Sometimes the stories countries tell through their media, or the stories they don’t, are news in themselves. At the 主播大秀, there is a specialised unit within the World Service who spend their days listening to, watching and scrolling through the world’s media – primarily non-English speaking – looking for such a story, and watching international events as they play out on the public stage.
Today 主播大秀 Monitoring celebrates its 80th anniversary. Despite how long the service has been running, it has remained largely unknown to many – the detailed and nuanced art of the constant watch not always grabbing the limelight. The unit was originally set up in a very different media age, during the Second World War, where people chosen for their languages skills listened into foreign media to track what was broadcast during the conflict, by both enemies and allies. It proved such a fount of information that Winston Churchill himself requested a copy be sent directly to him every morning during the war years, with a special teleprinter link established in 10 Downing Street to speed up reporting.
Since the war, Monitoring has continued to serve a vital and specialised purpose picking up on breaking international stories before anyone else, such as the crashing of flight MH17 in 2014, and lending the kind of in-depth insight to developing stories that can only be accrued through constant watching and listening.
In the last 80 years, Monitoring have moved from headquarters in Eversham, to Caversham, and now to London, with 12 international bureaux, including in Kiev, Delhi, Jerusalem and Kabul. They work in more than 100 languages with an archive stretching back to 1939.
To celebrate the unique role 主播大秀 Monitoring has played for the organisation and audiences over the last 80 years, we have pulled together a selection of moments from the service’s history where the its constant watch on the world’s media saw it capture some of the most pivotal moments in modern history, all by listening in to the stories nations tell themselves, and others, through the media.
1945 - Death of Hitler
Karl Lehmann, a 24 year old who had fled Germany nine years earlier to escape the Nazi’s increasing persecution of Jewish people, heard the news over German radio. He told the 主播大秀 in an interview years later that, “We were the first people in Britain to hear the announcement. […] The whole building cheered. We realised how important it was. It meant the end of the war against Germany."
In the initial announcement, the Germans reported that Hitler had died in active combat. It was only later that it emerged he had killed himself. When the monitors heard the story, it was quickly translated, scribbled down on a piece of paper rather than the usual process of typing it up neatly, and reported to the rest of the 主播大秀 News operation.
This was the translated broadcast:
“The German Wireless broadcasts grave and important news for the German people. (Three rolls of drums). It is reported from the Fuehrer’s HQ that our Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism, fell for Germany this afternoon at his operation HQ in the Reich Chancellery.” – North German 主播大秀 Service, 1st May 1945.
Karl Lehmann added in his later interview, "Hitler was very difficult to translate […]. He was a terrible writer and his speeches were unimpressive when you read them in the German but totally different when he spoke. He relied on his oratory. It meant we wouldn't have to translate him anymore."
1981 – Poland
The election of a Polish Pope, John Paul II, in 1978 was followed in 1980 by the birth of the independent trade union movement Solidarity, in his homeland.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected US President. Reagan described the USSR as an “evil empire” and there was an increasing stand-off between the two super-powers. By late 1981, Poland was in crisis and 主播大秀 Monitoring became one of the few sources of information about what was happening inside the country.
The unit reported this announcement: “Men and women of Poland!… The Military Council for National Salvation is appealing to you. Our homeland is threatened by daily danger. The anti-state, subversive action of forces hostile to socialism has pushed the community to the brink of civil war… Moved by the supreme national interest and the seriousness of the historical moment, the Council of State… has declared martial law throughout the entire country.” Warsaw 主播大秀 Service, 0900 GMT 13 December 1981.
Every available scrap of news was gathered. 主播大秀 Monitoring started operations in West Berlin to track Polish provincial broadcasts, following the principle of seeking a variety of sources and those away from centres of power.
Soviet Union and Chernobyl
Broadcasting was very old fashioned in the early 1980s. Impending serious news announcements could be detected from changes to programme schedules and the types of music being broadcast.
News of the demise of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985 came from monitors on Moscow watch. By the mid-1980s, news from the USSR was still rigidly controlled. When a reactor caught fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power station on 26 April 1986, the Soviet mass media took two days to report it. It was item 21 on the evening television news and reported tersely:
“An accident has occurred at Chernobyl nuclear power station. One of the atomic reactors has been damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to the victims.” Moscow Television, 1700 GMT 28 April 1986
But this was no longer a viable way of handling news. Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost followed. Jamming of foreign broadcasts eased, then stopped. Enormous volumes of material poured in to 主播大秀 Monitoring from the USSR. Even before then, Poland and Hungary had relaxed control over the media. More complex information was broadcast, discussion programmes, phone-ins and talent contests, where you could see a growing appetite for voting.
2014 - Downing of flight MH17
By the mid-2010s, the media landscape was unrecognisable to when 主播大秀 Monitoring had started listening to radio broadcast in the 1930s. In that time, the unit had changed completely, and now monitored the fast-moving world of social media.
Five years ago, 主播大秀 Monitoring broke the story of the downing of MH17.
Since then, other media outlets, notably Bellingcat, have gone on to investigate the story in depth, but at the time of the news breaking, 主播大秀 Monitoring played a vital role in reporting the story and establishing the facts.
Monitoring tracked the removal of triumphant social posts from Russia-backed separatists that they’d shot down a Ukrainian plane. Using verification techniques, Monitoring’s Russian team plotted the exact location of the incident, and - through regional expertise and language analysis - showed that Russians were in Ukraine at the time.
It’s a story that has continued to grip the world’s media, and Monitoring has joined other high-profile journalists in forensically investigating the truth: debunking, exposing and verifying claims through social media monitoring, and using its unique regional and linguistic expertise and cross-team international collaboration.
2019 – Seizing of British oil tanker by Iran
Coming forward to the present day, 主播大秀 Monitoring’s expertise is still breaking news. On 19th July this year Monitoring were the first to report that Iran had seized a British-flagged oil tanker, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz.
The announcement was spotted on a breaking news caption on the state-run Iranian TV news channel. The Persian monitors translated and reported the bulletin:
"The public relations office of the IRGC Naval Force has announced that it has seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. This oil tanker named Stena Impero was stopped while passing through the Strait of Hormuz for not observing international marine rules and regulations. After being confiscated, the tanker was led to the shore and handed over to the Ports and Maritime Organisation for legal procedures and the required investigations," Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, 19th July 2019.
Relations between Iran and the West had become increasingly strained since British naval forces seized an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar on suspicion of smuggling oil to Syria, and spotting this news item on Iranian state TV was significant development in the story.
As technology has evolved over the years, it has transformed everyone’s lives as media organisations can communicate with their audiences more quickly than ever before. This change in the way we communicate has also transformed 主播大秀 Monitoring from a small operation of 30 people to a much larger, much more sophisticated global organisation with international partnerships and operations.
Here’s to 80 more years.