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Showing results for tags 'anti-americanism'.
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I did some quick searches on the BBC and CBC's 'Impartial' [suppressing laughter] 'news' sites. The BBC is applying for a domestic US broadcasting license and a bigger share of the US news market. Frightening. Why Bush would allow this, is beyond my ken. On the BBC site I found: 1) BBC's reporting of U.S. President George Bush's pledge of $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa makes a good case study. Approximating as it does to four times the entire GDP of Zambia, one might expect that such a gigantic aid package would be reported positively. However, a search of the BBC's Web site reveals an altogether different picture. >Of the articles that relate to the AIDS initiative, one reports President Bush's summer tour of five African countries, entitled: "Is the US Africa's friend or foe?" Within the piece its author remarks: "others saw ulterior motives behind Mr. Bush's visit. Some of the AIDS cash is dependent on deals with U.S. pharmaceutical companies, while others saw America's thirst for oil as the key motivation. Meanwhile the U.S. has refused to commit help to Liberia during [the] recent heavy conflict." >This is one way that the BBC achieves "impartiality" -- countering positive, real news about the U.S. with hostile "quotes" ascribed to anonymous "sources" or rent-a-rant pressure groups. The CBC adds 'The president's interest in the continent is a big change from his attitude during the 2000 presidential campaign, in which he called the continent a country and said the U.S. had no "national strategic interests" there.' Again not adding that Canada does nothing on AIDS relief and has no pharma industry to produce an antidote to the disease. They side swipe Bush's package with belittling comments. 2) When the BBC reported how U.S. troops had unearthed in early May a mass grave containing the bodies of 15,000 Iraqi men, women and children murdered by Sadam Hussein's regime, the BBC's radio newscaster announced the discovery thus: "Human-rights groups have today criticized the U.S. military for failing to protect the site of a mass grave in Iraq." In other words, the BBC reported the inconsequential (invented?) anti-U.S. reaction as the main issue rather than the far more newsworthy event vindicating U.S. policy from which that reaction emanated. The CBC adds: 'Some people who lost relatives told a CBC news crew that the world should be ashamed of itself for not doing anything to help protect them from a brutal dictatorship until now.' Again the CBC does not state that the war was moral, justified or a force for good, nor does it add details on the US efforts to secure the mass grave sites or the lack of Canadian efforts in anything to do with Iraq qua grave sites, security or military aid. It sticks on its front page to: There isn't a situation, event or initiative extolling conservative principles or institutions which the BBC or CBC does not actively seek to diminish, distort or alter completely through the inclusion of extraneous matter. Impartial ? Surely you jest.
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