This is taken from The Sunday Times, July 03, 2005:

Radio Waves: Paul Donovan: Politics of 8

Live 8, and the vast moral crusade associated with it, presents acute problems for the BBC. I do not mean just the technical challenges involved in the live relay from Hyde Park of the world’s biggest-ever concert, and its allied gigs over two continents, at the start of an extra-ordinarily global week that will also see broadcasts from Scotland ( the G8 meeting), Singapore (Olympics decision), South Africa (an alternative G8), Accra (Ghanaian harmonies) and Serbia (the Exit festival, which celebrates music rather than euthanasia). No, I mean the editorial headache.

Many in the corporation share the idealism, noble or naive, of Bob Geldof and his cohorts. They are inspired and galvanised by his vision of ending extreme poverty. But, as Jenni Murray so pertinently pointed out in Radio 4’s The Message nine days ago, the BBC has to be neutral when it comes to Live 8’s political objectives. It can cover campaigns, but it must not endorse them.

On television, that distinction has already been somewhat muddied: one of Live 8’s chief organisers, Richard Curtis, wrote a primetime drama set around a G8 summit, shown last weekend on BBC1. On radio, balance has been more rigorously maintained through a simple and proper policy of allowing numerous points of view to be heard.

Thus it is that Five Live yesterday not only spoke to critics of Live 8, who think the concerts could do more harm than good, but advertised that in advance. Airtime has also been given to a Red Pepper writer who thinks it is absurd to expect rich nations to solve a problem they themselves have caused; to Mark Tully, who emphasises Africa’s spirituality today; to those who claim that poverty is often caused by the corruption, brutality and incompetence of African governments, citing Zimbabwe as the obvious example; and to Africans such as the Ugandan broadcaster Andrew Mwenda, who will argue on the World Service’s Analysis programme, on Tuesday, that “aid and debt relief are fostering a culture of irresponsibility by encouraging bad economic behaviour. Because our government has always been able to rely on donors for aid — even the chairs in the parliament building are donated by Denmark — it hasn’t bothered to establish a decent tax- collection service”.

Just as there is more than opinion to be heard, so there is more than one perspective to be seen. There is more to Africa than bloodshed and starvation. Two linked seasons display this at present: The New Africa Season, which began yesterday on the BBC World Service, and Africa Lives on the BBC, which runs across the corporation. “They are designed to give people a more rounded portrayal of African life and culture than the one emphasising war, famine and disease,” is how the World Service’s director, Nigel Chapman, puts it.

With programmes ranging from Africa’s taste in books (tonight, Radio 3) to Nairobi’s Congestina Achieng, the new women’s world middleweight champion and the first African woman to hold an international boxing title (Tuesday’s Everywoman), and from this week’s local radio
twinnings, such as the link-up between Cornwall and Mozambique, to a report on the first opera from the Sahara (Friday’s Music Review), he and his domestic colleagues have been as good as their word.