Under Mugabe’s heel the people of Zimbabwe suffer with nary a peep from the BBC. Go to the Africa page [at time of posting] and you’ll find one tepid story. Admittedly, there are links to this [2June05], this [15Oct04], this [24June04] , this, [28Feb03] this [2July04] and this [27Nov04] on that page, but nothing ‘above the fold’. Why is this not considered a much bigger story than the extremely rare ‘Koran abuse’? I leave that to our informed commentariat to decide.
Hat tip: Instapundit
Update: B-BBC commenters Mark and Scott note that they have viewed and heard some tough BBC reporting on Zimbabwe. My focus here is the BBC website, but the Beeb deserves credit where it’s due. Indeed, the BBC has been banned by Robert Mugabe’s awful regime. I saw this victim’s story posted today [8June05]. That said, it is apparently still possible to get reports, banned or not. Let the BBC website put the Zimbabwean tragedy in the center of their crosshairs once more.
Update 2: Mark B notes that there is a new story today [9June05] covering the strike. It’s a story that needs to be told.
Pete:
1. In what way is the BBC’s reporting not “fair, accurate and proportionate to what is happening there”?
2. How is it the BBC’s fault if “most people haven’t heard the word ‘Zimbabwe’ mentioned once on news reports”? Like I said previously , it was story #1 on the One O’Clock News today, and it’s also on the front page of the BBC News website. If people don’t watch the BBC’s news or read the BBC’s website how is that the BBC’s fault?
3. Do you really think that Abu Ghraib was only about “an inmate having a pair of knickers put on his head”? I very much doubt it.
4. In what way is the BBC’s coverage of the events in Zimbabwe biased?
mark b
1. I said that the reporting should be fair, accurate and proportionate (as in air time devoted to the importance of the events.) On this basis it has not been proportionate.
2. Having a job, I couldn’t catch the lunchtime news but I have looked at BBC News Online a couple of times and it hasn’t even been one of the main reports. Currently it’s a small link on the right. Even that’s about Mugabe defending his actions!
3. Do you think Abu Ghraib was worthy of the blanket, saturation, wall-to-wall, round the clock, 24/7, 7 days a week coverage? Do you? Do you think the events at Abu G to be more important than 200,000 people having their homes demolished? (Let’s run with the UN figures here, dubious though that source is.)
4. I didn’t say the BBC had shown bias over Zimbabwe, though no doubt a search will throw up material. I said that it hasn’t devoted enough time to the events there given Mugabe’s reported actions. Set against the reporting of Abu G by the BBC, its reporting of Zimbabwe has been pathetic.
In fact, let’s compare like-for-like.
The UN says that Mugabe’s regime has bulldozed the homes of 200,000 people (link above.) 200,000 people kicked out of their homes in a forced march out of the towns and cities. This equals a belated top billing on the lunchtime news and a link on the online front page. Woooohoooo.
Think of the orgy of reporting which would result from the US bulldozing the homes of 200,000 Sunni Iraqis. There wouldn’t be enough minutes in the day and journalists in the world to report that 200,000 Palestinians have had their homes bulldozed by Israel.
So yes, the BBC is biased over events in Zimbabwe.
It certainly did not get the top billing on Radio 4 news at 1pm, or PM at 5.
So yes, the BBC does give SOME coverage to Zimbabwe. But nothing like as much as it should for the current actions which will lead to thousands of deaths. Nothing in proportion to the fuss over Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. And Zimbabwe has particular connotations as a former Brit colony. Plus there seems to be a lot of pertinance if this is the Year of Africa.
Instead of really focussing on appalling persecution in Zimbabwe, PM is banging on suggesting there is endless persecution of Muslims in Britain.
I accept that you aim to be fair. However, I would argue that you haven’t been at all fair in this post. I have provided you with a wealth of evidence showing that the mark b
You said: BBC News website certainly is not letting Mugabe off lightly. That is not a subjective conclusion; it is a normative statement. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, you must surely accept that the BBC have not let Mugabe off lightly. There are no articles that I know of on the BBC website (feel free to point any my way) which give credence to this claim…etc.
My first post noted Zimbabwe coverage but most were very old. That has been addressed somewhat on the website.
To say as you do that Further, the massive range of news stories that I linked to on the BBC News website, coupled with this story about the current unrest (today!) in Zimbabwe, shows that your argument that it is equally “failing to report news as it happens”, is factually incorrect…. is fine by me. I have updated the post twice to reflect new developments. Not being a prophet, I must draw the line on predicting what the Beeb may do tomorrow. I think my original observations on the paucity of up-to-date reporting on the day of the stands.
This really is quite a surreal conversation. In spite of all hard evidence to the contrary, you still insist that “the BBC is biased over events in Zimbabwe” OK. Well I’ll try and deal with your comments, as absurd as they may be.
1. There has been plenty of reporting on the situation in Zimbabwe. Besides the three Panorama reports in as many years, at great personal risk to the reporters, on BBC News online alone there are 1,338 search results for “Zimbabwe Mugabe”. Search for “Abu Ghraib” on BBC News. 87 Results.
2. It was roughly a 5:30 length piece on the lunchtime news, which lasts 30 minutes. A “belated top billing”? It was the first story, the headline news. The story was the third of the three stories on the front page of the website earlier in the day, as I’m sure others can confirm for you. On the Video pop-up window, it’s the second item.
Did you even bother to click on the link? Have a look at the picture on that page, of kids standing around a house on fire. Hardly pro-Mugabe!
3. Abu Ghraib dealt with above. 87 results on BBC News vs 1,338 for “Mugabe Zimbabwe”. And yes, I do think the scandal at Abu Ghraib was rather more than just “an inmate having a pair of knickers put on his head”. It was humiliating, dehumanising, and illegal. What’s more, the whole affair has put both our and American troops in danger in Iraq. It wasn’t the reporting that did that, it was the fact that it happened. It should not have happened.
You’re not comparing like for like, you’re comparing the BBC’s current output on this story with hypothetical speculation.
4. “I didn’t say the BBC had shown bias over Zimbabwe, though no doubt a search will throw up material.”
Fine, the search box is there at the top of the news site; use it. Give me some examples where the BBC have showed that Mugabe is in actual fact a lovely man with feelings and everything. It obviously exists, otherwise you wouldn’t make such a ridiculous assertion, would you?
John – Were you listening to the same programme? As far as I can see, it WAS the first story on Radio Four at 1pm. Have another listen here. It starts with the words “… people homeless, is said to have got off to a slow start. We’ll hear the explanation of one of President Mugabe’s supporters, and we’ll talk to a newspaper editor in Harare who says that the opposition is failing to make the most of fertile ground”. When the news starts, again the first story is on Zimbabwe, it starts: “A two day strike is being held in Zimbabwe in protest at the demolition of thousands of homes and shops by the government.” (it continues). Sound familiar?
It was also the second story on the news on Radio 4 at 5PM.
How about Newsnight? Fair bit about it on there.
“the BBC does give SOME coverage to Zimbabwe. But nothing like as much as it should for the current actions”
Like SKY and ITV, which don’t even mention it on their websites.
So, just today, that’s:
BBC One O’Clock News: First story, 5 minutes long
Radio 4 – The World at One: First story, again, substantial amount of the programme given to it.
Radio 4 – PM: Second news story, after story on paedophiles.
Newsnight – main story
BBC News Online – briefly third most important article, currently still on the front page and most important article in the Africa section
BBC 6 O’Clock News, BBC One – substantial piece on it
… against NO mention on ITV or SKY’s websites. (and no mention on ITV News at 6.30, it seems)
So, it looks like the BBC certainly is biased, then. If you have a mental age of four.
I don’t know how the above comment got so jumbled.
The comment should have begun with “mark b, you said….”
Sthe last sentence should read:
I think my original observations on the paucity of up-to-date reporting on the day of my first post stands.
Ah right Kerry OK I see. You originally wrote it on the 7th. OK, so I admit that you were unlikely to know of today’s news then! Equally though, if you check the search results on the BBC News site even then there were at least seven stories on Zimbabwe in the seven days before your post, so the title of your post (Why is the Beeb letting a bloodthirsty dictator off the hook?) still isn’t true.
mark b
What has been lacking in many of the reports you have mentioned is a sense of ABSOLUTE MORAL OUTRAGE. A huge outrage going on, day by day. And they did NOT give it peak prominence at either 1pm or 5 pm on Radio 4 news – or on the Today programme. The flagship news programmes on radio.
I still feel the BBC expressed more continual outrage over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo which are de minimis aberrations compared with the deliberate state actions of Mugabe.
It is not relevant to say that the BBC are not allowed into Zimbabwe – the same applies to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. And in this case, Britain still has a degree of responsibility in terms of actions by the Commonwealth etc.
Try imagining the BBC’s outrage if US troops cleared and destroyed – without military cause – hundreds of thousands of homes in Baghdad and closed down all the market traders. That is the proper measure of the outrage that the BBC should be expressing. And the other channels. Why are they not calling for action by Blair – they always do if there is something to complain about re the US. Or are they sotto voce because the Zimbabwe story flies straight into the “Give Aid to Africa” mantra.
Re Radio 4 – it was the most prominent story on the World at One (I’m not sure how you can say that it wasn’t the first story on the World at One, are you listening to a different broadcast?), and the second most prominent story on the news at 5pm.
Listen to Today again. It starts:
HUMPHERYS – It’s 6 O’Clock on Thursday, the 9th of June. Good Morning, this is Today with Caroline Quinn and James Naughtie.
QUINN – The headlines this morning – A general strike’s been called in Zimbabwe to protest against the demolition of tens of thousands of homes…
After the rest of the headlines, the newsreader begins with:
Opposition groups in Zimbabwe have called a general strike in protest against the demolition of tens of thousands of makeshift homes and shops in the country’s cities. The two day stoppage is timed to coincide with the opening of parliament by president Robert Mugabe. The authorities have said they will deal severely with anyone who joins the strike. The government says it’s cleaning up illegal settlements, but the United Nations Human Rights Commission says it believes up to 200,000 people have been evicted from their homes. The UN special expert on the right to housing, Miloon Kothari, is particularly worried about the plight of young children.
KOTHARI: We have eyewitness accounts of children who have died because of exposure in the cold at night. Just yesterday we were hearing information of two children who died, and so the situation is very severe and I think this is very hard to understand why the government is in a situation where there is a grave housing, agriculture, economic crisis in the country, why the government is undertaking this operation at such a arge scale.
Note the highlighted part of the quote from Mr Kothari. Is children dying at night from exposure enough moral outrage for you?
My point with regards to the BBC not being allowed into Zimbabwe was that whereas in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib there is a substantial amount of photos and video that has been released into the public domain, in Zimbabwe even this is obviously not possible.
“in this case, Britain still has a degree of responsibility in terms of actions by the Commonwealth etc.”
Total rubbish.
1. Zimbabwe is an independent, sovereign nation.
2. Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth in 2003 after being suspended
3. If Britain were responsible because Zimbabwe is in the Commonwealth (which it isn’t), then we’re also responsible for apartheid in South Africa up to 1961, the persecution of the Aboriginees in Australia, Muslim extremists in Pakistan, persecution of gays (amongst others) in Jamaica, the lack of democracy in Brunei and countless other countries, and famine in Mozambique.
A pretty long list, and a pretty absurd argument.
Regarding your last paragraph, how outraged do you imagine the BBC would be able to be if it couldn’t get any news out of Iraq? How could it possibly be so outraged if it has nothing, no evidence, to be outraged about? That’s the situation in Zimbabwe at the moment, and that’s why your analogy doesn’t work.
I agree with you on one thing though – the real outrage here is that other channels are also not speaking up about what is happening now in Zimbabwe. The BBC has done a fair bit, but ITV, for instance, had a brief ten second long report about what is happening in Zimbabwe, at about 18:45. After a long story about evidently retarded kids playing chicken with trains. It certainly puts the BBC’s coverage into perspective.
Did it get the main 8.10am slot on Today ? No. So it did not get the most prominence.
Did it get the first discussion slot on News at One ? No. So – not the most prominence.
Did it get the first discussion slot on PM at 5 ? No. Ditto
Were calls out to Jack Straw asking him on any of these programmes what Britain was doing about it all ? eg Is Britain raising it at the UN ? No.
So where is all the outrage to match all the synthetic fuss the BBC puts up over Gitmno and Abu Ghraib. One sttement from the UN just after 6am is hardly good enough. Where was all the spluttering from John Humphrys ? All the preaching from Naughtie ? This business has been going on for days now, and the BBC has hardly raised sweat.
Yes Zimbabwe is currently out of the commonwealth. But its neighbours are not. Where are the BBC interviews with senior politicians in South Africa, for example ?
Alright. SO basically what you’re saying is that it’s fine for ITV News to only have 10 seconds on this after a long report on moronic children playing chicken with trains. At the same time, you’re saying that it’s disgraceful that the BBC ONLY had the following coverage of this news story:
+Radio 4 – Today, first story at 6am, 7am AND 8am, though it wasn’t discussed
+Radio 4 – The World at One, first story
+Radio 4 – PM, second news story
+BBC News Online – briefly third most important article, currently still on the front page and most important article in the Africa section
+BBC One O’Clock News, BBC One – First story, 5 minutes long
+BBC Six O’Clock News, BBC One – substantial piece on it
+BBC Ten O’Clock News, BBC One – second story – four minutes on it, again, including pictures of people in desperation and a woman crying
+Newsnight – main story, including an interview with Hilary Benn.
You’re arguing that it’s disgraceful that the BBC ‘only’ broadcast that much about this issue, but it’s not disgraceful that ITV only did ten seconds, and nothing on their website. Correct?
And all of that makes the BBC biased towards Mugabe, right?
Count me as one who thinks the BBC’s coverage of Zim. is far too soft, and influenced unduly by political considerations and leftist anti-colonial thinking. Generally their fault is to consider the Zim government as a real government, and to give its words a western kind of credence.
But anyway, someone linked this article as an example of BBC investigative quality- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/1865514.stm
What disturbed me was the lack of reference to the bribe he must have paid the passport officials to get into the country. The smiling officials smile for a reason. Why is this important? Only because it’s the unvarnished truth, belying the notion that there is any normal civil activity in Zim. That’s the kind of reality which I find in other journalism but find missing from the BBC- because of the leftist allowances they make.
mark b
Wht hs been notably missing in BBC coverage of Zimbbwe is any real sense of moral outrage – eg compared with some of the UK press.
The BBC LOVES injecting its own opinion. Tht is what drives this site – we are sick of their anti-US moralising. But on Zimbabwe the BBC seems strangely subdued.
And not much news of any sort on Zimbabwe today from the BBC, whereas a lot of the press has screaming headlines of attack on Mugabe.
J_i_L – yes, you’ve said that point about moral outrage before. and what about moral outrage from ITV? 10 seconds. You *still* haven’t answered that point.
Again the news reports in the morning on radio 4 included comments from the UN which talked about kids dying. Tell me that THAT does not evoke feelings of moral outrage. BBC News reports later on included pictures of women crying as their houses had been flattened. Tell me THAT does not evoke feelins of moral outrage. Reports later on also had many pictures of people crying, stories of up to 200,000 houses flattened. Tell me THAT does not evoke feelings of moral outrage.
Presumably the ten seconds on ITV DID evoke feelings of moral outrage for you, though, as in your silence on that subject you appear to feel that’s OK.
And ed, presumably you watched that Panorama programme; were you not disturbed by the pictures of distended children and pictures of people who had been tortured, and their scars? The story which the report tells of thousands slaughtered and tortured in Matabeleland during 1983 and 1984 (when, by the way, he was being financed by the TORY British government)?
That’s what I find disturbing. And like he said, he posed as a tourist to get into Zimbabwe, so I’m not sure what your point is about bribes.
“CIVIL ACTIVITY”? It talks about people being murdered and tortured. in that context, whether or not they paid bribes to border guards (which they obviously didn’t) is totally insignificant.
ITV sticks to what it thinks is news. It does not PREACH at us. The BBC is always preaching – yet it tones down its preachiness on the one topic that is screaming for it. Reference to what a UN person says is not the BBC itself preaching. Where is Humphrys, Naughtie et al hammering someone till they squirm ?
There are NOT the signs of endless-loop preaching on Zimbabwe that we would expect from the BBC, compared to their predilection to anti-US preaching.
Mark B. Tourists don’t go to Zimbabwe, by and large. Posing as a tourist wouldn’t exempt you from a bribe I strongly believe- in fact it would merely draw attention to yourself. Better off posing as a white South African ANC member or something like that. Did you see any holiday offers to visit Mugabe’s paradise recently? I just don’t think we’re getting the whole truth there.
Of course reports of specific atrocities are powerful, yet to present them in any way like dark spots on a lighter background is totally to undermine the real sense of Zimbabwe’s troubles. The problem is one of relentless and unremitting oppression, and a dictator gone mad ripping and shredding the fabric that sustains his people.
Even taking the soundest of the reports you quoted what we find there is interesting- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/2963318.stm
We have Zimbabwe’s plight depicted in fairly typical terms for Africa ie. famine, crisis, poverty etc. Only then do we find that dissent (apparently against this state of affairs) is ruthlessly suppressed.
This is the familiar African angle- sigh. But Zimbabwe is different, different in history (1980 independence), different from a British perspective, different in terms of the level of its development and precipitatness of its decline. Unline most of Africa’s grand stories of decline it’s happening now. All of this makes the BBC’s responsibility special, yet they fit it into their old template and pretend that Mugabe is African business as usual. He’s not.
J_i_L
Right, so this isn’t ‘news’? A very thin argument.
How about the 3 Panorama reports containing shocking images? How many times have ITV *EVER* made a documentary about the plight of Zimbabweans under Mugabe?
The BBC didn’t accidentally carry that quote from the UN bloke. They did it on purpose, to put across a certain point.
And who are they going to hammer? The foreign office? What can they do? Nothing. The South Africans? Why would they listen to a British journalist when they’re not listening to the international community?
ed
So, basically, you’re saying that Fergal Keane is lying that he got in as a tourist? Why the hell would he do that? What benefit would he get out of saying that?
I have some friends who went to South Africa recently. While they were there, they also visited Victoria Falls (in Zimbabwe), and though they got quite a bit of their stuff stolen, they did’t have to pay a bribe.
And it’s fairly difficult to pose as a South African ANC member if you have a British passport and a British accent…
“Of course reports of specific atrocities are powerful, yet to present them in any way like dark spots on a lighter background is totally to undermine the real sense of Zimbabwe’s troubles.”
In what way did the panorama broadcast do that?
And all that stuff about famine, crisis, poverty on there was background. If it was just another case of the “familiar African angle” then the BBC wouldn’t have made a Panorama report about it, which centred on Mugabe’s suppression of his people!
mark b
You continue to fail to comment on the fact that Zimbabwe has slipped right off the BBC news agenda today.
Why did not the Today programme haul in a Foreign Office Minister and ask why Britain was not raising this at the UN ? Why not talk to critics in South Africa who feel the Government re is far too supportive of Mugabe. The BBC is not normally short of ways of expressing moral concern.
Why should I dream up ways of expressing outrage – why can’t the huge number of staff at the BBC News Deprtment find ways ?
Pointing to former programmes is no answer. This is new news, people are dying right now. Why isn’t Newsnight on the case ?
No – the BBC has moved on, it seems. But they never move on from any chance to attack the US.
And you continue to fail to respond to the argument that ITV News has hardly reported on it at all! At least the BBC DID REPORT ON IT, SUBSTANTIALLY.
Yes, people are dying right now. And the BBC had a long report on it just last night on Newsnight. Nothing new has happened since yesterday, no new revelations have come to light.
Today, it’s yesterday’s news. The EU rebate is the main news today, and there are other things to talk about. ITV isn’t reporting on it at all now (not even their token ten seconds), and neither is the BBC, you’re right.
Just in case you thought this was some bizarre leftwing pro-Mugabe conspiracy, there’s a big piece on it today in the Guardian, complete with a picture of a girl running across the rubble of her former house. And it makes the first three pages of the Independent (including the front page).
See today’s front pages here.
Both the BBC and the leftwing press is giving this issue a fair bit of attention. In the Guardian there was a fair bit on it both yesterday and today, and the Independent ran it on its first three pages today.
What about ITV, SKY and the rightwing press? Where is their moral outrage? Nowhere, that’s where.
mark b, ITV, Sky etc don’t fund themselves by extorting money under threat of imprisonment from us! Especially while fraudulently claiming a lack of political bias.
As for right wing press – that ceased to exist in the UK years ago… there is the Telegraph which is occasionally rightish mostly middle of the road… then there are tabloid comics that vary with direction of the wind or the biggest soap bubble… but there ain’t anything that could be truthfully defined as right wing in todays UK mainstream media.
Newsnight did not do much on Mgbe last night. Their piece was on Africa generally.
And nothing I have seen or heard on the BBC carries a feeling of outrage. Nothing to match eg today’s Independent.
No coverage today by papers other than the Indie and the Guardian, you say ? Rubbish.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/10/wzim10.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/06/10/ixportaltop.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1648280,00.html
The UK press, left and right, seems to be doing a far better job than the FOUR THOUSAND BBC news staff on reporting Zimbabwe. The BBC stuff does not look much more than a news feed from PA or Reuters. So much for fearless Feargal.
There’s no point in continuing this conversation. We’re both wasting our time and neither of us are going to accept the other person’s views.
I think one difference may be that I have followed the politics of Sothern fric for decades. Indeed at one point I was involved in the drawing up of contingency plans for the mass evacuation of the settler community, thirty years ago.
I find the BBC coverage very thin, far less actual news than its huge news budget should obtain. And certainly far less of the moral tone that the BBC pushes at us other issues that fit its agenda. Mostly because IMHO it runs scared of criticising strongly the one person with any key to the situation, Thabo Mbeki, or any of the other Commonwealth leaders that have any clout with Harare.
Couldn’t agree more JiL- thin is exactly the word for BBC Africa coverage, and morally weak would be another appropriate phrase.
I don’t wish to come back at Mark over our previous discussion re Feargal Keane’s glossing, but I think the BBC’s grip on the major issues, such as bribery in African nations, always plays along with the national tunes being played. Then again the same is true of the British Foreign Office. Surprise, that- not.