Monthly Archives: June 2005

Two emails from readers about BBC coverage of African issues follow.

Karim Bakhtiar of the uncompromising new blog Nuke Labour writes:

Hi Natalie,

I came across the following example of BBC anti-private-sector pro-government pro-NGO bias.

Channel: BBC News 24

Programme: Reporters

Date: 12th June 2005

Time: 10:40 UK time

“Nomsa is HIV positive. Last year, feeling sick, she bought ARVs [Anti-retroviral drugs] from a private doctor, who didn’t have the correct combination of drugs in stock. Nomsa did not recover. Worse, by starting on the wrong course, she may have built up resistance to the drugs, making it harder to treat her”
…

“Nomsa is now at the same clinic as Prudence [the main subject of the report] run by the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières. Soon she’ll know if she’s responding to treatment or if she’s resistant to drugs, in which case she might not survive.

The Médecins Sans Frontières (or MSF) clinic is receiving more and more patients who are buying the wrong Anti-retrovirals from private doctors.

MSF believes this is happening because the government has not moved fast enough to provide free drugs to the huge HIV positive population.”

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent this:

On the BBC website, the issue of aid to Africa is straightforward. (“Enough payback for Iraq?”) It’s those knights on white chargers Blair and Brown against that nasty Mr Bush. The good guys want to wave a magic wand and cancel debt relief, thereby allowing Africans to build hundreds of new schools and hospitals. Mr Nasty is sitting in his counting house saying ‘bah, humbug’ to everything and condemning millions to premature death and misery.

In contrast, the British press have discussed in depth why the US’s policy to Africa is, in fact, both generous and much more realistic in tying aid to specific projects, ánd why debt relief may not be the best way forward. For example, Bronwen Maddox in the Times (July 8) (“Why it’s wrong to paint America as hard-hearted”) neatly explained why the US was “much more generous than its critics often credit” and why President Bush is constrained from backing Brown’s International Finance Facility because of the US constitution, which prohibits long term commitment to such projects.

The website has oodles of uncritical references to Brown and Blair’s demands, but can only parody the US’s efforts as the world’s biggest spender on African aid. This is how the “objective” assessment on the website about the US approach concludes:

“Bush treads his own path on Africa”

It has to be remembered that there is a lot less political support for foreign aid in the US Congress – unless it is to support political allies like Israel.

Many Republicans are deeply sceptical of the UN institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whom they suspect of inefficiency and corruption.

And with the growing fiscal deficit, many Democrats would argue that any spare cash should be spent on displaced US workers, not helping workers get jobs abroad.

And now that Mr Bush is essentially a lame-duck President, no longer facing re-election, he has even less clout with Congress, as both sides are positioning themselves for possible Presidential contests in 2008.

During the Cold War, US supported generous foreign aid, including the Marshall Plan, because it was seen as vital for US interests to strengthen its anti-communist allies.

Despite the war on terror, it is no longer clear that the US has the political will to tackle the growing gap between rich and poor countries.

LYNDA: “How come you don’t watch it?”

THE DOCTOR: “I didn’t pay my licence fee.”

LYNDA: “Wha-? You get executed for that!”

“Tory nuclear waste sites revealed”, says the BBC.

A list of 12 sites considered for storing nuclear waste by the last Tory government has been released under the Freedom of Information Act

I’m not one to say the Beeb must always accede to Conservative Central Office’s preference for the official name of their party, but count the number of times the word “Tory” occurs in this piece. Mention is made that “The current government is looking for a definite solution to nuclear waste storage, and will start from scratch” but we don’t discover what party the current government are. Here is more about that Tory list:

It was drawn up in the 1980s, but the plan to bury waste at the sites was abandoned following the landslide defeat of John Major’s government in 1997.

We might forget the size of Tony Blair’s majority in our excitement?

TORY POTENTIAL SITES

Means PLACES TO PUT NUCLEAR WASTE rather than marginal constituencies.

Nirex is emphasising that the released list is purely historical and when a decision is made on where to store nuclear waste, the Tory list would not become the starting point of a new exercise.

…

One of the Tory list sites in Essex, at the former Ministry of Defence facility at Potton island, is just a few kilometres from the centre of Southend.

…

And there has been speculation about Stanford in Norfolk, where the MoD owns land, which is also on the Tory list.

…

Bad Tories. Voting Tory makes you radioactive.

Hat tip – DumbJon.

UPDATE: Some poor innocents claim that the towns to be scorched by nuclear fire are selected by civil servants and scientists by criteria that are scarcely affected by what political party is in power.

No, no, it was Tories I tell you!

Fear them. They seek human women.

I have to respectfully disagree with my colleague Kerry Buttram over his last post. The BBC does some very good work on Zimbabwe, that does it proud. As I wrote last February on this blog

Plaudits to the BBC, though, for continuing to do good work on Zimbabwe. Another investigation is on News 24 at the moment.

I think some more focus on the latest developments in Zimbabwe would be in order, but as commentator Mark has pointed out in comments, BBC correspondents have done numerous reports at considerable risk to themselves to show what is happening in Zimbabwe. For that, I say (as before) well done.

Take a look at this new blog, The American Expatriate. The author, Scott Callahan, is what it says on the box. He says his primary aim “is to document and counter the misinformation about America that regularly flows forth from the British media.”

Of interest to Beeb-watchers is this post about how the BBC has changed its tune about the release of John Kerry’s military records.

But the one I really liked was this one, about the nomination of Christopher Cox to the Securities & Exchange Commission. I like it for its textual analysis:

Note the constant use of the passive tense. The SEC “is expected to…” Expected by who? The BBC doesn’t say. Doubts have been raised. Who has these doubts? The BBC doesn’t say. Mr. Cox is “seen as” close to the finance industry. Seen by who? The BBC doesn’t say. Even when the passive voice is abandoned, the actors are vague and unknown. Anonymous “experts” say this and “some commentators” say that. Hell, search the internet long enough and you can find “some commentator” saying virtually anything.

And I like it because it provides a comparator:

…compare this article with the Beeb’s piece on previous SEC head William Donaldson when he took over in 2003. Note how almost the entire piece is given over to Donaldson’s own words, while in this recent piece quotations from Cox are comprised of a single, 6 word sentence fragment.

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.

Last night on Newsnight, reader D. Burbage noticed that in a segment on the Euro (called “Shaking the Currency”), the presenter Paul Mason (subtitle: “Business correspondent”) was explaining some economics to us — which was presented as fact, not as opinion:

This graph shows the contribution public spending has made to GDP. While Gordon Brown has been able to use public money to help sustain economic growth, his counterparts in the Euro zone have been under pressure to cut public spending, hence the gap.

Thus creating the impression that the large amount of public spending in Britain in recent years has been a good thing for the economy, and also creating the bizarre impression that Europe doesn’t spend that much, that the supposed cutbacks in public spending are what has been harming its economy, and that it needs more public spending in order to do good by its economy. (Why not just spend everything we’ve got and make us all rich beyond our wildest dreams?)

(Video link here — Mason’s comments 27m 30secs in.)

P.S. The graph was titled “Boost to GDP from Public Spending”. I’d like to know where they get these figures from. (There’s nothing on the website about it – c’mon Beeb, it’s not the twentieth century any more, put up a few links). Any economists care to comment?

. I am happy to say that Scott Norvell’s article for the WSJ.com Opinion Journal, which mentioned this site and was discussed in this post, is now available to read online.

In other news, the BBC has completely reformed. All traces of bias have been swept away. In a spirit of sincere self-criticism for past errors the entire staff have all agreed to make over their worldly goods to Jeb Bush’s campaign fund and take up life as mendicant monks.

This may not be true. I haven’t been paying any attention to the news for the last few days so I wouldn’t know. If you have been paying attention, feel free to talk about it below.

As is typical for the Beeb, this BBC article about the Euro is notable for inventing history. Contra the report, ‘Is Europe’s passion for the euro fading?’, which states that
‘It was a idea that could barely be whispered inside Europe’s corridors of power – might the European Union lose its appetite for the euro?’,
there was never a time when Europe demonstrated a passion or appetite for the Euro, which has endured a very chequered history including a dramatic Danish ‘No’ when they were given a referendum to decide the issue. Hiding behind the idea that this is some tacit criticism of the EU’s ostrichism simply doesn’t cover the facts: Euro-enthusiasm is clearly suggested.

The BBC shows an amazing symbiosis with the EU powers in its ability to forget democratic votes which go against their chosen narrative. A few years ago they unaccountably found themselves reporting that ‘The poll result is a vote of no confidence in a euro which has declined so far that the world’s central banks felt it necessary to intervene on the markets and boost it.’

Now of course that’s been air-brushed away in time for the valiant ‘down but not out’ Euro to fight another day. Meanwhile the choice to lead with the Germans’ discontent rather than an Italian’s genuinely revolutionary (and quite popular) anti-Euro passion shows the BBC’s preference for Euro insiders rather than sceptics despite the fact that the Italian made the real splash, both in the hearts of Europeans and the pockets. The Beeb journalist dismisses this as ‘posturing’, yet I don’t think I’ve heard much about pro-Euro, or even pro-EU (amounting to the same thing) ‘posturing’ recently, despite the absurdities of Chirac and co.. Can it be that the Euro is too unpopular for supporting it to be populist? Seems like the Beeb have had enough of that nasty democratic nee-saying posturing for the time being.

Check out this juicy morsel in the mouth of the Rottweiler Puppy! Naturally the fellows at the R.P. fully deserve this link for assiduously linking this site and others supportive of Our Cause (and for invaluably antagonising the Enemy- see R.P.’s comments box). Well done chaps! Adda boy, Puppy!