Author: R J Adams

From: R J Adams – Sparrow Chat

To: Matt Marshall, Communications Director, BBC America.

Sir

Re: BBC NEWS AMERICA

As an ex-pat living six years in the States, it didn’t take long to realise the US television news media drew a fine line between news and indoctrination. For most of those six years, my lifeline was the thirty minutes of BBC World News broadcast by our local PBS station at 5.00am and 5.00pm each weekday.

That lifeline shortened considerably in October 2007, when the evening broadcast was replaced by BBC News America, anchored by Matt Frei.

I have always considered Frei as one of the great news reporters of the BBC; his reports from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina were exacting, and pulled no punches when relating to the inadequacies of the US government response. Since taking on the frontman role of BBC America News, however, my opinion of him has drastically declined. He now appears to have metamorphosed into just another Washington lackey.

The program itself has degenerated over the months into a mirror of US establishment media news, such as NBC, CBS, and ABC, with much emphasis on matters unrelated to serious issues in the world today. As an example, yesterday’s (Thursday 10th July 2008) program broadcast twelve minutes of newsworthy material, although the headline piece on Iran’s missile tests was so one-sided, due to Frei’s pro-American stance, that Jon Leyne in Iran had to defend the Iranian viewpoint against Frei’s attacks. Much of the remaining programme time was wasted by what was nothing short of an infomercial for the new Apple iPhone, closely followed by a long and tedious promotion for a new film about the equally tedious and long dead, Hunter S Thompson.

The one major item of news yesterday, totally omitted by the BBC and all US news channels, concerned the use of US bases in Iraq by Israeli warplanes which, according to Iraqi and Pakistani news sources, were regularly flying within Iraqi airspace:

REF: Link included

Perhaps I might have an adequate explanation as to why Steve Jobs and Hunter Thompson were considered more important issues than this, and why at no time it was deemed worthy of broadcasting to the American people?

Regards

R J Adams
Illinois, USA

http://SparrowChat.com
[email protected]

When pushed into a corner, corporations have a habit of ignoring these type of requests. If any answer is forthcoming, it will be posted here.

Of course, the reason this news wasn’t broadcast within the US or UK isn’t difficult to fathom. Twenty-four hours later, the information is common knowledge, thanks to the internet, so it will be interesting to note if the establishment media make any mention.

Filed under: Military objectives

“George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan……” reports the British Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Continuing:

“The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world’s richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.”

Perhaps it’s time for a new international law – that all clowns should be restricted to circuses.

^{Read more at “Asshole-in-Chief” over at TOB’s place}

Filed under: Offensiveness personified

Both the US and UK media are making much of Iran’s recent missile tests, with much huffing and puffing from politicians, adroit whipping up of fervor from news anchors, and mutterings of ‘provocation‘, ‘retaliation‘, ‘determination‘, and many other words ending in ‘ation‘, all uttered with grim indign-ation.

Sadly, what’s missing from all this hot air is even a modicum of truth.

Iran is provoking neither the West, nor Israel, with its military displays. Iran is hardly the aggressor. It is the West and Israel who are saber-rattling once again in the region.

Only a few weeks ago, Israel undertook war games widely viewed as rehearsals for an assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Pressure by the US on Eastern Europe to accept missile defense systems on their territory, and the lengths to which Bush and his minions are pursuing that aim, invoking the threat of another cold war with Russia in order to achieve it, are further proof of the militaristic intent of the West to encircle Iran and Syria with armor.

Iran is behaving like any schoolboy under threat from a load of bullying yobs; attempting to appear stronger than it really is, with a show of military might it hopes will cause the bullies to reconsider.

Anyone who doubts the militaristic intent of countries like the US and Israel towards Iran, a nation that stands as the last real barrier to US domination of the region, should ask themselves for what other purpose Israeli warplanes would be using US bases in Iraq, and flying regularly through Iraqi airspace.^[1]

It’s strange how Western media outlets have totally failed to broadcast that item of interest to the world.

All-in-all, I think, a definite case of…… procrastin-ation?

^{[1] “Israeli jets using Iraq’s airspace” Pakistan Daily, July 10th 2008}

Filed under: Military objectives