#GROWING UP POOR BBC HOW TO#
#GROWING UP POOR BBC LICENSE#

In 1995, when the Charar-e-Sharif shrine was burnt down in Kashmir valley by terrorists, BBC aired footage of Russian tanks in Chechnya in its reportage, which created the impression that it was the Indian Army’s use of tanks that had damaged the shrine. It depicted only poverty and despair even though India had come a long way from when the British left India in poverty and despair in 1947. In the summer of 1970, the BBC broadcasted two documentary films – Calcutta and Phantom India which caused outrage amongst the Indian diaspora and with the Indian government for prejudicial and negative depictions of India and was dispelled from India in 1972. In the 1930s it started news from its colonies, including India. But when it was established in 1922, it got financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved domestic manufacturers.

#GROWING UP POOR BBC LICENSE#

I did some research and found out that BBC was established under a Royal Charter and is funded by a license fee charged to all British households, companies and organizations. “They only want to know about the rapes and lynchings and violence which makes Headline news,” he said. His answer was classic and I have never been able to forget it. Isn’t there at least one big story about how someone was saved from certain death by a good Samaritan. I asked the reporter whether this was all that he could get from a country of 1.3 billion people. The story was about how a young man was badly beaten up and was critical in hospital as he had taken his cows to graze in fields that belonged to a particular community.

I happened to hear one who was rather loud and excited over the phone and was saying his story would make the headlines.

I was asked to wait for a bit in their main reporting room where there were several reporters searching for what would make the headline news, with their stringers in various parts of India, via computer and phone. In 2013, I was in their bureau for an interview for my book. My first personal experience with BBC in India, was quite an awakening - I discovered to my shock that it wanted to report on only sensational bad news in a country of 1-3 billion people.

#GROWING UP POOR BBC HOW TO#

I was taught on how to report the news and also make films by some of the best in the industry, and to get all points of views. Since I returned to India in 2007 after my career abroad, I could not help but notice that CNN and BBC had changed drastically, and for the worse, in its reportage of news and documentaries.

I have followed the BBC since I was a child growing up in India and they have some good archival footage of some interviews with India’s leaders during and after Independence, but the BBC then and journalism was different. Having been both a documentary film maker for PBS and Discovery in America as well as a journalist, I was not really surprised by BBC’s bias against India.

Growing up poor bbc