A brickbat and a bouquet

Yalda Hakim

Following up on some of your earlier comments...

It really is the case - as Alan noted at B-BBC - that the BBC has been unusually reluctant to report the latest political pronouncements of Bill Gates. Usually, they have been very supportive of Bill Gates, favourably reporting his campaigns, asking him to give their Richard Dimbleby Lecture, letting his wife guest-edit Today, etc. But his criticisms (in the German media) this week of Angela Merkel's open door policy and his calls for the EU to make it much harder for migrants to come into Europe haven't been taken up by the BBC at all. ("Europe must make it more difficult for Africans to reach the Continent via the current transit route", he's said - among other things). 

I've tried searching for any mentions of his (elsewhere) much-reported remarks but I can't find any on the BBC. I've found praise for his philanthropic efforts in Africa this week, but nothing on this.

LBC has discussed them. Talk Radio has discussed them. The BBC hasn't.

The Times, the Mail, the Sun and the Express have reported them. The BBC hasn't. 

This shows the BBC's left-liberal news priorities in action (or, in this case, not very much in action).

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That said, as also noted in earlier comments, Newsnight (by coincidence?) did actually produce a most un-BBC report on the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean this week on this very subject.

Reporter Yalda Hakim made it clear that the large majority of so-called refugees are actually economic migrants, that NGOs may have a case to answer over the charge of taxiing over waves of such migrants from Libya, and that ordinary Italians are fed up with it all. Even the right-wing activists taking action to stop it weren't demonised (much). 

It was report unlike any other report I've seen on the BBC. It made it clear that there is a serious problem about which something must be done and that the people the BBC usually supports - NGOs, the EU, etc - may be a major part of the problem. 

All credit to Yalda and to Newsnight for broadcasting that.

No credit though to the rest of the BBC monolith for ignoring Bill Gates's remarks on mass immigration.