I don’t know the guy above who does a fact-check of the BBC’s latest attack on the perfidious British empire. A documentary on the transatlantic slave trade. I do know the scholarship of Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, the Kenyan-Indian-Brit historian, who also brilliantly covers these issues. From a historically factual base rather than to a preferred narrative.
From the Show Notes of the above video:
The BBC have released there latest documentary, Empire with David Olusoga. Like many similar documentaries the BBC view Britain's past in an overwhelmingly negative light, treating the past as one long list of wrong doings by Britain. This comes at a time of intense scrutiny, as the BBC's bias has been the subject of a recent memo accusing it of not being impartial in the coverage of Donald Trump, the war in Gaza and their treatment of British history
Look, it’s not “Noooo mea culpa”. It’s “yes, Culpa, we Brits”, but also: everyone culpa. Including Africa and the vast, expansionist Islamic Empire. Where, by the way, slavery remains endemic to this day….
But also: “we Brits stopped the transatlantic slave trade”. And used blood and toil to stop it everywhere. And that’s simply not covered. Relevant, surely?! As the guy I don’t know, above, points out: lying by omission. A cunning BBC trick. And the BBC lying by commission as in: treating the violently imperialist slave-trading Mughal empire in India as a form or lovely, benign governance, with massive wealth, which bedazzled the colonial Brits. Right.
ADDED: Brendan O’Neill talks to Robin Aitken who worked at the BBC for decades, and now talks as an insider about its bias. “BBC bias: it’s worse than you think”. Robin traces the background to how the BBC bias developed and how difficult if not impossible it would be to change it back to a genuinely impartial source. He speaks beautifully. So mellifluous.
