Yearning for the good ol days at the Beeb
I hark back to the good old days of the empire when the BBC was as steadfast and "reliable" as Greenwich meantime and when David Frost, a university contemporary of mine, became the pivot of the broadcasting station. I think the BBC remains incomparable w
But even more seriously, I am concerned with its perception of the world and hence its international reportage, which is geared towards an outdated imperial or American world view.
Frost went on to build up Al Jazeera, which became world renown and, during the red-shirt uprising and the burning of central Bangkok, just about the only reliable TV channel reporting on the event. Sadly though, Al Jazeera has now succumbed to the so-called international community, that is, the Euro-US centric viewpoint, in its coverage on its own neighbour Syria.
Someone wrote in The Nation’s Letters column to chastise me for being masochistic, saying that instead of moaning I should watch other channels than the BBC or CNN. Well, there is RT, which gives the opposite but most compelling logic in its presentation of world affairs, although I feel that they can do well without replicating that hard-hitting BBC “HardTalker”.
As for the English NHK, it is the opposite – it is too Japanese, too polite. One then entertains hope for the English CCTV. But then it has a long way to go before it can come out, if ever, of its orientalism.
Sumet Jumsai
Bangkok
