BBC lies exposed

media house in reporting accurately and objectively in the world, but recent events which are unfolding reveal otherwise. Zimbabwe has been on the forefront questioning the objectivity of the BBC as the country has been at the receiving end from this British-government-owned broadcasting organisation.
The country has been calling for thorough analysis of some of their news articles which portrayed the country in a negative way. Now that the BBC has tarnished the image of their countryman by reporting falsehoods about him, the authorities at the widely followed media house are beginning to carry out investigations to find out where they went wrong. It is interesting to note that BBC is threatening to take disciplinary action against anyone who wrote that article which is at the centre of the crisis as if it is the first time to report falsehood.
Initially, the British government was not perturbed by the BBC when it carried out unsubstantiated reports on various countries, resulting in quite a number of countries ending up falling victim to this unchecked reporting system. The main objective of the broadcaster was not to check the implications of its reporting system but it was only interested in conveying what it wanted its target audience to hear.
Now that the world’s largest broadcasting organisation has ruffled the feathers of its countryman Alistair McAlpine, a Conservative politician, the BBC is now seeking to hire an outsider to work as its new director-general in a move to overhaul an unyieldingly management culture. The BBC has not been checking news articles on other important people in the world to find out whether what they were saying about them was true but were bent on targeting them for character assassinations for no apparent reasons.
Unashamedly, the BBC news on August 8, 2011 claimed in its Panorama program that there were torture camps run by the Zimbabwean military personnel in Chiadzwa area in Manicaland. They went on to claim that former military officials and victims of torture were witnesses to such claims. The BBC gave a picture of a situation where people were tortured for no apparent reason. The reason behind such unsubstantiated reports was to make sure that Zimbabwean diamonds were banned from international market on the basis that they were blood and conflict diamonds.
Such reports were widely broadcast by BBC with no facts to substantiate such claims. The BBC wanted to portray Zimbabwe as a country abusing human rights.
As such the diamonds in Chiadzwa were put on international scrutiny with Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (SPCS) sending its monitors to come and inspect the diamond mining companies’ compliance with international standards on the mining procedures.
In February 2004, Hilary Anderson, the BBC reporter claimed, in one of the Panorama programs, that Zimbabwe was having security torture camps run by the Border Gezi youths graduates. She went on to show the world a video of the alleged camps found in Zimbabwe but surprisingly the background on that video clip revealed the Drakensberg Mountains found in South Africa. Such shenanigans by Anderson were meant to confuse the people. However, the result showed that the video was just a fallacy from her imaginations of the said security camps.
Now that the BBC news crew is under investigation over false reporting system, it gives credence to what has been said by the Zimbabwean authorities that the BBC is not telling the truth but only bent on causing confusion in developing countries.
This BBC is known for feeding its audience with what they want them to hear. In the turn of the twenty-first century, Saddam Hussein, the then President of Iraq, became the victim of the BBC lies.
With its failure to investigate and report objectively, the BBC alleged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It went to town with the report without checking facts resulting in America — in collaboration with Britain — militarily invading Iraq and overthrowing the government of Hussein.
The BBC, which is publicly funded under the Royal Charter with nearly twenty-three thousand people under its employment and a global audience of about two hundred and thirty nine million, should appreciate that one mistake broadcast globally is deadly to its audience. The organisation should take necessary steps to make sure that people are not misled with what it churns out.
This broadcaster, with assistance from the CNN, has not been reporting positive things about the African continent and other developing countries and they are not challenged because the victims have no economic muscles to do that. They are good at character assassinations and that is their main objective. In Zimbabwe, the former USA ambassador to the country, Charles Ray, summed it up when he addressed some youths in Bulawayo during his last days in the country. He said, I quote, “Reflecting on my nearly three years in Zimbabwe, l now remain cautiously optimistic. The long future of this country is bright. Before l came here, the media made me believe that the country was not habitable, but my three-year stay here proved otherwise”.
Such is how the western media led by the BBC and the CNN is like. They are good at destroying other countries` investment opportunities through negative publicity. It should be realised that negative media reports on countries scare away investors.
Mukachana Hanyani is a Harare-based social and political commentator.