A few days ago, while visiting the BBC Arabic newsroom in London to gather my papers and books as my contract with the venerable institution nears its end, a collection of images caught my eye. The photographs depict former presenters and staff of the Arabic service of the British Broadcasting Corporation, mostly in black and white.

What surprised me, however, was the location of these images: they were all placed atop a row of metal lockers that employees use to store their personal belongings during their shifts.

I couldn’t help but ask myself: is this truly the rightful place for these icons who shaped the history on which BBC Arabic still stands today?

I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that these individuals—presenters, editors, translators, and others—helped craft the very history of BBC Arabic. The service, which remains synonymous in the minds of many with the name “The British Broadcasting Corporation,” did not achieve this by chance.

The radio service, which thrived for over eighty years before being neglected and suffocated to its demise, is what built the name of BBC Arabic. Peter Partner’s remarkable book, Arab Voices: BBC Arabic from 1938 to 1988, speaks to this legacy.

Throughout that history, some of these figures even resigned live on air in protest of the British-French-Israeli aggression against Egypt during the Suez Crisis.

I don’t believe that BBC Arabic television or its online service ever managed to create a legacy of that magnitude or rise to the same level of significance.

So, is it fitting that the images of these historic figures now languish atop metal lockers in the newsroom?

Perhaps the answer to this question lies in the diminishing space that BBC Arabic and its management currently occupy within the massive media corporation.

BBC Arabic is part of the World Service, which spans numerous languages, with Arabic being the largest in terms of staff.

However, the standing of the World Service, in all its languages, was diminished when the British Foreign Office ceased its funding during the Conservative government of David Cameron. The World Service lost its independence and perhaps its prestige, becoming subordinate to the domestic English-language services funded by the television license fee paid annually by the British public.

I doubt that the English service management was ever pleased with sharing the billions generated by the license fee with the staff of the World Service. The waves of layoffs in the World Service, as well as in some parts of the English services, provide some evidence of this claim—it has become a body repeatedly stabbed by the upper management of the institution.

The strangling and silencing of BBC Arabic radio, while the various English-language radio stations were preserved, offers further proof that the real motivation behind these cuts wasn’t the so-called “digital transformation,” but rather the reduction of the World Service’s expenses, which had become a burden on the institution as a whole.

This is the current status of the World Service and its various languages, with BBC Arabic at the forefront.

In this light, we can understand the place of these images of former broadcasters and editors who shaped its history—sitting atop staff lockers—while the images of English presenters adorn glass-walled rooms built especially for staff meetings, serving as a tribute to their memory.

At one time, the renowned Palestinian presenter Majed Sarhan, may he rest in peace, was honored with one such room, decorated with his photograph alongside a map of part of Palestine from an earlier era. Sadly, this tribute has faded, much like the stature of BBC Arabic and the World Service itself.