Normally I content myself with the belief that even though the BBC is frequently dire, at least it is better than it's counterpart on the other side of the English Channel. With regards to the Tsunami coverage this is not necessarily the case. French TV says the Americans are doing a wonderful job in the aftermath of the Tsunami. The BBC, on the other hand, sneers at the US and says the UN has done a wonderful job (latter link via An Englishman's Castle). In reality the Americans started shipping aid and moving ships to deliver it on Dec 27 - less than 24 hours after the Tsunami wheras the UN, the EU and France did little more that send a few telegrams of condolence and worry about their nationals until sometime in the new year. On January 5th when the French Helicopter Carrier Jeanne D'Arc finally started heading towards Indonesia the BBC had the unmitigated gall to write:
...His reference to "American values" is not unusual or unexpected. It fits in with the American neo-conservative view that there is no contradiction between US foreign policy as carried out in Iraq and elsewhere and its readiness to help in disasters.
President Bush himself sprinkles his speeches with references to extending "liberty" around the world.
He regards an American "helping hand" to the needy as part of that effort. Mr Powell, though not one of the ideologues of an administration he is about to leave, shares that position. In his book, America is one of the good guys.
The issue is whether others are convinced.
The sneer quotes are just the highlight of this appalling piece which gets worse further on in ways that Tim Worstall would blow a gasket about with respect to Trade vs Aid:
One important yardstick of US foreign policy will be how it positions itself on long-term aid, including debt relief.
The relief of debt is not an uncontroversial one in international aid circles. There is a view, held for example by the Financial Times, that "debt is simply the wrong place to start."
This argument holds that debt is not the main problem and its relief, while helpful, would not in itself get more money to the affected regions.
And then the conclusion is unbelievably snide:
But beyond that, the question is who will be the most generous and if the US shows willing, then it could recoup some of the ground it has lost in Muslim public opinion.
There is however always the risk that relief efforts are interpreted as a way of buying favours. No doubt that claim will be made in this case.
And extreme anti-American opinion is unlikely to be swayed by a few helicopters.
Here's the deal you BBC moron. No one else had sent ANY helicopters other than the Australians when you wrote that piece. If the victims had had to wait for aid from the UN then they would be dead because the aid would probably be showing up about now.
I wish I could say this was just one article, but it isn't. In addition to the ridiculous conspiracy theory stuff that Biased BBC points to, there are pages and pages of stuff which uses suppressio veri and suggestio falsi to denigrate the people (US, Australia ...) who are actually on the ground providing aid. For example the timeline manages to comment that the US raised its "palty" amount but barely mentions who is actually delivering the aid on the ground except for one mention of the arrival of the Lincoln on Jan 1. Even straight forward background information pages play down who is doing what with interesting uses of the passive voice and the like such as
Initially bottled water is being supplied but engineers are also working to establish reliable clean water sources in the worst hit areas.
But getting aid to the worst hit areas is proving difficult. Many roads and airstrips have been damaged, flooded or blocked by debris. ... Even when planes have room to land, local air traffic control systems can be in disarray. Because of their versatility, helicopters are a vital part of the relief effort.
Questions that rather spring to mind are: whose engineers? who is running the ATC? and whose helicopters? Needless to say there doesn't seem to be an answer except grudging secondary paragraphs in articles about how the Indonesian government does or does not want foreign troops to leave and even then there has to be the obligatory dig about how the troops are overcomitted in Iraq and Afghanistan:
The US has sent more than 15,000 military personnel to the region, at a time when commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan are already placing a heavy burden on the country's armed forces.
And nowhere does the BBC note the (lack of) troop numbers by the EU, Britan, France etc. although it does finally admit that the US is providing a service that no one else can
The BBC's Tim Johnston in Jakarta says a US aircraft carrier off the coast of Sumatra island is providing much-needed helicopters to lift supplies into, and injured victims out of, parts of the disaster zone that are beyond the reach of more conventional transport.
For people in Britain who don't read the Torygraph or blogs such as the Diplomad or EU Referendum but do trust the BBC, the entire effort looks like one where the UN has done wonderful things assisted by hard working members of the EU and various charities and grudgingly assisted by the US apparently because the rest of the world shamed it in to doing so. This is the sort of misrepresentation of the truth that is worthy of Orwell's 1984 and something that all Britons should be ashamed to have anything to do with.