BBC accused of making quake-hit Haitians look ‘like savages’

LONDON - BBC’s coverage of the Haiti earthquake has been projected as having racist undertones. BBC has also been slammed for showing Haitians as ” savages.”

BBC presenter Andy Kershaw has said that reporting of the disaster by Matt Frei, Corporation’s Washington correspondent has been “disgraceful”.

“An incongruously ample figure around Port-au-Prince, Frei has been working himself up all week into what is now a state of near hysteria about ’security’ and the almost non-existent ‘violence’,” The Telegraph quoted Kershaw, as saying in his article headlined ‘Stop treating these people like savages’.

“When he is not almost tumescent about violence, he pontificates pompously to camera, or booms at earthquake victims in French. Most Haitians don’t speak French. They speak Creole,” he added.

He went on blaming Frei for exaggerating violence in the calamity hit nation.

“Disgracefully, on Newsnight on Monday, he had the audacity - and anything but the evidence - to declare: ‘The dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.’ No, it certainly is not. It took Bill Clinton, being interviewed by Frei, to correct him. Their chat was turned by Frei, inevitably, to his appetite for imminent violence,” he said.

Frei reacted to Kershaw’s rant with just one word: “Blimey”.

While he is back in Washington, he denies that it has anything to do with concern about his reports.

Meanwhile, Kevin Bakhurst, the controller of the BBC News Channel, says he does not share Kershaw’s views: “Matt’s reports showed his usual integrity, authority and his immense experience of covering emergencies.” (ANI)