BBC Somali Service: From News Provider To Another Political Opponent In Somali Affairs

Hussein Sheikh Mohamed Yusuf

The BBC Somali Service was established with the mandate of providing information to all Somali speaking communities in Eastern Africa regardless of their nationality and country of origin. It remained as a major source of unbiased and authentic information for decades. It also had the largest listeners compared to other Somali broadcasting radios. I do remember in the late 1990s as a secondary school student that among my classmates if one issue was raised and debated, we used to ask everyone to forward their evidence but any quote from the BBC was unanimously accepted as ultimate evidence.

This shows how the BBC'S trustworthiness filled the hearts of my generation in those years because we were raised in a society where information serves as a meal in their daily life.

But today the BBC is no more a place of information but a major political group that plays a great role in Somali politics. The Somali Service today lacks all the principles of journalism that is truth, loyalty and neutrality.

The BBC used to provide its listeners with a uniform and balanced coverage of all the events in the Horn but today it concentrates its coverage in one area and in favor of one group only. In the past all the news readers were from different areas of all Somali speaking society but today it is dominated by one group from the same area. The most admired and interested journalists for the Somali Service had departed from Bush House.

With regard to Somalia’s political turmoil, the BBC acts as a political group and speaks with the interest of one group in mind. It deserves to be recognized as one of the political groupings in Somalia and be invited to all reconciliation conferences as a political entity and not as a news agency as the BBC Somali Service has deviated from its real mission as a news provider.

I urge the international community and all bodies involved in Somali reconciliation conferences to invite the BBC and its chairman Yusuf Garad to the peace talks if everlasting peace is ever to be attained in Somalia

Hussein Sheikh Mohamed Yusuf

E-MAIL:hussien2363@hotmail.com

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