BBC: DEMAND A BROADER VIEW

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yeah right!

i've seen the same program discussed above and i did detect the same bias the SPUC people uncovered. yep, the BCC is full of it and the stench is so obvious.

i also saw a show profiling cardinal ratzinger at bbcworld. for me, it was fairly balanced, many of the people interviewed for the program talked about the man, his genuine humility, his academic prowess, and his fidelity and defense of the teachings of the Church. for me, these are all traits of a good and formidable defender of the faith, a job he has controversially held, to good effect i think. the BBC's conclusion: he is of disservice to his Church.

huh? i wondered how the BBC formed this conclusion. did i snooze off during the program and miss something? was it the dissenting view of hans kung, which to my amusement was delivered in german without any translation or subtitles? i guess that incredible logic was beyond the capacity of my dull mind.

i find the bbc's news coverages to be rather shallow, blind to nuances inherent in every news item, and their reports usually lean towards certain agenda. sometimes they do get things right, especially when they get real experts to analyze the news and provide the caveats and nuances of the the item.

but the analysis sometimes takes place in a live interview, in fact not much is gathered from interviews from the experts because of the time constraints typical of a live news presentation. bbc viewers would be lucky if the get to hear the right stuff from an interviewee who expounds the matter immediately and accurately. what is shown repeatedly is the shallow, dumb and ignorant views their reporters make, and the interviews with the experts, if they get the right ones, tend to be shorter versions of the original when they replayed.

one of the most representative item where my point could be validated is with the "Oakwood Incident" back in july 2003. the bbc reported the obvious facts: that rebellious soldiers took over a hotel in makati, that the soldiers were complaining of "corruption" in government as their motivation for staging the incident, and that there were foreigners and civilians trapped in the hotel.

oddly enough, when they reported the release of the civilians, they failed to mention the incredibly civil and courteous conduct of the mutinous soldiers, which to many of us, is hardly typical of terrorists or rebels. but the bbc thought this was a minor point that could be easily ignored so they let the rest of the world watching their broadcast think we're another barbarous country, when in fact that strangest conduct of a mutiny was taking place, highly unusually and certainly worth highlighting.

another incident i wanna take up is the "May 1 Siege of Malacanang." the bbc reported that a policeman was lynched and killed, and the bbc showed video footage of this. it turned out later that the same policeman survived and he related that in fact there were figures in the mob that didn't tolerate the violence of their comrades. this was widely reported in the local media, just hours after the incident. but the bbc kept running the same totally wrong report repeatedly, especially in their weekly summary of world news. were they too lazy to at least fix this inaccuracy or did they think that nobody would care or notice the serious inaccuracy of their report? in my mind, the bbc murdered the poor guy whenever they would run that footage with the reporter saying he was killed.

i know that such things are not inherent in bbc alone. many other media outfits are guilty of such shortcomings. but the bbc misrepresents itself when it claims that it provides its viewers a "broader view" by asking it viewers the slogan "demand a broader view." or did i misundertand their statement? perhaps they are indeed keenly aware of their narrow and unbalanced view of the news that they want its viewers to complain and demand a broader view. perhaps we ought to take their appeal literally and DEMAND A BROADER VIEW.