BBC MONITOR 30

Guatemalan election: Corruption casts shadow

Violence in Sudan: Foreign mercenaries fight

Charles III: Media coverage of coronation

After the mutiny: Wagner’s network of social media support

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At BBC Monitoring, we track, translate, summarise and analyse local media sources to make sense of what is happening on the ground around the world. Our international perspective means we keep across broadcast, press and social media sources in multiple languages, especially where reliable news and information are in short supply.

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Editorial

Dear all,

I hope you are enjoying the summer. We have a jam-packed edition of Monitor magazine, featuring articles about mercenaries, monarchy and, of course, the media. I am always impressed by the skill and expertise shown by our journalists in making sense of the world’s media. Our lead article on the media operations of Russia’s Wagner group illustrates just how challenging this can be. Colleagues covering the recent insecurity in Sudan are using mainstream media outlets in Africa and the Middle East to shine a light on the role of Wagner and other mercenary groups in the unrest there.

Also in this edition, we go behind the scenes at BBC Verify - a new brand within BBC News aimed at building trust with audiences by transparently showing how BBC journalists know the information they are reporting - and hear about the part that BBC Monitoring plays in this exciting new initiative.

BBC Monitoring has been exploring the world through the lens of its media for over 80 years and I am delighted that more of our history is now available through a project to digitise the Summary of World Broadcast documents. This exciting project, undertaken by Readex, unlocks this important archive for academics around the world.

Happy reading!

Monitor magazine: editorial team

MANAGING EDITOR: John Sutherland

PICTURES AND DESIGN: Claudia Harding

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Liz Howell

Front cover: Armoured vehicles and Wagner fighters on the streets of Russia’s Rostov-on-Don during the mutiny on 24 June

Back cover: Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers victory speech in Ankara after his re-election as Turkey’s president in May

Liz Howell Director, BBC Monitoring

Featured Stories

4 Telegram support for Wagner

Following the mutiny in June, Gleb Borschevsky looks at support for Prigozhin and the Wagner group on social media channels

14 INSIDE MONITORING

8 Charles III

How was the coronation of King Charles III covered in Iran, Russia and China? Our teams report

18 Sudan

11 Guatemalan elections

Latin American specialist Blaire Toedte reports on the elections in the Central American country

22 OUTSIDE MONITORING

BBC Monitoring’s Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB) products have been digitised and are now available on an online portal. Jim Draper tells us about the process

25 Living the Story

Nick Reynolds reports back from his trip to Japan – and Alastair Coleman tells us about BBCM’s forensic role in BBC Verify

mercenaries

Beverly Ochieng and Omneya El Naggar report on the thousands of foreign mercenaries fighting in Sudan

Pascal Fletcher gives the lowdown on covering Latin America from our Miami bureau

Wagner, Prigozhin retain Telegram channels’ support

While uncertainty surrounds the future of the Wagner Group in Russia following its mutiny against the Russian armed forces in late June, Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group still retain the support of a large network of social media channels, Russian specialist Gleb Borschevsky writes.

Yevgeny Progozhin has been in the headlines as a mercenary boss ever since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Over the past decade, the Russian businessman also built a vast media empire: the Patriot media group,

a cluster of eleven pro-Kremlin and far-right outlets linked to each other through shared traits, such as having identical physical addresses and founders.

He was also the founder and financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency, a “troll factory” behind numerous Russian disinformation campaigns, cyber-attacks and election meddling in the West, most notably in the US.

Prigozhin’s most prominent venture, the private military company (PMC) Wagner Group, has also amassed a huge presence on social media, most notably on the popular messenger app Telegram.

Following the abrupt end of Wagner’s mutiny against the Russian military and the shutting down of the Patriot media group on 30 June, traditional media outlets linked to Prigozhin ceased their operations.

However, Prigozhin and Wagner still appear to be supported by a sprawling network of Wagner-linked Telegram channels.

The following is an overview of these channels, categorised by the degree of their affiliation with Prigozhin.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don

Prigozhin was behind the Patriot media group, a cluster of eleven pro-Kremlin and far-right outlets

and Wagner

of Wagner-linked Telegram channels

Official channels

Throughout the many years of PMC Wagner’s existence, only two channels emerged that can be somewhat reliably linked to Prigozhin himself and viewed as “official” outlets of the company.

The first of them is the Telegram channel “Prigozhin’s press service” (1.3m subscribers), run by the press service of Prigozhin’s catering business Konkord (Concord), which was reportedly shut down on 30 June.

The channel was set up in November 2022 as an outlet for statements “personally” from Prigozhin. Since then, it has hosted nearly a thousand of his statements, including many made through voice recordings.

Konkord’s press service also used to have a page on popular Russian social media website VK (VKontakte). However, the page has since been blocked by Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor.

The second “official” channel affiliated with Prigozhin is the so-called PMC Wagner Svodki (130,000 subscribers).

In January 2023, Svodki was promoted by Prigozhin as the official Wagner channel run by a “PMC Wagner employee with the call sign Peresvet”, who would “provide information that is of interest to Russians on a daily basis”. It was also promoted by other Wagneraffiliated accounts as “the official channel of the Wagner Group”.

However, the first posts on the channel only appeared on 23 June, shortly before the start of Wagner’s mutiny. Throughout the rebellion, Svodki made numerous posts in its own voice in support of Wagner.

Prigozhin

still appear to be supported by a sprawling network

Telegram’s Messenger App is very widely used in Russia

Searches of offices of Prigozhin’s media outlets Ekonomika Segodnya, Politika Segodnya and Inforeaktor

Prigozhin's press service shows an anonymous “letter” voicing support during the mutiny

Affiliated channels: communities...

Despite its somewhat official status, Svodki is neither the oldest nor the most popular account related to Wagner.

The oldest and most prominent one, Grey Zone (516,000 subscribers), was set up in October 2019. Prior to that, it existed as a now-deleted Instagram page.

Grey Zone is a self-described “mercenary community” run by a blogger known as “Pyatisoty” (“cargo 500”, Russian military slang for a deserter).

From its inception, Grey Zone was part of the same media project as the channel Reverse Side of the Medal (RSOTM, 386,000 subscribers). Much of their earlier content reported on the activities of Russian mercenaries in Africa.

However, in July 2022 the channels split up, with RSOTM being run by a person known simply as “Admin”.

Since then, Grey Zone has gradually taken an increasingly pro-Wagner stance, gaining notoriety for its affiliation with the company. It was the host to two graphic videos depicting alleged killings of ex-Wagner fighters seen as “traitors” to the group.

In a development that further linked Grey Zone to both Wagner and Prigozhin himself, Prigozhin said the latter of these videos was a “film” that had “another episode”. Only hours after the original video showing the purported killing was posted by Grey Zone, Prigozhin’s press service uploaded a video featuring the same man, wearing the same clothes and filmed in a similar location, who claimed he was “pardoned” by Wagner and allowed to live.

A large number of Telegram channels carry Wagner's name and branding

... and Wagnerbranded accounts

A large number of Telegram channels carry Wagner’s name and branding. But only a few of them have evidence pointing to their actual affiliation with the company.

One such channel is Razgruzka Wagnera (169,000 subscribers). A week before Wagner’s mutiny, Razgruzka hosted two videos showing Prigozhin attempting to submit a letter at a Defence Ministry office.

Razgruzka was supportive of Wagner during the mutiny, with some of its messages also being reposted by the official Svodki account.

After the mutiny ended, Razgruzka announced the resignation of one of Wagner’s commanders, Andrei Troshev, and reposted that Wagner had suspended the work of its regional recruitment offices.

That announcement was made by the channel Wagner Employment (34,000 subscribers) and was also reposted by Svodki.

Prior to the mutiny, Wagner Employment hosted various vacancies and recruitment information for Wagner. The information was on par with what had earlier been provided by Prigozhin himself.

Another affiliated channel is PMC Wagner AFU prisoners (11,000 subscribers), a channel promoted on several occasions by Prigozhin’s press service. The channel posts information on people it claims to be Ukrainian prisoners of war captured by Wagner.

There are also several popular Wagnerbranded channels that, however, cannot be reliably connected to Prigozhin or Wagner itself.

The most notable of them are the general-purpose account Wagner Orchestra (956,000 subscribers) and the self-proclaimed “official recruitment channel” Wagner Group (250,000 subscribers).

Russian military HQ surrounded by Wagner group in Rostov-on-Don

RIA FAN-related accounts

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s most prominent media outlet, the “news agency” RIA FAN, used to run a network of “military reporters” who largely reported on Wagner activities. Some of their reporting carried branding associated with the company.

These channels include Callsign Brus (Alexander Simonov, 180,000 subscribers), Military Correspondent Yarem (Alexander Yaremchuk, 84,000 subscribers) and Fotozarisovki (Stepan Yatsko, 7,000 subscribers)

These reporters continue to operate despite RIA FAN’s shutdown. None of them mention RIA FAN in their channel descriptions. Instead, Yaremchuk and Yatsko now post their payment details, asking for donations.

Some of them, like Simonov, have barely mentioned Wagner since the mutiny. Others, like Yaremchuk and Yatsko, continue to support the company.

One other channel affiliated with Prigozhin and RIA FAN, Cyber Front Z (118,000 subscribers), supported Wagner’s mutiny, but stopped posting shortly before Patriot closed.

It should be noted that RIA FAN’s “military reporters”, while prominent in Wagner circles, have never had a following as big as military reporters of traditional pro-Kremlin media, such as state broadcaster VGTRK’s Alexander Sladkov (1m subscribers) and tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda’s Alexander Kots (660,000 subscribers).

Pro-Wagner accounts

A number of popular accounts are not believed to be directly affiliated with Wagner, but have been supportive of the mercenary group in the past, propagating Prigozhin’s narratives.

War blogger Semyon Pegov (WarGonzo, 1.3m subscribers), for instance, recorded and published two lengthy interviews with Prigozhin, revealing some information about the company’s operations.

Pegov continues to mention Wagner in some of his posts, mostly in a neutral tone.

Other popular channels, like Operation Z (1.4m subscribers), Hooked on Z War (759,000 subscribers), Military Informant (630,000 subscribers) and war blogger Yuri Kotenok (430,000 subscribers) follow a similar pattern - previously explicitly supportive of Wagner, they now report on the group in either a neutral or a cautiously positive tone.

Gleb Borschevsky is a journalist in our Russian team

GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Russian war blogger Semyon Pegov attends meeting with President Putin

Russian war reporter Alexander Kots meets President Putin

Russian war correspondents Dmitry Steshin and Alexander Sladkov at meeting with President Putin

Media reaction to the coronation of King Charles III

Last year, Monitor looked at the coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II around the world. More recently, how was Charles III’s coronation seen in the key countries of Russia, Iran and China? Our regional teams report.

Russia: “big coronation scandal”

Rossiya 1’s main evening TV news programme, Vesti, took a negative view of the coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey on 6 May, saying there had been a “big coronation scandal” – although it did not explain what this was.

The programme went on to highlight the cost of the ceremony amid the UK's “severest economic crisis for half a century”. It said that the British were “forbidden” to object to this, saying that “anyone who tried to stage a protest was taken away by the police”.

For Vesti, Charles III had broken with tradition by inviting female priests, upsetting monarchists. There had been problems with placing the crown on his head and the Koh-i-noor diamond had been removed from Camilla's crown to avoid offending India.

“The coronation should have been a grand show uniting the nation if only via TV,” but this ambition had – Vesti implied – been undermined by some celebrities withdrawing from the coronation concert.

Russia’s Vesti news bulletin covering the coronation

The Koh-i-noor diamond had been removed from Camilla's crown to avoid offending India

Vesti highlighted the presence at the ceremony of Prince Harry (“an annoyance to almost half the nation”) and Prince Andrew (“accused of paedophilia and the subject of a criminal case”).

Vesti concluded its report by highlighting the attention given to the ceremony in Ukraine, saying this was the “only place where the coronation was greeted like its own”. But it insinuated that this may have been a ruse to get the UK to send it “more weapons”.

Beijing congratulates King Charles, Queen Camilla

China’s official media coverage of the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on 6 May was largely restricted to official reactions from Chinese leaders.

National broadcaster China Central Television's (CCTV) flagship evening news bulletin, Xinwen Lianbo (News Hookup), led with news of President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan sending a message of congratulations to the Royal couple on 6 May.

In their message, Xi and Peng said China and Britain “should take a longterm and strategic view to jointly promote the historical trend of peace, development and win-win cooperation”.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily newspaper featured Xi's message on its front page on 7 May as well as a photo of Vice-President Han Zheng attending the coronation on behalf of Xi and meeting King Charles III.

CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo bulletin on 7 May showed Han Zheng meeting the King, Prince William, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden.

State media, however, were not observed to report Han Zheng's meeting with UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly the day before the coronation.

Meanwhile, Taiwan – which was not represented at the coronation – sent a congratulatory message from its representative in London, Kelly Hsieh, wishing King Charles a “successful reign”, the Central News Agency reported.

TOBY MELVILLE/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

China’s Vice-President Han Zheng meeting King Charles III

Prince Harry and Prince Andrew leave after the coronation ceremony

Britons were questioning the expensive ceremony for King Charles III

Iran: Britons question cost of ceremony

On coronation day, Iran's internationalfacing English-language Press TV said Britons were questioning the expensive ceremony for King Charles III amid the cost of living crisis and nationwide strikes over pay. Anti-monarchy activists called the cost of the coronation “a slap in the face” for millions struggling to make ends meet, Press TV said.

The report said a recent survey found that most Britons wanted the coronation to be funded by the Royal Family, not the government.

Elsewhere, Iran’s state broadcaster's IRIB news agency said another survey had found that one fifth of the British population lived in poverty, while the coronation ceremony would be the most “security-centred and costly” in the UK's history. Only 9% of the population supported the ceremony, an activist from the UK’s anti-monarchist Republic group said.

The report also linked the adoption of the new Public Order Bill, and the “lower tolerance level” for disruption in Windsor, to a decline in the popularity of the Royal Family.

The Public Order Bill was passed in a “hasty” move after anti-monarchists announced plans to hold protests on coronation day, IRIB said. Pro-republic and anti-monarchist citizens saw the bill as a “clear violation of freedom of expression”, the agency added.

The national broadcaster's other news outlet, the Young Journalists Club (YJC) quoted the head of activist group Republic as saying that the police sent protesters “intimidatory” messages the day before the coronation.

Press TV also carried an interview with analyst Clive Menzies, who doubted the legitimacy of the coronations of both Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III. “I think people are waking up to the fact that monarchy is a very corrupt, greedy, petulant institution,” he added.

Thanks to our Russia, China and Iran teams for these reports

King Charles III being crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury during his coronation

Hardline daily Keyhan denounced the “expensive coronation”

King Charles III and Queen Camilla appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after the coronation

Corruption debate cast long shadow over Guatemala elections

Guatemala's politics and elections have long been plagued by allegations of corruption, and the run-up to the country's 25 June presidential and parliamentary elections proved no exception, Latin American specialist Blaire Toedte writes.

Guatemala’s election authority, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) reported on 26 June that, with more than 90 per cent of the votes counted, former First Lady Sandra Torres and a left-leaning candidate, Bernardo Arevalo, would compete in the 20 August run-off election. Torres and Arevalo received 15.14 per cent and 12.20 per cent of the vote respectively

The theme of corruption heavily permeated the debate in Guatemalan media and social media coverage of the vote and its over 20 presidential candidates. Several prominent contenders were barred from standing earlier in the race by electoral and judicial authorities, in decisions widely viewed by critics as politically-motivated.

This, and corruption accusations being exchanged between the main election front-runners, were seen by observers as badly undermining voters' confidence in the election and in Guatemala's democracy.

The Spanish term “pacto de corruptos” (pact of the corrupt) – widely understood in Guatemala to refer to a wealthy ruling political and business elite linked to the Armed Forces and seeking to maintain control of the government – has become both a warning shout and a rallying cry for those seeking to change the way Guatemala is governed. It has figured constantly, with notable spikes, in the media and social media debate of the last few months ahead of the 25 June ballot.

Political analysts cited by the media have described a “deterioration” in the country's democratic institutions in recent years, especially following the 2019 end of operations of a UN-backed anti-corruption entity, Cicig (International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala), whose mandate was not renewed in 2018 by then President Jimmy Morales.

Morales himself was under investigation by Cicig, whose disbanding was seen hastening Guatemala's slide to being a “fragile democracy”, news website Plaza Public reported on 11 June.

Social media mentions of a 'pact of the corrupt' rose when candidates were suspended

Political analysts cited by the media have described a “deterioration” in the country's democratic institutions

Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) employees prepare for the elections

Candidates for change?

The three candidates who led the polls for the 25 June vote – viewed as highly likely to go to a deciding second round on 20 August – faced considerable critical scrutiny in the media, with commentators questioning whether they would bring real change.

Three-time presidential contender Sandra Torres, representing the National Unity for Hope (UNE) party, is a former First Lady who has faced accusations of illicit electoral financing.

Zury Rios, of the VALOR-Unionista coalition, is the daughter of late Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt who in 2013 was convicted of committing genocide against the Mayan Ixil people in the 1980s. Rightwinger Rios campaigned on a tough law-and-order agenda.

Former diplomat and UN official Edmond Mulet ran on a “new start” platform, but some media outlets including Plaza Publica also linked him to Guatemala's “old politics”.

Pessimism and disillusionment about the vote, and about the prospects for tackling the country's corruption problem, visibly coloured the media coverage.

“Corruption won, Guatemala lost”

For many observers, faith in the elections' integrity was already undermined well before any votes were cast, when Guatemala's TSE electoral authority suspended in mid-May the candidacy of businessman and political outsider Carlos Pineda, alleging irregularities in his nomination process. Pineda, who had stood for his Citizens' Prosperity party as an anti-graft campaigner, had been topping opinion polls.

“There is not the slightest doubt that this 2023 electoral process has been the most vitiated and dirty, with a difference, of all those that there has been in Guatemala since the 1985 Constitution [restoring democracy] was promulgated,” columnist Emilio Matta wrote in leading daily La Hora on 14 June, in an opinion piece entitled “Corruption and empty proposals”.

“There are no reasons to trust that the elections in June will be an opportunity to improve the practices of government in Guatemala,” columnist Juan Luis Font commented on news website Con Criterio at the end of January, before full campaigning had even started.

Bernardo Arevalo of the Movimiento Semilla, the surprise second place candidate, did not feature heavily in Guatemalan media’s coverage of corruption allegations, primarily due to his low polling numbers ahead of the vote.

Guatemala's Constitutional Court confirmed Pineda's suspension on 26 May, leading many to suspect that the country's own judicial system was tainted and tipping the election scales.

“Corruption won, Guatemala lost” was the trenchant comment tweeted by Pineda when news of his suspension was confirmed.

Others agreed. Guatemalan former anti-corruption prosecutor Francisco Sandoval, who lives in exile in the US after being sacked in 2021, was quoted in US Spanish language media on 30 May as saying conditions did not exist for fair elections in Guatemala, due to the alleged political meddling and bias. Local and international pro-democracy watchdogs expressed similar opinions.

Presidential candidate Carlos Pineda walks with supporters during a rally outside the Constitutional Court in Guatemala City

JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Presidential candidate Carlos Pineda speaks to supporters in Guatemala City

The theme of corruption heavily permeated the debate in Guatemalan media and social media coverage of the vote

A level playing field?

They pointed to the disqualification even earlier in the election process of the candidacies of leftist indigenous Mayan leader Thelma Cabrera and former human rights ombudsman Jordan Rodas, another strong anticorruption voice. These presidential and vice-presidential candidates, both critics of the Giammattei government, had been bidding to stand for the leftwing Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP).

Rodas told Spanish newspaper El Pais in early February that his and Cabrera's bans were “an arbitrary decision, based on illegality”. He said he was the object of what he called a “vendetta” by “Guatemala's most conservative sectors” against him for his past antigraft denunciations.

El Pais saw “institutional deterioration and corruption” marking the Guatemalan electoral process.

Also barred from running was rightwing candidate Roberto Arzu, who was standing for the Podemos party and is the son of ex-President Alvaro Arzu Irigoyen.

“We’re seeing a clear veto from the executive branch and certain political groups,” Guatemalan constitutional lawyer Alejandro Balsells told the English language edition of El Salvador-based Central American investigative newspaper El Faro on 28 March.

In another blow to confidence in Guatemala's judiciary and public authorities, prominent Guatemalan journalist and anti-corruption critic Jose Ruben Zamora was sentenced on 14 June to six years in jail on money laundering charges in a case whose legal basis was widely questioned by press freedom watchdogs and pro-democracy groups. The InterAmerican Press Association (IAPA) issued a statement criticising a “lack of independence” in the Guatemalan justice system.

Voter apathy?

Social media traffic about the election also reflected public disenchantment with the vote and what it offered ordinary Guatemalans, raising the possibility of high voter abstention on 25 June.

According to data provided by the TSE election authority, the number of “null votes” tallied during the 25 June election exceeded 17 per cent and blank votes contributed an additional 7 per cent, showing voter apathy and rejection of the system.

“There is not the slightest doubt that this 2023 electoral process has been the most vitiated and dirty… since 1985”

Members of the Resistance Front Against Electoral Fraud and the Dictatorship protest against the presidential candidacy of Zury Rios, daughter of late Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt

Human rights organisations express

Blaire Toedte is a digital journalist in our Miami office

Inside Monitoring

Inside Monitoring

You’ve seen the What, this is the How. Inside Monitoring is a blog written by our staff journalists, linguists and analysts from around the world. With access to local sources and a nuanced understanding of language and context, they truly live the stories and are able to identify what other news organisations may miss. In this edition, we talk about our new, improved formats for our content.

You’ve seen the What, this is the How. Inside Monitoring is a blog written by our staff –journalists, linguists and analysts from around the world. With access to local sources and a nuanced understanding of language and context, they truly live the stories and are able to identify what other news organisations may miss. In this column, they talk about their experiences, initiatives and challenges.

For a view from the other side, turn to Outside Monitoring on page 24.

For a view from the other side, turn to Outside Monitoring on page 28.

BBC Verify: a natural progression for BBC Monitoring

BBC Verify is the new BBC brand which brings together experts in disinformation, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and verification from across the BBC. The BBC understands that it should “show its workings” to restore public trust in news. Disinformation specialist Alistair Coleman tells us about BBC Monitoring’s contribution.

Greater impact

Among the 60 journalists taking part in the initiative is BBC Monitoring’s Disinformation Team, the small but effective unit which was set up five years ago to combat “fake news”. The squad’s skills have led to investigations into vaccines, the QAnon conspiracy theory, potential war crimes in Ukraine, and the consequences of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.

Now we’re working formally among teams with which we’ve been partnering since the start of the Covid pandemic, such as Reality Check, UGC Hub and global disinformation teams.

It has given BBC Monitoring greater impact both on air and on the BBC News website. In its first weeks, BBC Monitoring experts have already proved their worth by appearing in reports on Ukraine, while continuing to work on longer-term projects such as climate change and international affairs.

But it is not just the Disinformation Team that is playing a part. Verification and countering propaganda has been at the heart of Monitoring’s operation since its founding, and experts from across the business can now demonstrate their local knowledge and experience in an initiative that brings the BBC closer to its audience.

BBC Verify allows Monitoring to showcase what we’ve always done, and show us at our best. It is, indeed, a natural progression.

Alistair Coleman is a senior journalist in our Disinformation team

BBC Monitoring’s work for BBC Verify has already appeared on TV news bulletins

Japan from a different angle

Business Development Manager Nick Reynolds tells us about his recent visit to customers in Japan, where a map gave him a new perspective on the country – and business etiquette is very different...

In an age of back-to-back video calls, instant online communication and robots that can write your emails, is meeting real people face-to-face necessary anymore?

BBC Monitoring has had customers in Japan since the 1960s. And in Japan, business etiquette is very different from any other country I’ve been to. Courtesy, politeness, formality and a stress on building trust are essential. So meeting my customers in Japan face-to-face, as I was lucky enough to do in March of this year, takes on an importance it may not have in other parts of the world.

Respect

The quality of relationships in business and everywhere in the culture is critical. You must show respect. If someone gives you a business card, whatever you do, do not put the card in the back pocket of your trousers. The card is a gift: beautifully designed and printed on paper of the highest quality. Treat the card with respect.

“Service before profit”

On the wall at the front of the Diamaru department store in downtown Osaka there is a bronze plaque. The plaque states there has been a store on the site since 1726 and that the philosophy of the company is based on a text from the 3rd Century BC: “service before profit”.

I learned a thousand things in Japan, and got a deep insight into this unique country. While technologically at the cutting edge, so many aspects of the country have remained the same for thousands of years.

The map opened my eyes

Map of Japan offered Nick a new perspective on the country

BBCM

Map turns the country on its side

My brilliant fixer found me a map of Japan used by members of the Diet (the Japanese Parliament).

Instead of showing Japan the standard way, running from North to South, the map turns the country on its side.

Suddenly everything is different. North Korea is incredibly close, on the doorstep. China and Taiwan not much further. Russia is a few miles away. The sea between these islands and land masses is a narrow, tight, crowded and contested area. Above Japan, nothing but the blue Pacific.

On my return to London I showed the map to my colleagues in the BBC Monitoring team who look at media from Chinese sources and in the rest of the world. Being experts, they already understood the complexities of the region, as China seeks to expand its global influence.

For me, as an insight into the geopolitics of the region, the map opened my eyes. I started to see the world as my customers might see it. If I continue to do that, BBC Monitoring will continue to prosper.

Nick Reynolds is a Business Development Manager in our Business Development team

In Japan, business etiquette is very different

Nick meeting customers from NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster

The plaque seen at the Diamaru department store in Tokyo

BBCM

BBCM

Who are the foreign mercenaries fighting in Sudan?

With violence continuing in Sudan, despite peace talks mediated by the USA and Saudi Arabia, our Sudan specialists Omneya El Naggar and Beverly Ochieng consider reports of regional and foreign mercenaries – including Russia’s Wagner Group –in the country.

European military reports estimated there were around 18,000 fighters from Chad, Niger, Mali, northern Nigeria and southern Libya in the country

Lt Gen Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF)

Observers and media reports say mercenaries are fighting alongside the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Lt Gen Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (better known as Hemedti), against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Lt Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Countries including Chad, Mali, Niger, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya have been identified as sources of mercenaries lured either by filial and tribal connections to Hemedti – or by money gained from his gold mines in Sudan’s restive Darfur region.

Senior SAF officials have alleged the involvement of Russia’s Wagner group amid reports that the mercenaries are supporting the RSF with both fighters and weapons.

The RSF has denied the claims and also accused unnamed foreign powers of backing the army.

However, the involvement of foreign mercenaries risks widening the conflict and worsening insecurity in the politically volatile region.

First reports

One of the first reports of foreign fighters in Sudan was carried by the Islamic-focused Tayba TV, which reported “foreign nationalities amongst the [RSF] militia’s dead bodies at Merowe airport”.

The channel quoted security sources in the northern city of Merowe on 30 April, saying there were 756 dead from Hemedti’s forces, most of them “foreign nationals from neighbouring countries”.

Days later, the Sudanese army accused the RSF of using West African mercenaries during the fighting.

The army did not provide proof or name specific countries, but said the mercenaries were recognised by their “unfamiliarity with the values and customs of the Sudanese people”.

Sahel states

The UN special envoy to Sudan, Volker Perthes, told the German website Qantara there was no evidence of Wagner mercenaries in Sudan, but there were “quite a number” of “bounty hunters and mercenaries” from the Sahel states.

Sudanese writer Al-Sadiq al-Raziqui explained that the wars in Darfur and Yemen led to West African mercenaries fighting alongside the RSF.

He wrote on Al Jazeera’s website that mercenaries returning from Yemen in 2019 were still in Sudan and European military reports estimated there were around 18,000 fighters from Chad, Niger, Mali, northern Nigeria and southern Libya in the country.

Chad was the largest source of these mercenaries due to tribal affiliations and the ease of movement into Sudan, as well as the two countries’ shared values and culture, he said.

Hemedti himself belongs to a small Chadian Arab camel-herding clan, which took refuge in Darfur in the 1980s.

“bounty hunters and mercenaries” from the Sahel

Russia’s Wagner Group

The Wagner Group is believed to have been operating in Sudan since 2017 with an eye on economic gains from the country’s gold and mineral resources through Meroe Gold, a subsidiary of a company owned by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Wagner has reportedly provided training to the RSF and – in the run up to the removal of President Omar al-Bashir from power in April 2019 – was seen in Khartoum during antigovernment protests.

Reports from Darfur-focused Radio Dabanga indicated that 500 mercenaries operated between Sudan and neighbouring CAR.

While a 2020 Wagner propaganda film featured Sudan as one of the countries where it operated, Prigozhin said –shortly after the fighting began – no Wagner fighters had been in Sudan since 2021.

Meanwhile, Sudan is strategically important to the Kremlin and there is a long-standing agreement to establish a Russian naval base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

Libya

Sudan has reportedly sent mercenaries to fight in other countries, including Yemen and Libya. The RSF's ties with powerful Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar date back to 2019 when Hemedti is believed to have deployed at least 1,000 of his fighters to fight alongside Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).

Media reports suggested that the Libyan warlord has been supporting the RSF against the Sudanese army, sending planes with military supplies acquired from the UAE, although this has been denied by the LNA.

Media reporting

Several Arab media outlets have reported on African and Wagner mercenaries joining the RSF in its fight against the Sudanese army, with some mulling how this would impact regional stability.

The prominent Libyan privately owned Al-Wasat website said that this would diminish chances of restoring peace and stability in Libya, the main focus of UN envoy for Libya Abdoulaye Bathily’s tour of Libya's southern neighbours last April.

Al-Wasat said that the crisis in Sudan would destroy all efforts to remove foreign mercenaries, especially the Sudanese, from Libya as they would use the country's south as a base to “oppose the [Khartoum] regime militarily”.

Abdoulaye Bathily, UN Special Representative for Libya and Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL)

Libya’s Khalifa Haftar

JOSH EDELSON/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

CHESNOT/GETTY IMAGES

MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Gulf-based pan-Arab channels and websites, especially Qatar-linked ones, have also highlighted the presence of foreign mercenaries in Sudan.

Doha-based Al-Araby TV published a video report on its interactive digital platform Ana al-Araby on 16 May titled “Sudan, a battlefield for different mercenaries”, in which it quoted eyewitnesses in Khartoum who observed French-speaking fighters amongst the RSF, suggesting that they were from Chad.

The report added that the RSF has been receiving weapons from parts of Libya under Haftar control.

Wider implications

The reported engagement of foreign mercenaries in Sudan casts a dark shadow over the conflict, which appears to have no end in sight.

It not only exacerbates the fighting, but also has been a cause of unrest amid accusations that these bounty hunters have been involved in human rights abuses and looting.

There is a high risk of worsened insecurity in different areas leading to ethnic unrest, especially in Darfur. The Amsterdam-based Radio Dabanga website reported on 16 May that “over 2,000 people might have died” in El-Geneina in Sudan's West Darfur State where alleged ethnic attacks had “been ongoing for 21 days”.

Regionally, there are also concerns over the operations of mercenaries that might affect stability in both Libya and Chad.

Libyan journalist and activist Ismail Bazanka told the Middle Eastfocused website Arabi21 that the military conflict in Sudan would affect the “security situation” in Libya, particularly in the country's south due to the expected influx of rebellious forces and mercenaries in camps near the border.

International relations professor Kwaku Nwamah told Voice of America that “the US is worried about Chad”.

“Chad is a strong American ally, and Russia is already in the vicinity in the Central African Republic,” said Nwamah. “If Hemedti wins this conflict, the Darfur region can become a starting base for Arab rebels who are challenging the government in Chad.”

Beverly Ochieng is a senior journalist in our Nairobi bureau; Omneya El-Naggar is a journalist in our Cairo bureau

Senior SAF officials have alleged the involvement of Russia’s Wagner Group

Smoke plumes rise from a fire at a timber warehouse in southern Khartoum amid continued fighting

Digitising the Summary of World Broadcasts

In 2022, BBC Monitoring and Readex entered into an agreement to digitise BBC Monitoring’s Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB) archive from 1939 to 2001. By digitising this important historical archive, Readex is making previously inaccessible content available for the first time to scholars around the world, Readex’s Jim Draper writes.

The entirety of SWB—nearly three million pages—is being published on a Readex research platform developed for academic users and enhanced with new tools to enable content discovery. When the digitisation is completed (January 2024), more than 70,000 multi-page SWB reports will be accessible.

Long an advocate for the research value of news-type content, we believe that news gives people the power to understand the past, make sense of the present, and plan for the future.

Readex’s Summary of World Broadcasts product

Readex: Bringing history to life

Established in 1950, Readex, a division of NewsBank Inc publishes many of the world’s most widely used collections of digitised research materials.

Researchers know Readex as a leading provider of historical news, government documents, books and pamphlets. To date, we have created 125 historical collections that cover a wide range of places, time periods and topics.

One of our most popular collections is Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1941-1996 (FBIS), a US archive of open source intelligence (OSINT) containing millions of transcribed radio broadcasts, created by BBC Monitoring’s US partner organization FBIS (now OSE).

Readex digital collections are used in academic, national, public and government libraries in more than 80 countries.

The digitisation process

How do you digitise a physical archive – conserved in paper, microfilm and microfiche – like SWB?

Answer: Step by step by step.

Most of the work is done at our production facility in Chester, Vermont. We employ teams of content editors, subject-matter experts, UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) designers and web developers who work together to build our database collections.

For the SWBs, the Readex team worked closely with the BBC Monitoring and Written Archives teams, first to understand the structure of the documents. The complexity of the SWBs – with formats that evolved constantly –really tested our editorial skills.

Next, we worked with the BBC Written Archives Centre in Caversham to ship the content to the US so it could be digitised. This was a huge task, and we are grateful for the Centre’s support, particularly from Mark Macey and Hannah Spinks.

News gives people the power to understand the past, make sense of the present, and plan for the future

The hard copy SWBs arrive on pallets in Readex’s offices

With the content safely in Chester, the heavy lifting began:

• First, the Readex imaging team created a high-resolution image of every page in SWB.

• Next, descriptive metadata was developed (researchers value metadata because it helps them better understand the content they are using, and for SWB we developed more metadata than we had ever done before).

• We then enhanced each SWB report with article-level zoning (individual reports are separated into unique documents, each with its own bibliographical record).

• The content was then made fulltext searchable using optical character recognition (OCR).

• Finally, the content was loaded into the database and mapped to user tools to make it searchable in many ways.

Unlocking history

Readex’s mission is simple: unlock history for scholars and students to enable new discoveries, make connections, illuminate new scholarship, and provide opportunities for new insights and learning.

Readex is especially excited to be the publisher of SWB because SWB is the natural companion to FBIS, which, like SWB, collects transcripts of foreign broadcasts. Our customers think of FBIS as the “American” SWB, and of SWB as the “British” FBIS. Now—for the first time—the two content sets dovetail flawlessly in a single place, each supporting the other to create a more complete whole.

My prediction: In the coming years we will see new discoveries about the 20th century that would be impossible without a digital SWB archive. The discoveries will enlighten us in many areas: international studies, media and journalism studies, military history, propaganda and communications studies, and many more disciplines… still waiting to be “unlocked.”

The newly digitised BBC Monitoring: Summary of World Broadcasts collection is now available from Readex. Readex is grateful to our many new friends at the BBC for making this possible.

Jim Draper is president of Readex, where he focuses on developing new content sets to support academic research. Jim is a graduate of Princeton University and holds a postgraduate degree in Medieval Languages from the University of Oxford

www.readex.com

“This is the history of the world speaking to the world”

– Nick Cull, Professor of Communication, University of Southern California

BBC ARCHIVE

Living the story: Pascal Fletcher

As this is the summer edition of Monitor, we feature Editorial Lead Pascal Fletcher, based in Miami, in the USA’s “sunshine

What brought you to BBC

Monitoring?

After a very full and active three decades in what I’d call “front-line” journalism (mostly with Reuters), which took me to many parts of Latin America and Africa, I was looking for something new and an opportunity to work for BBC Monitoring presented itself in 2016. I was interested, because in my past travels I had heard of Monitoring and knew something of its history. I initially started part-time and soon realised that the work of BBC Monitoring added a fascinating fresh dimension to “straight” journalism: the overlay of observing and analysing news events through the prism of the media and social media, with all that this entails in terms of disinformation, geopolitical power plays and political and economic influences at work. So if you can imagine a job that combines day-to-day journalism with the work of strategic security analysis, open source intelligence and media consultancy all wrapped up into one, then this is it. One thing led to another and I found myself heading up the BBC Monitoring team covering Latin America, which is based in Miami.

What does a typical day look like?

There is never a dull moment in Latin America, where so many global themes play out on a daily basis – climate change, environmental problems and weather emergencies, migration, insurgency, violent organised crime and drug-trafficking, and not least, geopolitical rivalry, as the United States faces challenges in its traditional Western Hemisphere “backyard” from China, Russia and Iran. “Constant watch” is a daily task for any BBC Monitoring team, looking across a vast landscape of media sources and social media to detect breaking news and angles that might have been missed or neglected by traditional international

news sources, as well as trends and developments in national and regional media cover, or “nuggets” of information of potential interest to our customers. As well as filing spot-news alerts and reports, we also work on more in-depth Insight pieces that seek to join-the-dots on any trends observed and “nuggets” found, providing context and analysis. On any given day too, we might be fielding requests from other BBC units requesting two-way radio and TV interviews, and help with translation, material and analysis to produce online stories, programmes and podcasts. We also work on media guides. So every day is a full plate.

state” of Florida.

Social media is huge in Latin American countries

Pascal Fletcher with some members of our Miami team past and present: from left to right: Daniela Traldi, Pascal Fletcher, Blaire Toedte, Rose Delaney, Rachelle Krygier

The arrival of inmates belonging to the MS-13 and 18 gangs to a vast new prison in El Salvador’s Tecoluca

Absolutely. There are published studies which indicate that disinformation is even more prevalent in Spanish – and Portuguese-language media than in English, including the US Hispanic population. Social media is huge in Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina, and disinformation, “fake news” and misinformation stories are constantly cropping up – from the anti-vaccine narratives peddled in Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic by rightwing then president Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters to online efforts by some of Mexico’s powerful drug cartels to present themselves as social benefactors and deployment by some governments of “digital troops” to promote propaganda and harass critics.

Ideological opponents like Cuba and the US fight “information wars” across the Florida Straits. There is hardly an election anywhere in the region that is not somehow “contaminated” with false narratives and “fake news”, leading to a boom in fact-checking websites. And let’s not forget too that China, Russia and Iran are all increasingly pushing their respective narratives through state-run Spanish language services all targeting Latin American audiences.

What’s the most interesting story you have worked on?

I’m going to have to confess to a personal fascination here, stemming from my past years of working as a correspondent in Havana, for the online information war involving Cuba and the US. Up to only a few years ago, Cuba’s ruling Communist Party was able to exercise an almost complete monopoly over media and information (enshrined, it should be said, in the Cuban constitution, which still does not permit non-state-owned media).

However, the advent of mobile phones on the island and increasing access to the Internet and social media for Cuban citizens have eroded the government’s past power to control information and political narrative. Cubans can now find anti-government and dissident news sources and see, post and interact with criticism of the authorities on social media.

This has left the Cuban state media – which seeks only to report and promote pro-government news –with a serious credibility crisis and scrambling to keep up with news and activity on social media that show a much less flattering picture of reality on the island.

This information battleground was vividly revealed by a wave of antigovernment protests that rippled across the island on 11 July 2021, and was given visibility and momentum by reporting and videos on social media. For its part, Cuba’s government alleges a “media war” is being waged against its one-party communist system by and from the US (especially by Cuban exiles in Florida) and using US-based social media platforms. Havana has been countering by clamping down on internal dissidents and protesters, deploying pro-government “digital troops” and hashtags to promote the government’s positions, and passing laws that seem aimed to restrict antigovernment social media activity. The battle is continuing.

Is disinformation a big issue in Latin America?

National Guard and military vehicles transfer the two survivors out of four US citizens kidnapped in Mexico back to the US

Indigenous people protest in front of the presidential palace in Brasilia

An arrest during a demonstration against the Cuban government in Havana

STR/AFP

VIA GETTY IMAGES

Covering the large area that is Latin America and the Caribbean with a small team certainly poses challenges. We are constantly having to make “triage” coverage decisions on a dayto-day basis – deciding which stories or requests we are going to dedicate effort and resources to. Such decisions inevitably pull attention away from other developments that we will need to keep an eye on or delve into at some stage, unless they “blow up” in the meantime! Of course these are challenges faced by all Monitoring teams, whether they cover just one country or a region. Search tools and use of technology and AI can help, to complement the human mind and eye that seeks to make sense of our frenzied kinetic world.

Trying to unscramble that is of course the key part of BBC Monitoring’s work. So I’ve found that while exercising basic journalistic skills like writing and editing, you are also developing other skills of observation, analysis and prediction that are key to a whole range of potential professional career choices. As I say, there is never a dull day in Latin America – or in BBC Monitoring! There is never a dull day in Latin America – or in BBC Monitoring!

That there is so much more to the “news” that you see daily on TV, in news sites and newspapers, and on social media. Behind the breaking news items in themselves is a whole seething universe of political and economic interests, disinformation, competition for attention and influence and geopolitical rivalry, all being played out in the constantly shifting world of media and social media.

Pascal Fletcher is BBC Monitoring’s Editorial Lead in our Miami bureau

A mounted US Border Patrol agent tries to stop a Haitian migrant from entering an encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas

Earthquake damage in Haiti

What are the challenges in coordinating our Latin American coverage?

What have you learned while working at BBC Monitoring?

TO DISCUSS HOW WE CAN HELP YOUR ORGANISATION CONTACT US AT:

MONITORING@BBC.CO.UK

MONITORING.BBC.CO.UK

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BBC Monitoring observes, understands and explains media throughout the world, providing deep insight and enabling organisations to make better, more informed decisions. Our teams monitor and analyse developments in areas including geopolitics, terrorism and other security-related issues for BBC News as well as our clients, who include governments, NGOs and major corporations worldwide.