The following article by Carlos Martinez examines the BBC’s coverage of the catastrophic glacier collapse of 26 August, which sent a wall of ice, rock, mud and water down the river valleys straddling the border between Nepal and China’s Tibet (Xizang) Autonomous Region, killing well over a thousand people.
Rather than report on the disaster itself, or on its underlying cause in the accelerating warming of the world’s highest mountain range, the BBC’s China correspondent chose to run a story alleging that Beijing was suppressing footage of the event – footage which, as Carlos points out, had been released by the Chinese port authorities at Gyirong and was circulating widely on Chinese platforms. A massive rescue operation, with the direct involvement of China’s top leadership, becomes a “muted response”; Communist Party members being asked to assist their neighbours becomes evidence of authoritarian anxiety.
The article also takes apart the BBC’s assertion that Tibet was “annexed” by Beijing in the 1950s – a formulation at odds even with the declared position of the British government, which abandoned the colonial-era doctrine of “suzerainty” in 2008.
This article first appeared in the Morning Star.
On August 26, a glacier collapsed high on the Nepali side of the Himalayan range, sending a wall of ice, rock, mud and water down the river valleys straddling the border between Nepal and China’s Tibet (Xizang) autonomous region. Some 42 kilometres of road were wiped out, leaving helicopters as the only means of reaching survivors. At the time of writing, Nepal’s death toll has since passed 900, with more than 4,000 people missing; on the Chinese side, 16 have been confirmed dead, and 546 are reported missing.
This is the disaster that Laura Bicker, the BBC’s China correspondent, chose to report as follows: “Shocking footage isn’t being shown in China – and we know little about victims there.”
Numerous people in China immediately pointed out that the footage is, in fact, all over Chinese platforms. Indeed, the very video used in the BBC’s own report was released by the Chinese port authorities at Gyirong. So the sequence runs: the Chinese state published the clip; the BBC ran the clip; the BBC then published a story about how the Chinese state is suppressing the clip.
Several commentators have made another significant point: Chinese media does not operate on the principle of “if it bleeds, it leads.” You will not see grieving relatives and footage of bodies looped for 24 hours. The BBC treats the absence of disaster pornography as evidence of a cover-up rather than a different editorial culture.
Continue reading Slander over solidarity: the BBC reports a Himalayan disaster