Why cowardly BBC reporters are afraid to talk about “corruption”

There is one certainty with every Third World disaster (earthquake, floods, tsunami etc) – about a year after the event, there will be a weepy BBC reporter, standing amidst the homeless and the destitute and bleating on about how many people are still suffering because one year on all the aid given has failed to reach those for whom it was intended. Usually the report will end with words along the line of “hundreds of millions were pledged, but one year on many of the worst-affected people have had little to no help”. This phrasing is very clever. It leaves the responsibility for the human suffering deliberately vague. Were hundreds of millions pledged by Western governments and then not given? Or was the money given, but stolen by corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and their business cronies? The reporter wants us to believe the first answer – that devious Western governments didn’t live up to their promises. And I’m sure this often happens. But governments and ordinary people do give hundreds of millions, so what happens to this money? The real problem is that study after study after study by the UN has shown that around 90% of all aid given to Third World countries is lost due to corruption and incompetence. Sadly most politicians, bureaucrats and businesspeople in the Third World don’t give a damn about their own people and just see each disaster as a heaven-sent opportunity to get rich.

I imagine there’s a BBC manual somewhere which tells reporters not mention the 90% loss of aid money as that will make us less willing to give in the future. Any BBC reporter would be risking their own precious career if they were honest and courageous enough to mention the rampant corruption which follows any disaster. And so we  are deliberately being lied to by politically-correct, career-obsessed BBC reporters.