BBC World Service Arabic and Hindi services saved
This round-up of today's main media stories includes reports on the Government's increase in funds for the BBC World Service.
BBC World Service will receive an extra £2.2m per year over the next three years from the government, reports BBC News. The funding boost will be used to maintain BBC Arabic Service's "valuable work in the region", Foreign Secretary William Hague said. The BBC will also reallocate an additional £9m to safeguard the Hindi language short wave service. It comes after the government cut 16% of the World Service's £270m budget as part of last year's spending review.
The Daily Mail says ministers yesterday watered down their decision to cut cash to the BBC World Service. But, the paper goes on to say, a junior civil servant who announced the move on the Foreign Office website as a 'massive U-turn' is facing disciplinary action. The blunder left senior officials furious as it overshadowed the announcement by Foreign Secretary William Hague.
BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten yesterday sought to calm fears over the future of S4C, saying he would do nothing to undermine the channel's independence, says Wales Online. He told the Western Mail that the BBC's future relationship with S4C would be based on "partnership" rather than "imperialism". Lord Patten also said he understood the importance of BBC Wales in a time of greater independence in Welsh politics, despite potentially damaging cuts to its budget. It follows a meeting with Carwyn Jones in which the First Minister expressed his concerns over the future of broadcasting in Wales.
The Daily Mail renews its attack on Ofcom. It says that "as part of his promised 'Bonfire of the Quangos', David Cameron vowed that the vast, politically correct Ofcom empire would 'cease to exist as we know it'. Today, the truth is that this citadel of New Labour remains, under a Tory- dominated Government, utterly unreformed. If David Cameron thinks Ofcom is going to show respect for the family values he espouses or do something about properly policing the 9pm watershed, he is deluding himself."
ITV News has snapped up one of the rising stars of BBC news, political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg, to take the newly created role of business editor, reports the Guardian. Kuenssberg, chief political correspondent for the BBC News channel, will join ITV in September and contribute to ITV1 bulletins and current affairs strand Tonight. In May, Channel 4 News hired Matt Frei, anchor of BBC World News America, as its Washington correspondent, and Newsnight's Jackie Long as social affairs editor.
News International has partnered with PayPal, the online payment service, in a bid to drive digital subscriptions to the sundaytimes.co.uk, thetimes.co.uk and the newspapers' iPad editions, reports Media Week. The publisher will be using PayPal's faster checkout for online content, PayPal for Digital Goods - which means users do not have to enter their card details when they want to purchase a subscription.
Nick Clegg's plan to give every British voter shares in partially state-owned banks RBS and Lloyds leads the Daily Telegraph, the Times and the Financial Times, as reported in the BBC's newspaper review.