So many news organizations are getting coverage of the proposed Ugandan genocide of gays and lesbians wrong.
Today, the British journalists’ union criticized the BBC over their coverage.
The U.K. Guardian reports that BBC World Service has posted a discussion to debate whether or not gay people should be executed.
Should we post a discussion about whether the head of the BBC should be killed?
Of course not. That is simply irresponsible. Then why would the BBC post a discussion about whether I should be executed?
The BBC is publicly funded by a tax paid by all British citizens including gays and lesbians. Is the BBC proposing that those citizens should be murdered?
Or is the justification for the argument that the lives of Ugandan gays and lesbians are worth less than British gays and lesbians?
A news organization has an obligation to report facts and not make them up like Fox News does. A news organization may print opinion and label it as such. We do that on our Viewpoints page. We print opinion here in Instant Tea. But even opinion pages do not promote morally, ethically, legally criminal, abominable acts of murder.
Any responsible news organization has an obligation to call genocide what it is and under no circumstances should there be an online debate about whether that genocide is OK. It’s not.
UPDATE: BBC apologizes
Peter Horrocks, director of BBC World Service, apologized for a headline and for offense we may have taken at a debate hosted by his site over whether gays and lesbians should be executed.
I’m not sure he thinks debating whether gays and lesbians should be executed is wrong. He’s certainly sorry gays and lesbians were offended and sorry for the offensive headline, but apparently there is still room to debate whether Ugandan gays and lesbians have committed a capital offense.
An all time low.
Even for heterosexuals.
Take out the word “gays and lesbians” and put in “African Americans” and I think there’d be considerable more upset. But hey, as we’ve seen, we’re expendable human beings, who are used to being killed for who we are. So let’s have a healthy debate on whether it’s okay… or not.
By the way, let’s not put this to a vote in the U.S. We’re letting “majority rule” keep us from getting the right to get married in the United States. God forbid if we let the majority rule on if they’d like us all executed.
Worst apology ever. Epic fail.
You only have to do a google search to realise how much this inappropriate headline has got people talking about the issue. Many would not even know what was currently being proposed in Uganda if it wasn’t for the BBC.
It is sad that this is the only way to publicise a very serious issue. But despite this, it is wrong for the BBC to suggest that it deserves legitimate debate. The case is closed and always will be – gays do not deserve execution, clearly.
The BBC should have thought twice about this. I dare say that a headline such as ‘Should Jews be executed?’ or ‘Should African Americans be executed?’ would not have lasted for a split second before being removed.
This clearly illustrates how far we have to go before gays are considered equal, in two ways. Firstly, it illustrates that the question of executing gays is still on the agenda in some countries. Secondly, it illustrates that even in the West, gay people experience discrimination worse than ethnic minorities do (as I said, any suggestion that ethnic minorities should be executed wouldn’t have even been typed let alone lasted on the site for days before being removed!).