British Anti-Americanism?
Tony Blair has denounced the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina as 'full of hatred of America' and 'gloating' at the country's plight, it was reported yesterday.
Well, this is at least according to Mr Murdoch, the all powerful media mogul, who owns the Sun, the Times and News of the World newspapers and Sky Television and is a long-time critic of the BBC, as he recounted his feelings in a private conversation earlier this week in New York.
According to The Independent, this is revealing of :two transatlantic special relationships that have dominated Tony Blair's 11-year leadership of the Labour Party. One is with the US government; the other is with the naturalised US citizen Rupert Murdoch.
According to the BBC,
In any case if you want to know what is behind this, (and trust, there is much more to it ) read the rest of the article in The Independent, here. It's quite enlightening.
[Murdoch] said people around the world were jealous of the US, and anti-Americanism was common throughout Europe.As you can imagine there is a lot behind this attack against the BBC. The fact that this piece of info comes from Mr Murdoch is so telling that I wonder why anybody would take him seriously.
(.../...)the BBC's world editor Jonathan Baker defended its coverage to Newswatch after similar criticisms from some BBC News viewers and users.He said most of its output had been "absolutely down-the-line straightforward reportage", but added the president had made himself the "figurehead" of the disaster response. "If things are not going well, he is there to be criticised, and if they were going much better he would expect to take the credit," he said.
In any case if you want to know what is behind this, (and trust, there is much more to it ) read the rest of the article in The Independent, here. It's quite enlightening.
posted by Joker & Thief @ 1:19 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
And I think it is great that the BBC people can criticize the US government and be compassionate towards the American people. I think it actually reflects how most Europeans view the U.S. I believe some people confuse Bush-bashing with anti-americanism.
What you said about the "British reports peppering their comments with superlatives" is interesting because (and this shows how subjective it gets), I tend to find BBC news coverage much less dramatic than US news coverage in general. By just comparing BBC with CNN, or NBC on July 7 in their coerage of the terrorist attack in London, I must say that I was quite impressed with the (cool) professional tone of the BBC journalists (How British!). CNN and NBC made it much more dramatic as if the whole world was coming to an end. I'm not even comparing with FoxNews!
Anyway - this is all very subjective indeed but thanks for your comment!
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