Now you can see how the BBC rates the importance of each country. Just compare the number of reporters.
Italy is more important than Spain, California less than Brussels and China more than India. Can’t help that there are so many in Paris because they like living here and because it provides easy filler “death of the baguette” stories every three months etc.
(Conflict of interest admission: I’m the creator of the map! Although I don’t have any control over which reporter/correspondent gets sent where or decide how many people should be in each location)
I don’t agree with you. Italy (2 in Rome) has the same amount of correspondents in Spain (1 in Barcelona and 1 in Madrid). In addition, Rome is the center of the Catholic faith.
California, to the BBC’s audience, IS less important than Brussels, the latter being the centre of the European Parliament.
India has 3 correspondents in Delhi, 2 in Mumbai and 2 in Calcutta. China has 3 in Beijing, 1 in central China (Chongqing) and 1 in Shanghai… but there’s also 1 each in Taiwan and Hong Kong which can travel if required.
There’s only 2 correspondents in Paris, but while I was developing the map there was a big reshuffle in progress so I was using information that was out-of-date by a month or so, so there were more correspondents placed in Paris than were actually there.
Hope that clears up some of the points raised in the post!