BBC in the news, Tuesday

Was the BBC report racist? Without seeing it for myself, it's impossible to say. It must come as a shock for the leftist Eurosocialist sympathetic BBC management and staff to be accused of racism by the ANC, far more surprising than to be accused of anti Americanism, anti Israelism, and anti Blairism. If BBC presented its story with its usual lack of historical background, lack of perspective, lack of context, and superficiality on a subject which is extremely sensitive to a government and people grappling with a difficut and touchy problem, it may well have come off that way. BBC is the proverbial bull in the china shop. It feels that if it offends everyone, it must always be right. It never for one momment considers that it is invariably wrong, not in its details but in its substance. It selectively uses carefully limited strokes to paint a wrong picture. BBC's reports are often just like its "Picture of the Day" showing just enough to suggest the larger picture but completely misleading to those who already know what it really looks like. Perhaps BBC's most serious defect is not political bias or racism but arrogance. Having read John Simpson's pieces and heard his reports on many occasions, ANC's opinion comes as no surprise to me, in substance it's exactly the same as my own.