Media Backspin

The BBC Goes Native: Your Tax Money at Work

Trevor Asserson's newest report (pdf format) is an analysis of BBC Arabic's radio programming. The report points out various examples of Israel's demonization, dangerous and absurd comments, plus hostility to the USA and generally providing a respectable platform for terror organizations.

The BBC Arabic radio appears to be out of control . . . .

The relative lack of Arabic speakers amongst those who pay for the BBC means that the BBC does not benefit from the criticisms of the general listening public as it does for its English speaking programmes. The corrective influence which those complaints normally provide is necessarily absent.

Having rejected the Independent Panel's reccomendation to appoint a "guiding hand" to monitor its own Middle East output, the BBC has no systems in place to know what its own journalists think. We are not aware of any systematic method it has for monitoring programme content. It seems that the BBC has less control of its Arabic programmes than of any others, because it appears that relatively few of its senior staff speak Arabic.

See his other reports at BBCWatch. And consider this comforting thought: the BBC recently launched an Arabic TV channel.

Sounds similar in some ways to last year's problems at the US-funded Arabic channel Al-Hurra TV. Al-Hurra's former director was recognized as 2007's Worst News Director.

Posted at 04:36 PM