Join the club, John, I've been listening to the BBC for twelve years on WBUR, since Gulf War I. They used to be good, but their slant on this war is becoming nearly as obvious as the Arab press.
For instance, a few days ago I heard a BBC announcer interviewing a Human Rights Watch worker on the civilian casualties caused by US troops - or potentially about to be caused. I heard the HRW guy say, in answer to the obvious but unaired question, "what if the US troops turn out not to care about civilian casualties?", "well if the US troops do not care about civilian casualties, we are all in big trouble."
Now, we have just seen two major US campaigns, in Afghanistan and Iraq. You would think that these campaigns would furnish some evidence regarding the extent to which the US troops do or do not care about causing civilian casualties. You might think an objective observer, looking at those campaigns, would say something like, "the US does try to avoid civilian casualties as long as it doesn't cost them extra casualties or military setbacks. In short, they care a good deal but not enough to lose."
So what did the BBC report say about the evidence of these two campaigns? Nothing. Not a word. The entire report was devoted to actual civilian casualties, taken out of their context (no differentiating, for example, between anti-aircraft guns in schoolyards and stray bombs), and potential horrors. The mass of existing evidence was ignored.
This is reporting with a script, nearly as obvious as Al Jazeera. |
