The poor old BBC is coming under fire again.
This time it is from Sir Bob Geldof and the Band Aid Trust, backed by some of the world’s most respected charities including Oxfam, the Red Cross, Unicef, Christian Aid and Save the Children.
They are complaining about the "false and dangerously misleading impression" which was given in a report by World Service's Africa editor, Martin Plaut, which alleged that 95% of the aid which went to Tigray in 1985 had been diverted to buy arms by the rebel forces in that area.
The complaint is of poor reporting based on “dubious sources and rumour designed to leave an overall impression that the vast majority of resources raised by aid efforts in the mid 1980s largely went on buying arms". They say that there is not a shred of credible evidence of this whereas there is overwhelming evidence that hundreds of thousands or more lives were saved by their work.
Ironically the whole charity effort was inspired by the reporting of Michael Burke for the BBC in 1985 a irony not missed by the charities which contrast the decline in the quality of reporting in the intervening years.
The report relied largely on the testimony of a then commander in
the rebel army who was expelled from the guerrilla movement in of 1985. Sir Bob pointed out that, not only does he have an axe to grind, but he wasn’t even in Tigray at the time, having already left the rebels. He noted too that the massiveness of the story at the time meant that journalists were crawling all over the Live Aid team trying to find something wrong, but they couldn’t.
Nick Guttmann, director of emergency relief operations at Christian Aid has described the story as “palpable nonsense”, and “beyond belief”. He knows because he bought the food, bought the trucks and was there when they were driven in, offloaded, the food distributed and the empty trucks driven back.
Clearly I have no idea of the truth, but Sir Bob Geldof is a hero to me, and Band Aid is one of the events that helps me to make sense of the unpleasant world of greed and personal gain that we live in.
I trust that investigations will be held into this story and that the truth will be uncovered. I desperately hope and truly believe that the money was used as the Christian Aid director suggests.
At all costs we must know the truth, becasue already we have heard that people are, I suppose not unreasonable, dubious about giving to these charities. At a time when people are suffering in from the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, we need to encourage not discourage donations.
If the BBC has been sloppy over this, it must answer for more than sloppy journalism.
For those who like that sort of thing the BBC’s own “Now Show” has an excellent piece by Marcus Brigstocke on it (towards the end of the show) although there is much more that is excellent in this topical radio satire. (*There, I’ve said something nice about the BBC at long last.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r2fh8/The_Now_Show_Series_30_Episode_1/
This time it is from Sir Bob Geldof and the Band Aid Trust, backed by some of the world’s most respected charities including Oxfam, the Red Cross, Unicef, Christian Aid and Save the Children.
They are complaining about the "false and dangerously misleading impression" which was given in a report by World Service's Africa editor, Martin Plaut, which alleged that 95% of the aid which went to Tigray in 1985 had been diverted to buy arms by the rebel forces in that area.
The complaint is of poor reporting based on “dubious sources and rumour designed to leave an overall impression that the vast majority of resources raised by aid efforts in the mid 1980s largely went on buying arms". They say that there is not a shred of credible evidence of this whereas there is overwhelming evidence that hundreds of thousands or more lives were saved by their work.
Ironically the whole charity effort was inspired by the reporting of Michael Burke for the BBC in 1985 a irony not missed by the charities which contrast the decline in the quality of reporting in the intervening years.
The report relied largely on the testimony of a then commander in
the rebel army who was expelled from the guerrilla movement in of 1985. Sir Bob pointed out that, not only does he have an axe to grind, but he wasn’t even in Tigray at the time, having already left the rebels. He noted too that the massiveness of the story at the time meant that journalists were crawling all over the Live Aid team trying to find something wrong, but they couldn’t.Nick Guttmann, director of emergency relief operations at Christian Aid has described the story as “palpable nonsense”, and “beyond belief”. He knows because he bought the food, bought the trucks and was there when they were driven in, offloaded, the food distributed and the empty trucks driven back.
Clearly I have no idea of the truth, but Sir Bob Geldof is a hero to me, and Band Aid is one of the events that helps me to make sense of the unpleasant world of greed and personal gain that we live in.
I trust that investigations will be held into this story and that the truth will be uncovered. I desperately hope and truly believe that the money was used as the Christian Aid director suggests.
At all costs we must know the truth, becasue already we have heard that people are, I suppose not unreasonable, dubious about giving to these charities. At a time when people are suffering in from the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, we need to encourage not discourage donations.
If the BBC has been sloppy over this, it must answer for more than sloppy journalism.
For those who like that sort of thing the BBC’s own “Now Show” has an excellent piece by Marcus Brigstocke on it (towards the end of the show) although there is much more that is excellent in this topical radio satire. (*There, I’ve said something nice about the BBC at long last.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r2fh8/The_Now_Show_Series_30_Episode_1/
Pics: Organic farming in Tigray; and Bob in Ethiopia
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