One cannot help but be astonished by the level of ignorance shown from time to time by British reporters and news readers. Here are a couple of examples I caught in the past couple of weeks when my average hours of TV exposure is cut down by my 16-hour work days.

During the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, BBC's China correspondent who was commenting on the event as the athletes entered the stadium taught the British viewers two valuable lessons

a) Lee Kuan Yew was the president of Malaysia

b) Take what the BBC say about Asian countries with a pinch of salt.

Yesterday, a news reader on Sky News (the news channel of the year in 2006) said the following words, "breaking news from ...uhm... AP news agency". Great! Since when did the abbreviation for Associated Press become stranger to news readers? Maybe the next time they'll say "we are covering the general election from a country called ... uhm... US".

Standard of journalism is really going down in this country. When even the mere basics of professionalism is missing from the field, fairness, objectivity and other aspects of professional ethics are probably just too much to ask.  

And this explains why we see the following on the BBC (in the same day)

1) During the men's 10m platform, a BBC commentator was so impressed with a dive done by one of the divers and was so disappointed with marks that he said if the dive was done by a Chinese, there would be 10s.

2) Every BBC reporter reporting on the women's 67kg+ Taekwondo quarter final was eager to portray the judging error as a "gross injustice" against the British and in favour of the Chinese contestant, conveniently ignoring the facts that

    1) The original judgment was made by four judges from different countries

    2) The kick by the British contestant was indeed a valid kick, but from most angles it looked like a sole-kick (kick with the down-side of the foot) rather than an instep-kick (kick with the up-side of the foot), the former of which does not count as a scoring kick.

    Anyway, the decision was eventually overturned, and the British lady entered into the semi-final. Justice done. But instead of interpreting this incidence as a genuine mistake which was eventually corrected, the reporters decided to keep the British audience confused, and let them take it the wrong way.

    3) Thomas Daley, the 14-year old diver, said something which I find to be very worrying, "I'm really happy that the person who won isn't a Chinese"..... (At least he was bluntly frank, not BBC-style hypocritical – or maybe master class hypocrisy takes ages of brewing and perfecting, and this young chap is just not there yet)