BBC furthering Dragon’s Agenda!

A cash-for-propaganda deal between the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Chinese tech giant Huawei was revealed by Rajya Sabha MP from BJP and senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani. He has accused the BBC of making an anti-India documentary by taking money from a Chinese company. He said- Chinese company Huawei has given money to BBC to tarnish Modi’s image. Now the BBC is furthering the Chinese agenda.

Mahesh Jethmalani is the son of the late advocate Ram Jethmalani. He tweeted and said- Why is BBC so anti-India? BBC has a long history of spreading disinformation against India. In 2021, the map of India without Jammu and Kashmir was released by BBC. Later he apologized to the Government of India and corrected the map.

Here it is worth mentioning that the BBC ran into a controversy when it released the first episode of ‘The Modi Question’, a documentary on the Gujarat riots, on YouTube on 17 January. It claimed the role of the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. The second episode was to be released on January 24. Even before this, the central government removed the first episode from YouTube. The Government of India has termed the documentary as propaganda against Prime Minister Modi and the country. However, there was a ruckus at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on 24 January regarding the screening of this documentary.

Mahesh Jethmalani’s allegation is further substantiated by the UK-based publication The Spectator. Steerpike, The Spectator’s gossip columnist in an article said that amid budget cuts and the licence fee future looking uncertain, the BBC developed some questionable new corporate partnerships. One of them is with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant which was sanctioned by the US in 2019 and barred from the UK’s 5G network in 2020 over security concerns, said Steerpike.

Moreover, after the deal with Huawei, BBC has alleged to have aided the Chinese authorities in creating surveillance technology that targets the country’s Uyghur minority population, reported The Spectator.

BBC is still taking Huawei’s money to fund its overseas journalism. A current employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Steerpike that they were ‘shocked’ that the BBC was still taking money from a company with such close ties to the Chinese state ‘when it was us (the Corporation) who exposed the Chinese abuse in Uyghur camps last year.’