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Changes in Reference
from MONITOR 32
The Reference section of BBC Monitoring’s website contains a wealth of immediately accessible, regularly updated and in-depth background information. Editorial lead how our reference material is changing.
Our globally dispersed Reference team provides our customers with profiles of people and organisations in the news: from heads of governments to opposition activists, media owners to military chiefs and much more.
In order to continue to meet our customers’ expectations of context and insight with deep regional and thematic expertise, BBC Monitoring’s Reference content is changing, with a much greater emphasis on China, Russia and Iran.
This has enabled us to focus on BBCM’s core areas of expertise, bringing information from distinctive source material on high priority countries and themes to our customers.
Currently we have over 37,000 regularly updated biographies from around 70 priority countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North and Sub-Saharan Africa, all of which underpin and compliment BBC Monitoring’s media insight and analysis.
A wealth of immediately accessible, regularly updated and in depth background information
Russia, China and Iran
For Russia, China and Iran we are now producing much more detailed content, profiling a broader range of individuals and organisations. With Russia for example we have been able to expand our coverage significantly and ensure more timely updates.
Recent examples, ahead of the Russian presential election, included the barred candidate Boris Nadezhdin and updates on the death of Alexei Navalny – whom we had been covering since 2011 – as well as profiles of key figures in the media and Wagner PMC’s activities. And since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin we have been looking at his potential successors.
Expanded biographies include a summary and rich layers of detail: spelling variants of names, background information, personal details, education, career to date and a timeline with key developments, statements and so on. Similarly, profiles for organisations include an at-a-glance summary and more granular background notes, a timeline and leadership details.
Jihadism
Jihadism is a key global theme for us: we aim to profile all jihadist groups and leaders as well as their media outlets, such as Al- Naba, the Islamic State’s (IS) flagship Arabic weekly newspaper and IS news outlet Amaq.
Karen Beynon is the editorial lead in our Reference team
Discover more about the people and organisations you need to know about in over 70 key countries.
BBC Monitoring’s reference content includes:
• biographies of leading personalities
• profiles of organisations, armed organisations including jihadist groups, political parties
• lists of government ministers
• senior officials in parliament, ministries, regional government, armed forces, security services and police
Clear sourcing and attribution
Our researchers – experienced regional and thematic specialists with a wide range of language skills and regional media knowledge – expand and update our background content on a daily basis, drawing on BBCM output and open source material from around the world. Content is built up with granular, meticulously researched and double-sourced details.
Fascinating snippets of history are to be found in the updates that were recorded on around 250,000 cards
Over 80 years of history in biographical details
From the 1940’s until 2000, BBC Monitoring compiled information on personalities as part of an internal reference library which monitors would use to research and verify information. Over the decades this vast set of biographical data was typed on index cards and updated as events unfolded. Fascinating snippets of history are to be found in the updates that were recorded on around 250,000 cards. In the early 2000s BBC Monitoring began to produce a wider set of easily searchable online reference content.
