Good morning list, I don't suppose many of you are aware of this, but this morning the BBC News Online website is being accused of bias by the Venezuelan Ambassador to the UK for a very (IMHO) interesting reason.
For those who can read Spanish, the details of the accusation are on the Venezuelan state TV website: <http://www.vtv.gob.ve/articulos/reportajes/12217> For those who can't, the brief summary is this: The (English language) BBC News site currently has a 'have your say' section inviting comments about Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's performance in the ten years of his Presidency at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_7760000/newsid_7765400/7765415.stm>. There is currently no equivalent page on the BBCMundo.com (Spanish language) website. For the avoidance of any doubt, I will clarify that Spanish is the official language of Venezuela. Given that Venezuela has a population of about 60% below the poverty line and the majority of Chávez's supporters are known to be from the poorer sectors of the society (who are unlikely to have had sufficient education to speak English), the BBC stands accused of asking for comment in English only in order to deliberately manipulate the results to ensure that Chávez is discussed in predominantly adverse terms. Whilst I am pretty certain this is more likely to be a lack of communication between different parts of the BBC, rather than deliberate bias, I can't help but feel that the Ambassador might have a valid point here. I have suspected for a while that 'linguistic discrimination' is an under-recognised topic amongst website designers of websites with an international target audience who permit user feedback. The danger for the BBC, of course, is that this sort of debate could undermine the excellent work that has gone in to the development of BBCMundo.com and BBC Mundo Radio in Latin America in recent years. Without wishing to turn this into a political debate on this list, I wonder what you think? How much discussion goes into deciding which pages should invite comment and is the risk of 'linguistic discrimination' considered in conjunction with the World Service's different language services? Would it not be better, for example, for the invitation for comments to be on the Spanish site and for the comments to then be translated for the English site? Is there some form of software platform linking the different bits of the BBC and language services which allows for comments to be 'shipped' in translation between different departments? Or perhaps the comments should be displayed on the English page with a 'health warning' to warn that a full range of opinions might not be expressed due to the fact that it is only an English page? Best wishes, Dominic. (I do not work for the BBC) - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
