Global Journalism Review

BBC's Simpson urges better US coverage

John Simpson, veteran war reporter and presenter of his own programme on BBC World, has defended British coverage of conflict and criticised American war reporting, and in particular that of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel (writes a GJR broadcast coverage correspondent).

Speaking at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, where he was reading from his book, News From No Man's Land, he referred to the "dysfunctional, grotesquely patriotic and embarrassing" Fox News reports, which he said had misled the American public after September 11 with "hysterical, excitable reporting."

He said the US public had been seriously misinformed: "There is a great hunger for information in America which people are not getting.... Osama bin Laden is primarily motivated by wanting to remove American bases from Saudi Arabia, and by the Palestinian problem."

Mr Simpson said George Bush was a man of below average intelligence, and a glove-puppet of his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In his defence of BBC World, he said it should be funded by the state, given its huge importance in terms of Britain's standing in the world. It was wrong that, given its average audience of a quarter of a billion people, it had to survive on a shoestring budget - and was not shown in Britain.