The first one included an interview with an African world bank official (whose name escapes me) who was asked near the end whether Wolfowitz knew anything about Africa to which the World Bank chap answered "no, but he has stated he intends to travel to Africa ASAP after his". I should note that the official did a decent job in non-judgemental statements through out, but the BBC interviewer was having none of it and closed with the that question without allowing the World Bank guy to say (as I think he was intending to do) that Wolfowitz does have extensive experience in the Asian third as the BBC notes on its website:
He became assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in 1983.
Three years later he was appointed US ambassador to Indonesia - the country with the fourth largest population in the world and the largest Muslim population.
The World Service completely failed to mention any of this, or the fact that his appointment was unanimously approved by all the shareholders and tried to make it seem that the World Bank should have allowed its recipient nations a major say in its governance despite the fact the bank is structured as a corporation with shareholders and the primary shareholders are the US and the rest of the developed world.
The coverage of Amnesty's report on executions was, if anything, worse. Even the web page is bad mentioning the US's execution levels continuously and only in passing noting the order of magnitude higher levels in China. But the news segment concentrated exclusively on the US with an interview of some US anti-death penalty woman. There was no mention of any other country by name and no mention of the fact that, as the Amnesty report states:
"The figures released today are sadly only the tip of the iceberg. The true picture is hard to uncover as many countries continue to execute people secretly -- contravening United Nations standards calling for disclosure of information on capital punishment," said Amnesty International.
Perhaps most dinengenuously the BBC world service report mentioned the headline figure of nearly 4000 people killed (3797) without stating that as Amnesty does that:
China executed at least 3,400 people, but sources inside the country have estimated the number to be near 10,000.
In other words the headline figure was caused by one country alone which executed roughly 90% of the official count and which may in fact have executed three times as many people as it admitted to. The USA's 59 is pretty small (1.55%) by comparison so concentrating on it looks like bias.
The fact that these two segemnts ran back to back (at about 4:30am GMT if you must know) makes the bias even easier to diagnose.