The BBC and Sikhs

[West London Singh]

Now, I think, would be a really good time for we Sikhs to launch a campaign against the BBC.

Now that the BBC is on its knees with everyone seeing for the first time how it isn't the brilliant organisation they were conditioned into believing it was.

Now that the media, the public and the politicians all want to see the end of the corrupt BBC wouldn't it be the perfect time to make the wider public aware of our own grievances ?

The rest of the media is, at the present time, actively looking for stories of public miscontent with the BBC. Previously, the BBC has arrogantly ignored all letters of concern by Sikhs. Today, the BBC is begging at the knees for mercy......it is in no position to be arrogant.

Therefore, its time for some Sikh organisation to launch a campaign along these lines :

• For the most part the voice of the BBC, when it came to Sikh rights, was a man called Mark Tully. That man was given India's highest honour for "services to the nation". Services to the nation ? How does the BBC explain that ? How does a man that was supposed to present the facts to the British people, who paid his wages, for the benefit of the British people get honoured by the country he was supposed to be unbiased about for 'services to the nation' ?
  
• Now, most the BBC's news coverage of events in India are written and presented by representatives of the majority community in India. Despite having one of the largest south Asian communities in the world in the UK, the BBC have decided that it prefers Indians of Bombay and Delhi to be its ears and mouth in India. These are the same people who are inherently conditioned into believing that what happened to Sikhs in 1984 was a 'riot' and that Sikhs were murdering thousands of Hindus pre-1984 and then ran to hide in the Golden Temple. As silly as that sounds that is actually the sum of the understanding held by the BBC's journalists in India. Can you imagine if the BBC wanted to do a piece about the gas chambers at Autswicht. Would the BBC think it was wise to use a local German member of the nazi party as its reporter for the piece ?
  

As recent news stories about Sikhs have demonstrated, the BBC is not fit for purpose. This dirty, filthy biased drain on our financial resources is on its knees. Its time to kick the living daylight out of it. In normal times, our concerns would be ignored by all. At the moment, however, everyone and his dog would be interested in our beef with the BBC. I mentioned in the Brar news story a few months ago how the Met Police should learn a lesson from all of this, i.e. the fact that when one associated oneself with the Indians the dirt and filthy smell tends to rub off on oneself. The Met found that out the hard way. The BBC will find that out too.

[DailyMail]

Engaging with the media in general (not just the BBC) is always a bilateral process. Sikhs too need to actively engage in jounalism and careers in the media if they are to influence anyone in the BBC. From the BBC's perspective, if they want to aproach a Sikh or Sikh organisation to field thier views on a particular point of view (e.g. Brar), who would they approach? The Network of Sikh Organisations, The Sikh Council UK, the British Sikh Consulatative Forum....? The list goes on.

Launching a "campaign" against the BBC as it were, would ridicule the Sikhs as a sort of "protest community, chip on the shoulder type". Getting involved, whether it's presenting, producing, directing on even appearing on a 'Question Time' panel as a participant is a far better approach to begin with. Thereafter, Sikhs should aspire to pursue careers with not just the BBC but other media outlets. For example, if the producer of The Daily Politics, Newsnight or Panorama was a Sikh (I'm aware of the current fiasco but you understand my point), then I'm sure there would be a greater chance of a hard-hitting documentary on Sikh human right's abuses or any other issue. We have to think practically.

How many Sikhs are sitting in the BBC Trust, for example? Or how many were governors in the previous system? To have influence, one needs to get 'stuck in' as it were.

The status quo is a community fed up of being ignored, who established their own two Sikh channels where they produce documentaries for the benefit of the Sikh audience only. We should be thinking mainstream and not confining ourselves to Sikh/asian/desi media outlets.

[West London Singh]

Your argument would have more basis in normal times DailyMail. These are, however, not normal times for the BBC. Embroiled in scandal after scandal regarding the way it operates, there are wide calls for it to be killed off as a public institution. I myself, have full belief that once its role in the peadophile abuse of hundreds of children comes to light in the committee hearings there is no way it will be allowed to survive. The BBC know that. To counter that coming threat, the BBC will, and indeed are, going on their own publicity campaign designed to show what a fantastic fair and balanced news organisation they are. Unless we Sikhs tell the wider public how the BBC have been anything but fair and balanced towards Sikhs, they will be none the wiser.

This is not about Sikh Britons getting media degrees and thus jobs as journalists at the BBC. As current BBC news policy towards India shows, the BBC is committed towards only using Indian journalists from India. The inherent prejudices and bias of those journalists matters not one bit to the BBC. There are thousands and thousands of examples. But lets just use one from last week as an example : Sky News decided to do a piece about the Australian attempt to recognise the massacre of Sikhs as a genocide. The BBC said nothing. A day later, realising it wasn't fulfilling its role as a source of news, it got one of its Indian reporters to do an online piece on it. In that piece, even though the clear message by the Australians was that it was totally wrong to call something that wasn't a riot a riot, the BBC's reporters decided not only to refer to it with authority as a 'riot' it even listed in the title of the piece that it was a riot.

Like I said, this dirty filthy child abusing organisation is on its last legs. I say kick it when its down.

[VanHelsingh]

I'd personally go for an approach featuring a mixture of WLS and Daily Mail's stances tbh. For the short term I'd go the WLS route, hit-em-while-they're-down, etc. But long-term I'd engage and try to ensure changes are made from within, and that will only occur if young Sikhs find meaningful employment in the BBC machine. Well, when I say 'young Sikhs' I refer to the type with a clear goal on how to make positive changes for Sikh causes, and not young Sikhs piling into a pub on a Friday afternoon with their colleagues with nary a thought for long-term Sikh aspirations.

Like I said previously, as of this moment, what SIkhs with pull should be doing is highlighting the cosy nature of the BBCs and GOIs relationship, and how it seems the BBC is almost a mouthpiece of that regime. Now whether the BBC is leant upon to behave that way from high-up (UK govt) OR it is independent BBC editorial policy is another matter.

[DailyMail]

Whilst I'm sympathetic to what you say, I still feel it is far better to try to get involved. Look at the Israel-Palastinian story over the course of the past 20 years or so. From watching the news, it would appear it is very anti-palastinian in it's views. At cursory glance at the demographics of the BBC Trust (formerly the BBC Board of Governors) and it would appear a dominance of Jewish-sounding names sit on various committess. They tell me that the BBC is supposedly "impartial". Hmmm, I say otherwise! However, I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

Regarding the issue of paedophilia, well, after various enquiries, the BBC will re-emerge as a key player. It's too big a institution for it not to. So, one has to be realistic. I for one don't feel it will cease to exist.