Complaint against the BBC
BBC Complaints Department,
Glasgow,
BBC Information,
P.O. Box 1922,
Glasgow G2 3WT
22nd March 2006
Dear Sir/Madam,
We, the undersigned, would like to make a formal complaint about the
very
one-sided BBC coverage of the death of former Yugoslav President
Slobodan
Milosevic.
From the moment his death was announced on Saturday 11th March, the BBC seemed determined to paint a biased and factually incorrect portrayal of Milosevic. A succession of virulently anti-Milosevic 'experts' and politicians were wheeled out- (Lord Ashdown seemed to be permanently camped in the BBC studios) all parroting the same 'Butcher of Belgrade' line.
Ashdown claimed that Milosevic's death provided us with 'closure'. But
how
impartial a commentator was Ashdown? Only last autumn, when appearing
as a
witness at the Hague Tribunal, Ashdown was exposed by Milosevic to be
a
liar
(his testimony can be found at the url :
hague.bard.edu/past_video?09-2005.html).
Milosevic also played a video
tape
in court which showed Ashdown inspecting a Kosovan Liberation Army
weapons
cache in 1998 and in which he could be heard saying he would 'do his
best'
to procure the drug-running terrorist group assistance. Why did those
asking
for Ashdown's opinion on Milosevic not mention these revelations when
interviewing him?
We did not see or hear a single commentator on the BBC who put forward a different viewpoint on Milosevic. Two of our number, the journalist Neil Clark and Dr John Laughland of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group have been asked to appear on the BBC before to talk about Milosevic and the Hague Tribunal, but this time they received no invitation. There were plenty of other speakers the BBC could have asked too to get a better balance in its coverage.
For example, Professor Mark Almond, a Balkans expert from Oriel
College,
Oxford; Ian Johnson of the British branch of the International
Committee
for the Defence of Slobodan Milosevic, Misha Gavrilovic of the British
Serb
Alliance; former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who has conceded
that
the Western powers deliberately engineered the break-up of Yugoslavia
and
George Kenney, former official of the US State Department, who was due
to
testify in Milosevic's defence at The Hague. Why did the BBC not
invite any
of these people to give their verdict on Milosevic?
In the week following President Milosevic's death a number of lies were
repeated on the BBC.
The first was the statement, which appeared in News bulletins and on
the BBC
News website that 'few will mourn Milosevic'. This was clearly
nonsense-and
may we say racist- the world is not just people in the corridors of
in
the US and Europe- but a much larger place. In many countries, like
China,
where one-fifth of the world's people live, Milosevic was regarded as
a
hero
of the anti-imperialist struggle, ditto in India, Africa, South
America and
the Middle East. Why was this global opinion not reflected in your
coverage?
If the BBC had taken the trouble to read the comments posted on its
news
blog- it would have seen that there are plenty of people throughout
the
world who do not hold the standard Western governments line on
Milosevic.
We
enclose two tributes to Milosevic from your news blog, from a Kosovan
Albanian and a Sri Lankan.
(1) "I say - Rest in peace my friend, Milosovich, be happy. You
surpassed
this cruel, corrupt, hypocritic world". Sridhara Senarath, Colombo &
Sri
Lanka.
(2) "With all due respects to people in various parts of the world, the
strong condemnation of this man is solely based on what the media has
dished
out to them, how a hostile media can turn people with no connection to
be
so
damning about the only man of that region who tried to hold it
together. As
a Kosovo Albanian when he was in power we were in peace, now after
Nato we
are left with a similar fate of Iraq. Rest in peace mr President."
rexep
rexepi, Hobart.
Then there was the claim that President Milosevic was a 'dictator'.
This term was used by Kim Barnes in her video report of Milosevic's
funeral
on the BBC News website on 18th March. Milosevic won three democratic
elections in a country where over twenty-one political parties freely
operated. Even Adam Lebor, in his hostile 2002 biography of Milosevic
concedes that the use of the word 'dictator' is factually incorrect.
So why
on earth did the BBC's correspondent use it?
Barnes also claimed in her report that 50,000 people attended
Milosevic's
funeral ceremony in Belgrade. The ceremony's organisers claimed 500,000
were
present (a figure supported by Focus News Agency), whereas the Serbian
authorities themselves put the figure at 100,000. Gavin Hewitt in the
BBC1
News that evening talked of 80,000. From which source did Kim Barnes
obtain
her figure of 50,000?
Neil Clark mentioned BBC's one-sided coverage of Milosevic's death in
an
interview he gave for Sky News on 12th March. He also made a telephone
complaint on the same day to the BBC line 'Newswatch'.
His complaint was featured by Raymond Snoddy in his Newswatch
programme
of 18th March, but in a most unsatisfactory manner.
Snoddy introduced the programme by asking "How should news coverage
reflect
the death of a man who was universally reviled"! The whole point is
that
Milosevic was not 'universally reviled'. His complaint was then
glossed
over
by the BBC Obituaries correspondent and a correspondent who both said
that
'the weight of evidence' pointed to Milosevic's guilt. This again,
was
simply not true. A four year trial in which over 100 prosecution
witnesses
were called failed to produce a single scrap of compelling evidence
that
Milosevic was guilty of the crimes he was charged with.
The 'weight of evidence' supports Milosevic's innocence- not his guilt-
yet
one would never have thought so from the BBC's coverage.
On the day of Milosevic's funeral, Saturday 18th March, BBC News again
showed its bias. Reporter Gavin Hewitt, in his report shown on BBC1's
10.15pm bulletin said that Milosevic's funeral seemed 'more like a
rally
for Serb nationalism' -despite the picture of communist era Yugoslav
flags
flying in the foreground. Rather than concentrate on these visible
demonstrations of pro-Yugoslavism- the BBC cameras instead zoomed in
on
one,
isolated placard showing Milosevic with Karadzic and Mladic- which
Gavin
Hewitt commented on to back up his thesis. And when the pictures of
Milosevic's coffin being loaded into the ground were shown, Hewitt
commented
'some of the mourners were indicted war criminals'. Were they? Can he
produce evidence for this assertion?
Milosevic's burial was attended by a large crowd of mourners, many in
tears.
Yet rather than comment on the genuine sadness that those who were
present
at the burial felt- Hewitt instead preferred to make unsubstantiated
jibes
about 'war criminals'.
Overall, we believe the BBC's coverage of the death of President
Milosevic
to have been totally disgraceful. A man who enjoyed widespread support,
not
just in the former Yugoslavia, but around the world, was demonised and
treated as if he had already been found guilty of the charges the NATO
powers laid against him.
Yours faithfully,
Neil Clark, Name & Address supplied
Countersigned:
Dr John Laughland, Name & Address supplied
Zsuzsanna Clark, Name & Address supplied
Roy Clark, Name & Address supplied
Joan Clark, Name & Address supplied
Julia Hammett, Name & Address supplied
Kim Cooling, Name & Address supplied
Stuart Carr, Name & Address supplied.