Different slant on news

I am not sure that this is Government-controlled as implied by Ann Dickie (The Press, June 7), but it is certainly not a new phenomenon. Back in the 1980s Apartheid days, I travelled to South Africa on business and visited Soweto.

Just before I went, BBC television had shown the police rounding up local black people and capturing them in a wire-fenced area.

I saw the same scene myself and found the truth was a criminal element had broken into the fenced area and stolen parts from the council trucks and the police were trying to apprehend them for stealing.

A little later, during the first Gulf War, the BBC showed news reports of a destroyed road bridge which they said had been blasted by the advancing Iraqi troops.

Soon after that war, I visited and toured the area with an Indian agent who had stayed in Kuwait all through that turmoil.

He told me the Kuwaitis were building the road bridge over the new ring road and when they heard the Iraqis were close by, they dropped the steel girders they were hoisting and it was these that smashed thing things up rather than Iraqi firepower.

Such incidents make me think of that fabulous TV programme Drop The Dead Donkey. As Ann Dickie states “scrape the surface and see what you find”. Bob Redwood, Main Street, Askham Bryan.

• ROGER WESTMORLAND and Ann Dickie complained this week about the superficial and distorted news churned out by the UK TV channels.

It seems obvious that the rubbish presented as news is there to keep us from knowing what is really happening. Hence the constant barrage of trivia surrounding the Royal Jubilee and Oympics.

It seems equally obvious that government, in collaboration with the US, is allowing only what it wants people to hear.

I often wonder who cares about the turmoil in the world, apart from corporations and government agencies which stand to benefit from arms sales or regime change, and who have dubious involvement in most of the trouble spots. Our news reports only the US view of what happens.

I wonder if financial collapse is nearer than we are told, with the City approaching meltdown as a result of its unregulated greed. Our news is only now hinting of trouble ahead, with the blame already attributed to the Euro zone.

I am grateful we live in a country where we are allowed to receive more realistic news from other sources. However, I sometimes despair when I see what is presented to us as “news”.

P L Hart, Springwood, Haxby, York.