BBG Watch Commentary
“Here we go again. So, Oregon shooting is plastered all over BBC, on home page, and leading USA section. VOA as of 2:51 PM had no main item on the front page, none in USA section.” A comment by a former Voice of America reporter on VOA’s coverage of the Oregon shooting.
VOA was also late — well behind BBC and other media — in reporting on President Obama’s statement on the shooting and did not stream the President’s remarks live online.
A running commentary by a former VOA news reporter:
“Here’s the coup d’grace…..in its main lead on Oregon, in a sentence preceeding the long excerpt from Obama’s White House statement, BBC says: ‘Referring to a BBC interview in which he talked about this, he said countries like the UK and Australia showed that effective legislation was possible.'”
That was the long interview Obama gave to the Beeb before the Kenya trip.
Nearly an hour after Obama spoke at 6:20 PM, the only visible mention of Obama on the front page of Voice of America main English news website were several tweets by Aru Pande, the new White House correspondent….BBC story has, integrated in it, a long excerpt of Obama video….
Finally there is this…..neither BBC nor VOA had live video of Obama’s statement.
But BBC was heard in its worldwide radio coverage just before 6:30 PM to have
some of Obama’s remarks from the White House, and discussion between the BBC
program host and the Beeb DC correspondent. That’s WORLDWIDE RADIO that is WEB ACCESSIBLE.VOA had NO mention of Obama at all on its English web site…
NONE.
And for what was probably Obama’s strongest statement yet on gun violence
in his two terms in office….VOA chose not to go to the White House for live coverage.One more….VOA shifts off of Reuters, replaces with a “VOA News” story, still
using two hour old tweets, and stays with 7 dead in the headline, when everyone
else has 10 or 13…VOA lagged in upping the confirmed death toll to 10 while BBC was posting live text updates. Also — after two initial tweets, the little VOA “US News and Opinion” window was devoid of any new information…so much for VOA being any reliable source of ongoing breaking news.
Title of a short VOA video capture said it all . . . VOA at 4:25 PM carrying a 3:34 PM Reuters story, all 6 paragraphs of it, with tweets that were old as well….
AND. . . . . (drum roll). . . . the VOA story is REUTERS….
When it finally gets a story up, VOA uses hour old tweets….
VOA finally posted a story on the front page at 3:38 PM EDT — short, anemic….
lacking in kind of detail that BBC provides in its LIVE coverage page….VOA continued to rely on a single reporter and Tweets on her page, and in contrast BBC devoting an entire LIVE page to the shooting.
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