Disgruntled of Uxbridge

I complained to the BBC the other day. In the past I have usually sent a comment or suggestion, rather than a formal complaint. But I was so enraged by the lack of coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill, that I decided to write and complain that the online website news team seem to have got their global priorities in a mix, reporting on Glastonbury and the World Cup in such detail, and only posting a few short (less than a minute) films on the Gulf Oil spill, and those just a few of the residents moaning about not being able to swim.

Reading websites from around the world, watching videos posted on youtube, I felt that the picture I was receiving from those things was of a continuing catastrophe, affecting millions of people, and possible destroying irretrievably a unique environment and the associated wildlife. That wasn't the picture I had from the BBC, who appeared to think the story was no longer newsworthy. That little they had was buried in the Americas section of the website.

I was hoping it would prompt them to devote more time and space to the story, what I hadn't expected was that they would come up with this.

Of all the angles in the world they could have chosen, they've set out to find the only people with a good word to say about BP, and to report it. I have now made a second complaint to the BBC, this time about bias. If they had been reporting fully and fairly the situation in the Gulf of Mexico and had then added this report, then fair enough. But to publish this with no balancing information about what the majority of Americans feel... and an update on the actual impact of the oil spill at the moment, and more especially the environmental impact of the widespread use of Corexit in the Gulf... I think that is about the most extreme case of biassed reporting ever. Where is the balance? It's mad... they have rules about putting forward balance view in the most ridiculous cases... and then don't with something as important and potentially world-changing as this.