[Media-watch] Letter to the BBC

[Mark and Andrea]

Dear Media-Watchers
I think it's important that we share at least the detail of our
correspondence with the likes of the BBC. I believe that the media is
ultimately sensitive to public opinion, especially if enough people write;
and encouraging - even co-ordinating - such action surely must be one of the
purposes of Media-Watch.

The BBC has had a hard time recently off the right wing press for being too
liberal, anti-American and ant-war (despite the glaring evidence to the
contrary). Such discourses of derision are effective in molding public
opinion and in the long term potentially threaten our democratic freedoms.
Just look at the USA in the run up to and aftermath of Iraq - I think I read
in one of the media sources highlighted here that for some time the US
ceased to be democratic and became a propaganda state at this time - and I
seem to remember that this was said by no other than Dan Rather, that
bastion of the mainstream media (I may be wrong on this).

I came across the following quote on a website -
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/USA.asp


  'George Seldes, a reporter for over seventy years, points out that there
are three sacred cows still with us today: religion, patriotism, and the
media itself... Patriotism, defined as taking pride in one's country, allies
the masses of this ongoing control. The media refuses to discuss its
consistent failure to inform the masses of this ongoing control. It has been
in place for so long that few are aware of how it came about or that it is
even still there. But many people are intelligent, moral, and idealistic; if
the media would discuss the true history of these three sacred cows, that
control would quickly disappear.'

  --  J.W. Smith, The World's Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic
Democracy, 1994), p. 11.



Much of the mainstream media are clearly unwilling to do this. The New
Statesman reported last week that the activist group MoveOn had been denied
advertising space by CBS for a 30 second piece attacking the Bush
administration - another warning perhaps of the need to be vigilant and
active in challenging media distortion, omission and censorship, even where
it is unwitting, as  I think was the case with the BBC report yesterday on
the topic of the illegal immigrant murderer/rapist. I have written to
Richard Sambrook about this - my letter is as follows:


Dear Richard

I have not written to you for some time, as I appreciate the difficulties
you have faced post-Hutton. However, I must express my reservations about
the reporting of the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl on last night's
10pm bulletin.

The immigration status of the murderer was mentioned several times. he may
have been an illegal immigrant, but I wonder how relevant this was to the
specific crime, which could easily have been committed by a British
national. The prominence given to this issue, especially coming as it did
after the reporting of the Home Office/Romania affair, can only serve to
feed the increasing paranoia and moral panic on the issues of immigration
and asylum, whipped up as they are by the tabloid press. Surely the BBC has
a moral duty to exercise care in its reporting, so as not to contribute to
this.

As ever I would welcome your comments.

Mark Priestley


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