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After discussing Mark Easton's 'they're all as bad as each other, so Labour's not the worst of the lot by a long way as you might think' story, The World Tonight moved swiftly on to discuss its favourite subject, Israel (the subject is its favourite of course, not Israel!)
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It was discussed, inevitably, with a liberal American academic, Michele Dunne, senior research associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (the programme's favourite US think tank) before yet another report on this plight of the Palestinians - this time from Paul Wood on how "unarmed" Palestinians, "just coming home from college", were being shot with real (rather than rubber) bullets by the wicked Israelis. A Palestinian medic said, yes, he was sure they were shot with real bullets. The Palestinian case was made at considerable length, the Israeli denial considerably more concisely.
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The BBC are just obsessed about this. I am deeply, deeply bored by their obsession. I want to hear about Cambodia, or Gambia, or Canada, or Tunisia, or Fiji...there's a whole world out there BBC! Let's hear about it!
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(The World Tonight at least does spread its wings a bit wider than its companion programmes.)
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Take a read of this from last year to give you an idea of scale and the BBC's news priorities.
ReplyDeleteA fantastic post that one Not a sheep. Says it all really.
ReplyDeleteAll those BBC reporters (how many of them are there? I've lost count) roaming around Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in relative safety (despite Alan Johnson, who was released by a sympathetic Hamas) spinning story after story against Israel, day in day out, should be split up and sent to scandalously under-reported places like the DRC and Sudan.
It's odd, isn't it, that the BBC tut-tut about racist, colonialist attitudes to the world, but don't regard millions of dead black Africans in the DRC as an infinitely greater scar on the world's conscience than a few hundred dead Palestinians (many of whom were Hamas fighters).
Odd, or disgusting?
When Ariel Sharon was admitted to hospital in 2006 the BBC were out in force.
ReplyDeleteOver a period of 72 hours I counted seven different talking heads from the BBC spouting off to camera outside of the hospital where Sharon was being treated.
Why were they all there? As you and NaS have pointed out there are far more compelling news stories than the never-ending Islamic demonisation of Israel.
Could it be that Israel is a far safer place to be than the DRC and that BBC reporters aren't as intrepid as they'd have us believe?
Andy C
Nice of you to give poor little Gambia a name check !
ReplyDeleteJust back and catching up with your posts.
Some of my Gambia family and friends listen to the BBC World service and have all noticed bias and that the BBC only seem to report bad news from Africa.
I wouldn't expect too much about Gambia as it is pretty small and insignificant ( one reason I like it ) , but over the last 5 years ,I can only recall 3 stories on the BBC , all bad news and 2 totally misreported.
By the way, the Gambia TV service ( GRTS ) has improved considerably and , in many ways, is superior to the BBC, but that is not saying much !
Good to have you back Grant.
ReplyDeleteI did spot a BBC News website story about a few arrests there a week or so ago. Of the very few articles there are about Gambia the most recent ones all end with a comment about what President Jammeh thinks about homosexuality, regardless of the actual story.
Jammeh is far too complex a man for Beeboid simpletons to understand.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they should report that, on Fridays, GRTS broadcast Muslim programmes and on Sundays, Christian programmes, even though less than 10% of Gambians are Christian. Every Christmas Jammeh gives a speech to "salute our Christian brothers and sisters ".
I could go on ....
It is always difficult to know whether arrests in Gambia are justified. The situation is quite complicated.
I would have thought the BBC would give Jammeh the benefit of the doubt as he is a Muslim. On the other hand , he only has one wife !