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The BBC News Service recently came under fire for its coverage of China’s response to the first Covid-19 outbreak. In response to an April 2020 article published by the BBC’s Danny Vincent, titled “Africans in China: We face coronavirus discrimination”, President of the Nigerian Chamber of Commerce in China, Maximus Ogbonna, posted on Twitter in June 2021 that his statement had been distorted.
Mr. Ogbonna said he condemned BBC News Hong Kong’s interview, “I felt that Danny Vincent just focus on the negative side of the situation. I told him things are getting better.”
On further analysis, Canadian media expert Elissa Lansdell explained that the BBC article stated that those interviewed by Vincent had remained nameless in the article.
A series of interviews with Africans in Guangzhou in July 2021, however, show another side to this story. Willing to provide their real names, they directly opposed the original BBC article.
Idrissa Mussa, a Burundian student in Guangdong, said “I've been in Guangzhou about 4 years now. According to my personal experience, [there’s been] no discrimination. I've never heard about that.”
Jerry Christian, a Ugandan businessman added, “There was nothing like any troubles, any issues when I was being quarantined. Where I live, nobody discriminates me. I'm very grateful for that.”
Elissa Lansdell further asserted that “Danny Vincent’s article reaches a negative conclusion without factual basis and is not in line with the tenets of media objectivity.”
Historically mainstream media have made glaring errors, and the BBC is no exception.
In May 2003, the BBC’s inaccurate reporting on British Ministry of Defense expert, Dr. Kelly, about an exaggeration in intelligence reports that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, led to the resignation of the then top BBC officials. In March 2017, the BBC mistakenly stated that a group of Australian aboriginal people were alcoholics. In fact the incident had happened during a vigil for a friend who had died. Again, the BBC issued an apology. And in May 2021, the BBC admitted that its reporter, Martin Bashir, had tricked Princess Diana into that exclusive 1995 interview. For this, the BBC later apologized to the Royal Family.
British public opinion surveys showed nearly half of British respondents believed BBC news reports in recent years lacked fairness. Over the previous 12 months, the BBC has received nearly 500,000 viewer complaints about "perceived bias”, a 93,878 increase from the previous year.
Maximus Ogbonna continued “I think I should stand out and speak out the truth and deplore and condemn the BBC’s mistake.”
Clearly, the BBC article "Africans in China: We face coronavirus discrimination" is led by a few opinions and no researched facts. Will the BBC correct the misinformation they published?