Research Databases: “Orgs Ask DNI to Preserve Access to World News Connection”

Update time.

In early October we posted, “CIA’s Open Source Center Plans to End Data Service that Powers World News Connection Database”.

World News Connection (WNC) provides access to content from non-U.S. media including translations of non-English material.

In their words:

World News Connection (WNC) information is compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources obtained from full text and summaries of hard copy and electronic newspaper articles and periodicals, conference proceedings, television and radio broadcasts, OSC analyses, blogs, and non-classified technical reports.

Here’s a list of sources WNC provides access to (by country).  Users can search utilizing a controlled vocabulary. It’s available on the Dialog platform as file 985. Records date back to 1985.

BBC Monitoring provides similar services (fee-based). We’ve embedded an overview video about BBC Monitoring at the bottom of this post.

At the moment, public access to World News Connection (an NTIS resource powered by ProQuest) is set to end next week.

Today, Steven Aftergood reports in a Secrecy News post that last week over a dozen organizations sent a letter to, James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, asking him to continue providing public access to the database.

The post says that the letter to Clapper was coordinated by the National Coalition for History.

According to the letter, ending public access to World News Connection is not in alignment with the Second Open Government National Action Plan released by the Obama administration on December 6th.

The complete Secrecy News item includes a link to the full text of the letter sent to Clapper.

More on BBC Monitoring

For years BBC Monitoring has provided free access to a very limited number of current reports via the BBC web site. They also provide free access to regularly updated profiles of countries and territories along with background on key institutions.

See Also: BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Conference Presentations, Data Files, News, Profiles, Reports