Intensive interference of our signals started in 2009 at the time of Iran’s presidential election. On Election Day, Iranian authorities started to jam signals of BBC Persian Television, launched only a few months before. Intensive jamming continued in the aftermath of the election during the street protests and violence. For many Iranians, whose access to free media was limited, Persian TV was the main source of news and information.

Since then, the jamming of BBC Persian has continued intermittently. Some incidents have been directly related to specific types of programmes such as audience participation, documentaries or coverage of news events. The latest example of jamming is as recent as 9 February this year when the Iranian government was marking the Islamic Revolution’s anniversary and PTV was taken off-air alongside 13 other broadcasters.

In response, we have increased the number of satellites carrying the channel and technical changes were made to help reduce jamming on the original signal. However, more work needs to be done.

To make any meaningful impact, there is a compelling need for all stakeholders to work closely together in different fields, from technical to regulatory and political, to address the issue of satellite jamming.

That’s why in November 2012 the BBC brought together over 100 delegates from broadcasters, regulators, satellite operators, international organisations and politicians to consider what political and technical steps can be taken to address the growing threat of the blocking of international broadcasts.

This was followed by a very useful event, organised by satellite operator Eutelsat in January 2013, to demonstrate how they geo-locate interference to satellites to provide evidence to the UN recognised agency, International Telecommunication Union. They also unveiled new developments in satellite design which offer more protection on the next generation of satellites. We are pleased to see that our efforts of working closely with the satellite industry have contributed to Eutelsat’s decision to invest in technologies that identify sources of deliberate interference and make jamming more difficult.

We have also been working with other international broadcasters to highlight the impact of jamming on our ability to reach our audiences. We have called on governments and regulatory bodies to put maximum pressure on Iran to stop blocking of international broadcasts. The EU Foreign Affairs Council included jamming of satellite signals in its resolution against human rights violations in Iran in October 2011, and the UN General Assembly took a similar action in December 2011. On 6 February 2013 the United States blacklisted Iran’s state broadcasting authority and a major Iranian electronics producer partly because of their role in jamming international broadcasts to Iran.

It is of utmost importance that the satellite industry takes a united stance on highlighting the issue of jamming. There are still different views on whether publicising incidents of jamming help to find a solution or deteriorates the situation.

Jamming has not been the only tactic used by the Iranian government to restrict free flow of information. BBC Persian staff and their families have been subject to increasing harassment and intimidation by the Iranian authorities over the past few years. Their activities against BBC staff have intensified in recent months. An increasing number of BBC Persian staff family members have been questioned and threatened in an attempt to make our colleagues stop working for the BBC.

Harassment and intimidation of families has been accompanied by a widespread anti-BBC campaign in Iran. Cyber-activists believed to have close links to the Iranian authorities have set up fake Facebook pages and fake blogs attributed to BBC Persian journalists. They are using these fake accounts to discredit the BBC Persian staff by accusing them of sexual promiscuity and spying for MI6. These lies then are reported on a nationwide scale by local media including the state TV.

We remain extremely concerned about these activities. I wrote to the Iranian Head of Judiciary in March 2012 asking him to stop such illegal acts, but there was no reply. We have raised our concerns with the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Iran, Ahmad Shahid, and called on governments to take action to cease such acts.

Peter Horrocks is Director of the BBC World Service

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  — A child painted with the national colours of Bahrain during the uprisings second anniversary protests, in which a teenager was killed

Evidence given by Jeremy Paxman and a senior BBC official to the BBC internal inquiry into its handling of the Jimmy Savile affair will be removed from public transcripts detailing the investigations evidence. Lawyers examining the soon to be published transcripts said that evidence from the Newsnight presenter and global news director Peter Horrocks was potentially defamatory, and was particularly critical of how BBC management handled the criticism arising from the Savile scandal in Autumn last year. The findings of the inquiry, overseen by former head of Sky News Nick Pollard, were published by the BBC in December. The report examined the corporation’s handling of Newsnight’s dropped investigation into the case in 2011, and its later response after Savile was allegedly outed as a paedophile in October 2012. At the time the transcript was produced, those giving evidence reportedly didn’t know the report was to be made public. Overall, less than 10 per cent of the Pollard review transcripts will be redacted before publication.

A powerful new firewall used to censor online activity could be established in Pakistan within the next month. The Pakistani government has allegedly been working with the same technology companies that helped Iran, China and Libya curb online dissent, to allow authorities to block pornographic or blasphemous online content. Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik confirmed the reports on Twitter, saying The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) were in their final negotiations for obtaining the software. The PTA originally tried to introduce a similar $10million measure in 2012, which was quashed after being met with fierce public opposition. Whilst Pakistan claims to use the firewall to protect the country’s internet users from blasphemous and pornographic content, it has already blocked a number of unrelated sites, such as the US-based Buzzfeed.

An NHS whistleblower under investigation for high mortality rates has voiced concerns over patient safety despite a legal gag preventing him from speaking out. Gary Walker warned civil servants that he had been given the same choices that had resulted in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust scandal. He was fired from his job as chief executive of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust in 2010 for gross professional misconduct, allegedly because he swore during a meeting. Walker claims he was fired for refusing to meet Whitehall targets for non-emergency patients and then gagged as part of a reported £500,000 settlement emerging from an unfair work dismissal tribunal. He said he was instructed by the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority to meet the 18-week non-emergency target “whatever the demand” and was told to resign when he refused to do so. East Midlands Strategic Health Authority refuted the claims. The Francis report published last week recommended that gagging orders on NHS staff be lifted, orders which Walker said were due to a “culture of fear” within the service. His case has been raised in the commons.

The Israeli government has admitted that “Prisoner X”, the mystery detainee who later committed suicide in solitary confinement, was in fact a spy for Israel. Ben Zygier, as he is now known from reports, was part of Israel’s external intelligence forces known as the Mossad and was arrested in 2010 for charges which still remain unspecified, though they were revealed to be serious. The detention of Australian-Israeli Zygier was reportedly enshrouded in such secrecy that even the prison guards didn’t know his true identity or alleged offence. The information was revealed after a gagging order which forbade the media in Israel from reporting on the case was partially lifted by the Israeli government on 13 February.

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Will a new Director General be enough to save the BBC asks Index’s Kirsty Hughes

In a nutshell, the BBC first spiked what by all accounts was a piece of very serious journalism on alleged child abuse by a leading national figure, Jimmy Savile — leaving rivals ITV to broadcast the story first — and then it let through a piece of shoddy journalism on child abuse wrongly implicating, albeit anonymously (’til Twitter got to work), another national figure. While some have suggested the second, lax editorial signoff two weeks ago may actually show that caution over the Savile story was appropriate, this looks like the wrong conclusion.

Only some insiders know the full story of both process and content. But we do know that in the Savile case substantial evidence had been gathered, and five women were interviewed on camera about their allegations. Whether there was pressure from above, fear of libel, a casual attitude to child abuse involving young teenage girls or all these and more, the decision not to broadcast looks wrong — and has led to a storm of criticism since the story broke at the start of October. The BBC’s subsequent crisis management was inept — Entwistle sounding inadequately informed and turning in a weak performance before MPs, while Newsnight editor Peter Rippon, who shelved the programme, had to amend his blog post on how the decision was taken to correct inaccuracies.

A month after the Saville fiasco broke, Newsnight then broadcast its programme interviewing Steve Messham who alleged child abuse at a North Wales home in the 1970s by a senior Conservative politician. On Monday evening, the BBC issued a summary of its internal report confirming that Newsnight neither showed Messham a photo of the politician — nor put the allegations to that politician.  Lord McAlpine – mentioned in a series of tweets by a range of people after the Newsnight broadcast — has threatened legal action. Messham came out publicly after the programme and said McAlpine was not the person whose photo the police had shown him in the 1990s, and apologised. The BBC also apologised. Entwistle resigned, as did the director of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Iain Overton, the Bureau having been involved in making the programme.  As the summary BBC report says some “basic journalistic checks were not completed.”

Some suggest a libel action from McAlpine against Newsnight may fail, as the peer was not named in the programme. But wherever the legal case goes, the journalism looks shoddy and the editorial judgement in broadcasting the programme a bad call.

Perhaps one of the few brighter points of this dismal tale is that the most senior people in the two organisations resigned so fast — a lesson that ought not to be lost on hesitant politicians, heads of banks and others in recent years who have failed to step up and take responsibility for failures on their watch, or only reluctantly, slowly and after continuous pressure. But the large pay-off announced for Entwistle has rather diminished some of the impact of the honourable rapid resignation.

In a trenchant statement, Newsnight’s leading presenter, Jeremy Paxman blamed the post-Hutton inquiry BBC culture of appointing “biddable” people and “bloating” management at the expense of programme budgets. This sounds like the NHS, that other British icon, where years of changing reforms have repeatedly seemed to prioritise managers over medical staff. But if biddable managers is the problem, that can explain the Savile case — not taking a risk — but not the McAlpine case — taking a risk in spite of inadequate journalistic output. And it is how the BBC learns the lessons of these two opposite failures that will determine the eventual outcome of this crisis.

In the short term, the BBC will surely ride the crisis out. Chris Patten, heading up the BBC Trust, is right to be moving quickly to appoint what will have to be a top quality, credible new Director General.

But the BBC cannot afford another scandal of this sort soon. And the danger must be that serious, high quality, challenging journalism will be held back. If a battered, bruised and risk-averse BBC chooses to avoid any repetition of the second Newsnight weak journalism scandal, or holds back on anything risky as a second line of defence, then the crisis will have done real damage. If the BBC loses its courage on decent investigative journalism, this might create a false sense of calm for a while, but at the cost of undermining its reputation in the longer term. Steering between the twin hazards of weak editorial control and risk averse editorial control will be the test for the BBC and its next Director General.

Kirsty Hughes is Index’s chief executive

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What does the future hold for the World Service?  Adrienne van Heteren writes from within an institution still seen as beacon of trustworthiness around the world

A strange atmosphere is hanging Bush House, the London home of the BBC World Service. It is not merely the melancholy of autumn but the sense that we are living at a real end of an era, symbolically affirmed by the pending closure of Beaumont House, for many years the World Service’s base for trainees journalists from all over the world.

I remember my very short stay there and the interesting meetings I had over breakfast with a young trainee journalist of the Burmese service. He had always known that he wanted to work for the World Service. He had an exceptional sense of wanting to serve his country for the better. He knew the risks, but he was fully committed.

The World Service is being briefed about the cuts now. We are told that they present exciting challenges. I’m not unwilling to follow the logic that change means stability. But it is autumn at Bush House. Leaves are falling and winter is coming. I am not so sure if there is anything anybody can do now. The government and the BBC have agreed a fixed deal for six years, until the end of the concession period in 2016. There will be significant cuts. The World Service budget will be paid for by the BBC as from 2014 and no longer by the Foreign Office (FCO) until the end of the concession period. After that: who knows?

Someone in India asks: is this the end of the World Service? I look around at my colleagues in the room and I think that a lot of people in World Service instinctively feel that they were somehow better protected under the FCO umbrella.

Of course it is not the end, we are told. In two years we will all move to a building that departing deputy director general of the BBC Mark Byford describes as the biggest and most modern media centre in the world. I think that is fantastic, but it does not really improve my mood.

As I look at a few Afghan guests in my office, brave people, who have no clue how what is being said on a screen above their heads will affect them. I remember my recent meeting with young Afghan journalist trainees, their plans, their enthusiasm and their common desire to be part of that World Service family of quality journalism, because they felt it vital for their country. So young and with such a desire to belong to something so old.

I strongly feel that we will all start to regret some of these changes later, much later when we can see that it is gone. Like closing a library with precious books because not enough people read them. The World Service is for many in the world that beacon of light in the night, that voice of reason, that clear stream of information among all the state propaganda.

As a foreigner — and with all due respect for Brits — sometimes a thought crosses my mind: perhaps the World Service should not be owned by the British. Because really it belongs to all the people of the world. And that is why I have to ask the question: What is going to happen with whatever is left of the World Service after 2016?

There are no easy answers. But once an institution is dismantled, its gone and you won’t get it back.

Adrienne van Heteren works for the BBC World Service Trust. This article is written in her personal capacity

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