This interesting piece appeared in the current issue of The Stage:

WORLD WARY


In the aftermath of the Hutton inquiry, the shockwaves of a Corporation
under question are being felt beyond British shores. Trevor Grundy looks
at how a once implicit trust in the independence and accuracy of the
World Service has been shaken and how that has been exploited for
political gain in the Third World.




Forgive them, Greg Dyke. They don't know what they're doing. The finest
radio network in modern history is being undermined - not just in Britain
where it was created but throughout the world.


In Africa - a continent I know well having worked in central, eastern and
southern Africa as a journalist and broadcaster for 30 years - damage
caused by what is now known universally as "the row" has caused
irreparable damage to the cause of honest reporting.


"I cannot remember a time in my life - and I'm 87 years -old - when I
didn't regard the BBC World Service as the voice of the truth," says
writer and historian Lawrence Vambe, acclaimed author of the Zimbabwean
masterpiece An Ill-fated People.


"We'd turn and twiddle our radio dials to get the BBC and its familiar
jingle would brighten painful days whether we were in exile, prison,
detention or at home waiting to hear what Harold Wilson had said in
London, Ian Smith had said in Salisbury or what the President of the
United States of America thought abut African affairs in Washington.


"Often we had to listen to the BBC to find out what was happening in our
own countries. It never crossed our minds to say, 'This is British
propaganda', or 'BBC reporters don't do their homework properly'. We
implicitly trusted the BBC but those days might be coming to an end."


They are. Last week the smug - but clever - Robert Mugabe sycophant,
Zimbabwe's information minister Professor Jonathan Moyo, called on the
BBC to apologise directly to the people of Zimbabwe for "misleading" them
over so many issues - the land ownership issue, corruption and, need less
to say, BBC reports that Mugabe's vile Green Bombers and youth leaguers
had beaten the opposition to pulp, raped tens of thousands of young girls
and ruined agriculture by invading commercial farms.
Nicknamed Zimbabw&s Dr Goebbels, Moyo said that the recent condemna tion
of the BBC by Tony Blair's own
propaganda chief Alastair Campbell showed something was rotten in the
heart of the former British Empire.
"We have no apology to make about how we treat the BBC," said a
sniggering Moyo, adding that foreign journalists could still make short
reporting trips to Zimbabwe. "But we don't want the BBC sniffing around
getting everything wrong. Even the British prime minister says the BBC
makes things up. If the BBC does that in Britain, what does it do
everywhere else?"


Three years ago the BBC was told to get out of Zimbabwe because of its
alleged sensational reporting about election violence by the ruling Zanu
(PF). Today reporters stand on the South African side of Beit Bridge and
look into Zimbabwe's troubled rural areas from across the River Limpopo.
Moyo gloats about it.


He told state-controlled reporters at his headquarters in Harare that
Mugabe's government was "forced" to act against the BBC and other foreign
news organisations after realising that Western powers wanted to "use"
the foreign media in what he called "their campaign for unconstitutional
regime changes in Zimbabwe".


He added that Zimbabwe - like Tony Blair - had to protect itself from the
BBC.
"It will take a stupid and irresponsible government not to do something
against such a move," he uttered.


Blair's row with the BBC has under mined the Corporation's credibility
not only in Zimbabwe but also in Namibia, South Africa and Zambia, where
white land ownership is turning into a raging political issue.


Moyo said that Zimbabwe had been vindicated in banning the BBC by the
recent indictment of the UK's public broadcaster following the Hutton
report. As we all know, the BBC apologised to Blair after its release.


"These guys at the BBC are no good," chortled Moyo. "Look what they did
to Blair. But at least they apologised to him. We asked for a similar
apology but they refused."


In 1974 I was posted to Lusaka at the start of the 'detente' exercise
between black Africa and white Rhodesia and South Africa. Almost every
night I reported to the BBC's highly respected Focus on Africa programme
run by Robin White MBE. Questions put to me from London were always fair,
balanced, interesting and to the point.


When I reported out of Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Angola or Botswana to
London, it was assumed by every one that I'd done my homework and that I
could back up my stories with at least two sources.


African leaders rarely crossed swords with the BBC. Idi Amin was an
exception. To my certain knowledge, at least six Southern African
presidents tuned into the BBC's Focus on Africa five nights a week.


"[Dr Kenneth] Kaunda would sooner miss his supper than Focus on Africa,"
the late Milimo Punabantu, editor of the Times of Zambia in 1974, told
me.


The row following the Hutton report has done a terrible disservice to a
great media organisation. It will fill the tanks on people like Jonathan
Moyo, who want to ride roughshod over what is left of a free press.


Until recently, the BBC was the world's most respected voice in
international broadcasting, providing impartial news and information in
43 languages worldwide. Until the Hutton inquiry, it boasted that its
reporters were independent and accurate experts. Today, I think
tragically, those who would like to mow down and bury free-thinking
reporters say that the BBC no longer has a right to tell them what to do
or how to do it.


"The BBC is an arm of British foreign policy," says Moyo.


Men like Lawrence Vambe, who have loved the BBC for so many decades, are,
for the first time in their long lives, wondering if he's right.


-----------------------------


Trevor Grundy worked as a reporter and broadcaster in Africa from 1966 to
1996. He worked for the BBC Focus on Africa programme, Deutsche Welle
(Voice of Germany) in Cologne, VOA in Washington, SABC in Johannesburg
and Radio France Internationale in Paris and now lives and works in
Canterbury as a freelance author