BBC is too conservative

BBC is too conservative. That's right. While I enjoy their commercially uninterrupted news broadcast way more than that of CNN and MSNBC, I can't help but notice their conservative slant.

Yesterday, I watched a report on the first outbreak of Mad Cow Disease in America. Instead of talking about the human consequences, they spent 9 out of 10 minutes of the report on the business impact. It turns out that the beef industry is worth ~$200 billion a year. It turns out that so much of it (10% of so - no big deal actually) is exported to Asian countries, who have placed a ban on the American beef immediately. Not only that, the Japan gets X pounds of beef, Korea gets Y, blah blah blah. Also they import beaf from Australia, New Zealand. Also this and that country exports blah blah blah.

Let's now talk about how much money the beef industry lost in the UK. Let's now have an interview with a couple of ordinary Americans and ask them whether they'll be eating beef this Christmas. Of course they will. Things are under control, and the average consumer is not worried, it's only the silly Asians that are being immature by banning beef. Besides we don't want to get sued by the beef industry for the informative report do we? Now let's talk about the economic impact this could have on America. Uhuh, very serious consequences, even from one case. So many billions of dollars could be lost (poor beef producers). So much cattle could be slaughtered. Let's talk about McDonalds and Wendy's denying the reports, and their stocks going down. Blah, blah, blah, what a tragedy, please, cut the fucking shit!

OK, BBC, thanks for the informative numbers and the pleasure of having a continuous 10-minute report without commercials. But how about we talk about the human consequences a little more than in a brief mention? How many people have died from the Mad Cow Disease in Britain before the first case was detected? How many after that? Also, as much as my heart bleeds for the profits of the beef industry, I would like to know about the causes. Let's talk about the inhumane conditions in which the animals are kept. How about digging into the stories about the fact that feeding animal remains to the stock is a common practice, even though it is illegal. How about looking at the cows as more than just a commodity for a split second!

The amazing thing is that during the whole report, BBC failed to mention (even though you can implicitly calculate it from the numbers) that American beef has been banned from the European Union for years! This is because of the concern over hormones used in the beef, as well as other health issues. There was a previous story (around 1998-1999), when the WTO ruled the ban on beef illegal, despite the health concerns. After that, the European Union, understandably, still refused to allow imports of American beef. That story did get covered by the BBC that year, but somehow this highly relevant information didn't surface for the above mentioned report.

BBC gets their funding from taxes on British TV sets. I think this is a reasonable idea. However the above mentioned report has the unfortunate (and all too familiar) flavor of American news reporting on commercial channels. It saddens me that in many cases you can't even trust BBC anymore. I am basing it on more than just this report, but I don't have time to go into others. See it for yourself at http://news.bbc.co.uk/