From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Sat May 10 2003 - 09:15:30 MDT
Here's an article of possible interest:
<<Many Americans Follow War on BBC
LONDON - Frustrated by the failure of U.S.-based broadcast networks to
provide a realistic account of the political machinations that led to
the Iraq war and the war itself, millions of Americans tuned in British
news reports - which were picked up on public broadcasting and community
radio and television stations.
Already high American audience figures for BBC World News bulletins
spiked by 28 percent in the first weeks of the war, and BBC officials
delighted in e-mails like the one from a New York viewer who wrote, "The
BBC seems to be the only decent source of news on this conflict.
American networks are appalling."
[...]
So embarrassing was the U.S. coverage of the war - and so conscious was
the rest of the world of collapse of basic journalistic standards - that
BBC director general Greg Dyke found it necessary to promise that, "In
the area of impartiality, as in many other areas, we must ensure that we
don't become Americanized."
Dyke, who is generally seen as an ally of Blair, admitted that he was
"shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast
news media was during the war." He added that, while in the U.S., he was
"amazed by how many people just came up to me and said they were
following the war on the BBC because they no longer trusted the American
electronic news media." >>
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0509-01.htm
-Mike
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