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The racist subtext of the evacuation story
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, 19 July 2006
Israel has opened "windows" for the foreign powers to evacuate their terrified nationals from Lebanon. Obligingly, the foreign media have turned these "windows" into an opportunity to avert their gaze further from the death and destruction in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.
On BBC World, for example, we have been following the progress of one 12-year-old British boy fleeing Beirut. When he observed that he was worried for the Lebanese family members he was leaving behind, reporter Clive Myrie noted his was a "very mature attitude".
If only the BBC was demonstrating such maturity.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is BBC World, not its domestic news service. You would hardly know it watching the coverage of the past couple of days.
On Tuesday, when at least 35 Lebanese were killed -- possibly many more as no one seems to know who is lying under the rubble or has been incinerated in their fleeing cars -- we had the BBC's Ben Brown in Beirut giving a blow-by-blow account of every facet of the evacuation of foreign nationals in general and British nationals in particular.
If anyone doubted the racism of our Western media, here it was proudly on display. The BBC apparently considers their Beirut reporter's first duty to find out what meals HMS Gloucester's chef will be preparing for the evacuees. Lebanese and Palestinian civilians die unnoticed by the Western media (though not by the Arab channels) while we learn of onboard sleeping arrangements on the ship bound for Cyprus.
More
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5106.shtml
On BBC World, for example, we have been following the progress of one 12-year-old British boy fleeing Beirut. When he observed that he was worried for the Lebanese family members he was leaving behind, reporter Clive Myrie noted his was a "very mature attitude".
If only the BBC was demonstrating such maturity.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is BBC World, not its domestic news service. You would hardly know it watching the coverage of the past couple of days.
On Tuesday, when at least 35 Lebanese were killed -- possibly many more as no one seems to know who is lying under the rubble or has been incinerated in their fleeing cars -- we had the BBC's Ben Brown in Beirut giving a blow-by-blow account of every facet of the evacuation of foreign nationals in general and British nationals in particular.
If anyone doubted the racism of our Western media, here it was proudly on display. The BBC apparently considers their Beirut reporter's first duty to find out what meals HMS Gloucester's chef will be preparing for the evacuees. Lebanese and Palestinian civilians die unnoticed by the Western media (though not by the Arab channels) while we learn of onboard sleeping arrangements on the ship bound for Cyprus.
More
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5106.shtml
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