‘Tony Hall, the U.S. ambassador to the food program… asked one of Mugabe’s top aides: “Why do I get the impression that I have to beg you to feed your people?” ‘ -Michael Grunwald, Washington Post Staff writer, Jan 03
Funny how in this article about famine in Zimbabwe, a certain man’s name is missing. On top of that, they’ve chosen just about the most tendentious ‘fact’ possible with which to launch their story. It is reported that
‘Millions of Zimbabweans will go hungry this Christmas because international donors have failed to provide enough food, the United Nations has warned.’
That ‘Millions of Zimbabweans will go hungry this Christmas’ is a fact I would not want to argue with, and awful if so. Why is a different matter- our unnamed African leader ought to dominate that discussion. However, if the BBC merely wanted to report a shortage of aid from donors, they should have pointed out that because the price of all sorts of grain has risen strongly this year, due to a run of mixed world harvests (and the running-down in years past of surpluses by, for instance, the EU), usual inflation adjusted aid budgets that last year might have been adequate are not any more. So it’s not just a simple case of the ‘selfish West, as usual, stingy as they tuck into their Turkeys’, however the Beeb make it appear to be.
More evidence of what is a disturbing affinity among the left and brutal dictators, so long as they aren’t European.
When I was growing up, the left stood for unrealistic sentiments of peace and equality that while not terribly real-world, were at least laudable goals in theory. But now the left simply stands for anything the right/center does not.
And have you noticed that when the distribution of food aid is the hook for a BBC diatribe, the sacks of grain being gleefully toted away by the “starving” are almost always USAid—the Stars and Stripes prominent on them? It is also widely acknowledged that those carrying the sacks away will sell their contents at vastly inflated prices. The BBC, though, by that time has moved on to fresh US atrocities and errors.
BBC has been quite zealous about covering what’s happened in Zimbabwe over the past four years. If there is a bias, it was in neglecting Zimbabwe until the white farmers started having trouble. I don’t think it’s bias that BBC accurately quotes a particularly silly line from a UN report.
I would not call the line silly, it is leftwing propaganda to support another leftwing dictator, being passed on by the BBC.
Since when does a report on a statement by the UN become BBC comment. Cut the crap and give up as you know nothing of the position in Zim. Your piece is misleading as Mugabe is specifically mentioned on a link on that page together with other reports.
Supose you had to have something to criticise and you could not find anything else. Make a New Year’s resolution and read the links that you criticise in contexr.
Londonbear-
When I first made the report Mugabe’s name was not on the page even as a link. Later on that changed, but so what? The report has to be seen on its own merits- without the techno crap. You can report, or not report, an agency’s words- you can double quote mark it. You can introduce other angles adequately. You can make the remarks supplementary or your main focus. You can unpack a statement properly. Ask the average person who the president of Zimbabwe is and they will not know- hence the role of a PSB to inform. Mugabe is a bad man, and they should inform us about the fact tirelessly.
Personally I find almost all the BBC’s journalism defective. I nearly ALWAYS know something that they have deliberately excluded from their reports. That’s infuriating, when it has an impact on public life, like last night when they mentioned Iran’s willingness to accept aid from the world community as a sign of how serious the situation was there, without mentioning the one country
whose aid was refused- Israel. At a time of rising anti-Jewish feeling it’s important that people get to hear when the goodwill gestures they make are snubbed.
As to what I know about Zimbabwe- I have lived in East Africa amongst traditional African people. I know what they eat and how the seasons work because I’ve lived through them. I know how they relate to the powers-that-be in a general way, because I’ve been alongside them in situations where the authorites have been involved. I’ve also seen repossessed former colonial farmsteads- and had breakfast in a fifties-style dining room occupied by several African families. True, that wasn’t Zimbabwe, but I do know a number of people from their sister country Zambia who I call friends. I’ve followed the Zimbabwe crisis for a number of years with as much interest as I could muster from those contacts and experiences.