It's like a guest at a party who eventually pauses for breath and says, "But enough about me. Tell me what you think of me!"

But there can be no doubt after 9/11 that America needs to take a close interest in the rest of the world. And the media has to deliver that. Call it a corporate social responsibility. I firmly believe that with editorial vision, leadership, creativity, we can engage people in foreign news and in the world around them. And the circumstances that challenge us in terms of competition, choice, and fragmenting audiences may also provide us with opportunities.

How? We have to innovate-continually.The BBC has already put time and energy into expanding our services. Whether via digital TV or radio, via the Internet or new broadband services, mobile phone, we will be there and we want BBC news to be the top choice for news on all of these platforms. Twenty-four- hour TV, radio, and new media services.

To do that we have to evolve our content. Because in the end it is our content that must distinguish the BBC from its competitors. I want us to be the audience's first choice for the world's best journalism. In the States, it seems you compete more for talent than for content. For me, it's the journalism that counts.

I want greater differentiation in our programs. There cannot be one size of BBC news product that fits all audiences-a BBC News McNugget. On the contrary, for us "difference is good." What interests and motivates a 55-year-old will be very different from a 25-year-old. We have to provide for both-in niche services, if necessary.

So we've launched a new prime time international news program simulcast on BBC World and one of our U.K. digital channels, always taking an internationalist view of the news.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have "60-Seconds," an on-the-hour multimedia roundup for younger viewers on our digital channel, aimed at under-35s.

Next month, we're evolving our Internet news site to have both U.K. and international editions. The guiding principle behind all of our traditional and new output is not to shy away from the important news in favor of engaging trivia but to "make the important interesting."

So our output will change over time and rightly so-in all areas we need, as I say, a dynamic response. And for all our evolving news output, I think interactivity is key. We can no longer simply act as gatekeepers to information. The Internet and digital technology may have spawned competition, but it has also given us the opportunity to engage with our audiences as never before.

On September 11th we will launch an online portal marking that day and those terrible events. But it will also lead users into the BBC's news and history archive to explain what led to that extraordinary moment in time, and help them anticipate what may lie in the years ahead.

If you want to know more about a particular subject, the Internet and now interactive television can deliver that. And while editors have bemoaned the prospect of people devising running orders of their own choosing which might edit out what we believe is important, think of this: If, instead of asking people if they want to be e-mailed foreign news stories or business news, you ask, "Do you want to know about stories that could have a bearing on national security, or stories that might have a bearing on your pension plan?" you may get a different response.

As ever in journalism, you have to ask the right question to get the right answer. Do you want foreign news? No. Do you want to know how your world is changing? Yes.

In an increasingly complex world we can act as their trusted guide, helping them make sense of it all-whether it be through an interactive forum with a world leader on the World Service and BBC News Online's Talking Point, or through a major TV news show with e-mail and video-booth contributions and questions from the audience.

So, far from retrenching, we have expanded our news coverage aggressively. We now produce six times more news output than we did 10 years ago-30,000 hours per year for U.K. audiences and over 15,000 hours per year for overseas markets.

So should a broadcaster's response to increasing competition and a fickle audience be to put our bats away and retire hurt? Should it be to dig our heels in and convince ourselves that the product is good and the audience will come to their senses eventually? Should it be to dumb down and chase the ratings? To all of this an emphatic "No."

We must respond creatively, work harder, and manage carefully the changes forced upon us to ensure the survival of a healthy broadcast news industry.

Why? Because journalism provides something essential in a democratic culture: independent, reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information that citizens require to make free choices.

I don't think there are many people in this room that would disagree about the importance of foreign news reporting, but we know it's not a universal view.

Large media conglomerates may produce the news and own the production process, but they don't necessarily care about it. And governments across the world often fail to appreciate its importance or, worse, still try to stifle it.

If there is a crisis in broadcast news, then it needs leadership to find a way out of it.

The importance of news reporting in general and foreign news in particular has to be strongly argued for by those who do understand it and care passionately about it. The audiences still trust us. Just. Let's not let them down.

I hope audiences to your news programs increase. But I believe it'll only happen if we inspire our viewers, not pander to them. I hope media owners make a good profit, but not at the much higher cost of failing their public in explaining a complex and dangerous world.

I hope broadcast news is celebrated again as a powerful and important medium for connecting the world. But that'll only happen if we honor the trust our audiences place in us and speak loudly and clearly about our values and why they matter.

Broadcast news is still the most powerful tool for communication, for connecting the world, for explaining the world to itself. I believe it's a force for good. But it's up to us to prove it and to earn afresh that respect.

Question

STEVEN SEGALLER: I'm a displaced compatriot, a director at News and Public Affairs Programs at WNET in New York. And I should note that in a month's time, on July 11, we and PBS are launching a new, prime time, hour-long, all-international documentary series called "Wide Angle," for which we have high hopes. What's the face of news and public affairs on your main channels, on the main BBC One and BBC Two?

Has news and public affairs gone the way of its fellows in the U.S., being marginalized on the main channels, which have to deliver that large audience?

RICHARD SAMBROOK: I think there's a mixed picture, to be honest with you.

Certainly in terms of daily news, I'd say we're pretty strong at the moment. We recently shifted the time of our flagship evening news program from 9 PM to 10 PM, and that has stemmed the kind of long-term decline that I think the networks have suffered here as well, and that we felt in Britain. So that has leveled off, and actually, overall, the news audience, I think, has increased by about a million over the last year across all terrestrial channels in the U.K.

What's more difficult, though, is public affairs, or, as we call it, current affairs programming. What doesn't work anymore is hammocking, the way you put one popular program at one time and a different popular comedy or drama an hour later, and put something in between that was good for the audience in the hope they'd stick with it. Because they don't; they just zap away now.

So what we've done is to try to schedule serious content at a more protected place in the schedule, so our main flagship current affairs program, "Panorama," now goes out roughly in a kind of "60 Minutes" slot. And, though that's never going to be a massive audience place, it is less competitively scheduled against, and we believe it can still compete and find its natural place there.

But the digital channels, BBC Three and BBC Four, are absolutely places where we can experiment and innovate and try and find new formats and ways of doing things that will bring in a new audience.

Question

QUESTIONER: My question should go to the marketing department, but, as you are here, now that you have whetted our appetite, is there any chance that we in the U.S. can buy BBC World TV? So far, it's about the only satellite channel I know of that you cannot get in this country.

RICHARD SAMBROOK: In terms of BBC World, it's available on a number of PBS stations, and there are some programs on BBC America. We would love to have it as a 24-hour channel here, if that were possible. It may be, it may not. But we'd love to do that if it ever does become possible.

Question

ROY WADIA: I am formerly from CNN's Worldwide Service, which is not seen in this country, except on certain cable systems. From the outside, since you're in England, you've spoken about the cause of journalism worldwide. What do you think of the Fox phenomenon in this country, because it's actually pulled several other stations with it in a way, including my former station, CNN.

RICHARD SAMBROOK: Well, I don't get to see Fox very often. And when I do, it comes as a bit of a surprise, because we don't quite have anything like that in Britain. And the reason for that is in Britain all television, including commercial television, is regulated and has to be strictly politically impartial.

I suppose I'm not surprised that in an unregulated environment that's the way the pull has gone, and I'm not surprised that Fox in those terms has been successful.

But I suppose my real view about it is that, as I said in my comments earlier, for those of us who believe in the importance of international news and the importance of impartiality, that's another example of the market failing, if they have to do that to be successful, and, therefore, I think it could be the thin end of a very large wedge that would discomfort me considerably.

But, you know, this is a different market, and I can understand why they've done it, and I can understand why in its own terms it's been successful, but I'm glad that in Britain we still regulate it.

Question

QUESTIONER: I had hoped to hear this morning and this afternoon a little bit more about the impact of the Internet on the producing and consuming of international news, especially in a time when, if I want to find out what's happening in Pakistan, I can tune in to Najam Sethi's newspapers. And I know BBC has invested a lot into putting news on the Internet.

Can you give us some assessment of your own feeling as to the impact of this medium on reporting and consuming of international news?

RICHARD SAMBROOK: Well, I think the strengths of it are obviously in that it expands what you're able to do almost exponentially. And certainly, regarding this crucial issue about the amount of context and explanation and background briefing you can give to very complex issues, the Internet is part of that answer.

On something as difficult as the Middle East, we can provide online a lot of basic briefing and a lot of clickable maps and explanation there as a resource if people choose to go find it. But the question is whether they will choose to go and find it.

I think certainly in terms of interactive television, which is I guess the next step, it's going to be providing news on demand, which I am sure will be the next stage for a media organization like the BBC in providing news on demand on broadband service, on TV, and so on. I'm sure it will be absolutely a core part of what we do in not very many years.

The downside of it, of course, is that news on demand edits out what we think is important and it's kind of self-censoring in a way. We may simply have to accept that, but I think what the Internet provides at the moment is for the audience who's engaged anyway.

Question

QUESTIONER: I am the editor of the evening news in Channel 2 News Israel Television. We have, more or less, the same broadcast system as the British, with a combination of public service and commercials. And I want to ask you whether you feel that being a public service is more independent than the commercial news?

Because in Israel, we have a lot of constraints, especially on the public broadcast, from the political level, what to broadcast and what not to broadcast.

On the other hand, the commercial news has to be more appealing to the audience. So how do you see this?

RICHARD SAMBROOK: Well, certainly the commercial news in Britain has to appeal as well as it can to the audience, but I think so do we for the reasons I said. Ratings matter to the BBC very strongly. And if our ratings fall, then we're in trouble because our funding doesn't come from the government; it comes from our audience.

That also gives us independence from the government, so that we don't have the kind of pressure that you've described. I mean, occasionally the government will ring me up and express their opinion about what we're doing, as anyone else is entitled to, but I'm also entitled to tell them to go away.

And actually, our funding comes under debate once every 15 years when the charter comes up, but by and large, our funding is set and comes from the audience; and that gives us an independence, I think, that some other public broadcasters don't have.

Question

MUSTAFA MALIK: I work for the Glasgow Herald. You talked about Fox News. I watched Fox News recently out of fun. For 30 years I have been a very loyal audience of BBC. I was born in the empire you talked about. But, the question is: Rupert Murdoch took over The Times of London and also Fox News. The idea was that we heard research showed that audiences' tastes have changed. They are not into serious news. Now, you must have some studies about it. What does your audience say? Has it changed? I see that you have retained the same seriousness you had.

RICHARD SAMBROOK: I think the core audience for news and current affairs has the same kind of profile in Britain and in Europe as it has here. The core audience is an aging one, and the issue for us is how to appeal to and attract the younger audience.

We have within Britain what we call a demographic wave, which someone referred to this morning with regards to the United States. Ten years ago we indicated there was a problem with people under 35, who just weren't sitting down and watching our main news programs in the way that older people have. Ten years on those people haven't started watching. The problem now is with the under-45s, and there's every reason to suppose in 10 years time it'll be the under-55s.

So the issue is that there is a generational change in what people want from news, and the point is they don't gather around the set at 10:00 in the evening or 6:30, whenever it may be, in the way that previous generations did.

And I suppose we can judge that for ourselves in the way people live their lives these days. We're time pressed. We go to work. We get a little on the radio. We get something on the Net. We get a water cooler conversation, and by the time you get home, you don't have to sit down around the set to find out what's happened that day. But you will if you know something's happened you want to find out more about.

And that's why a lot of viewing and listening is event-led. When there's an event, they will come and they watch and they listen. If they know what's going on, there's nothing that interests them very much, they've got a lot of other things they can go and do. And that's very much the pattern that we see, which is why the BBC is starting to move into not just the Internet but into PDAs, mobile phones, broadband, and interactive TV.

Question

TERENCE SMITH: I'm the media correspondent for the "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." You alluded in an earlier answer to a goal of establishing a 24-hour BBC news channel in this country, if I understood you properly. Give us your thoughts, if you will, on what would make that work, what would make it viable both editorially and economically, when you look at the world of 24-hour cable news in this country, which already is a very competitive world with a relatively small audience.

RICHARD SAMBROOK: Well, I believe the BBC can offer something different. I believe we can differentiate ourselves in that market. I don't believe that BBC news can ever be more than a niche service in what is the most competitive media news market in the world probably, but I do think we have something that's sufficiently differentiated to find its niche and to find a viable one. And that differentiation really is about those core qualities of objectivity, a global perspective, and absolutely an international perspective, and also an emphasis not just on the who, what, when, where, but on the why.

We put a lot of emphasis on analysis and explanation, and I think that can differentiate us from a lot of other cable and satellite channels. It's not to say they don't do a good job; in a way they do a great job. But I believe we do something in a slightly different way, and I believe there is a niche audience that will be economically sustainable.