Sam Han | Eportfolio

The service, which began broadcasting in 1932, is one of Britain’s most visible exports and is known for bringing uncensored news to places where there is no free press. It currently has a budget of $432 million a year, a staff of 2,400 and a listening and viewing audience of 180 million a week, and 241 million across television, radio and the Internet.

The BBC is facing deep cuts in spending over the next several years, and earlier this week announced that it would cut 25 percent, or $54 million, from its online budget. But it hastened to point out that it was the government, which is responsible for financing the World Service through the Foreign Office, that made the decision to cut the budget so sharply.

“I want to stress that these are cuts that we would not have chosen to make without the funding reduction by the government,” Peter Horrocks, the BBC’s global news director, told reporters. “We made our case as strongly as we possibly could.”

The government had praised the importance of the World Service, Mr. Horrocks said, but “the funding that we have received makes it difficult to reconcile that.” In fact, he said, when other factors were taken into account, the budget cuts were equal to about 20 percent annually for three years, or $73 million a year by 2014.

In the House of Commons, angry legislators, some from the ruling Conservative Party, lined up to denounce the plans.

“There is very deep concern in the House about this decision,” Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative member of Parliament, said. Pointing out that even as it intends to cut the World Service, the government is increasing its overseas aid budget by 37 percent in real terms, Mr. Tyrie added: “I hope that he will hear the message from the House that if there is a choice between the two, we want to put the World Service first.”

Sir Gerald Kaufman, a Labour member of Parliament, said that the BBC World Service was “the most trusted voice in the world — more trusted than any Government, and more trusted than any other broadcaster in English or any other language.” He added: “To undermine the BBC World Service is to undermine truth.”

But William Hague, the foreign secretary, said that the BBC had to accept that cuts were being made across the government and that it had to shoulder some of the burden.

“The BBC World Service has a viable and promising future, but it is not immune from public spending constraints or from a reassessment of its priorities and services that have become less well used,” he said.

Outside the World Service offices, staff members held a demonstration against the impending cuts and laid wreaths saying things like “R.I.P. World Service.”

“As far as I’m concerned this announcement is a death knell for the World Service,” Michelle Stanistreet, deputy general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, told The Guardian. “We knew there were cuts coming down the line, but I think the scale of the cuts that are proposed has staggered everybody.”

The cuts include the closure of the Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian services, as well broadcasts in English for the Caribbean and in Portuguese for Africa. The broadcaster also intends to cut radio broadcasts to China, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, and to cease evening radio broadcasts in Arabic.

In addition, the service will cut off radio programming in Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Azeri, the official language of Azerbaijan, as well as radio broadcasts to Cuba in Spanish.

The BBC pledged that it would reverse the cuts in 2014, when it takes over responsibility for financing the World Service from the Foreign Office.

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