Russia's new media czar poo-poohs "Western depravity"

Flushed with success: Russian TV journalist and new media czar Dmitry Kiselyov receives Medal of Friendship from the Kremlin.  Photo: AFP/ RIA-Nvosti/ Mikhail Klimenty/Getty Images


It’s one thing for Kremlin critics to say that TV has gone down the toilet since President Vladimir Putin pulled the chain on independent programming.

But last week viewers of a state TV news report on protests in Kiev -- against President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a trade deal with the EU – were startled by clips from a Swedish educational series on bodily functions.

The title of the series is a play on Swedish words for “wee wee” and “poo poo,” words familiar to kiddies worldwide. But its fanciful cartoon portrayal of  backsides and genitalia was denounced as the kind of “Euro Sodom” that innocent Ukrainian children would be exposed to if Ukraine went West instead of East.

Leading the charge was Rossiya 1 anchor Dmitry Kiselyov, who informed viewers, rather contradictorily, that Sweden was a sewer of child depravity with a “sharp rise in child abortions…from the age of nine, and it is not surprising that child impotence starts at 12. There you have European values in all their glory.”

For his Kremlin-aligned views, Kiselyov was rewarded with a new job as czar of a restructured state news conglomerate.

In a surprise decree published Monday, President Vladimir Putin announced that RIA Novosti – which had struggled to maintain its balance under state control – would be disbanded and replaced by a (more reliable) news service called Russia Today.

In a bitter exit note, RIA called the move “the latest in a series of shifts in Russia’s news landscape which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.”

Kiselyov’s rising state stardom is also a pointer to a more intense crackdown on homosexuality, in the apparent guise of child protection.

Last year he made headlines for backing up new Russian laws criminalizing “gay propaganda” on his TV program, saying that mere fines for “homosexual propaganda among teenagers (are) not enough.”

Homosexuals should be banned from blood and sperm donations, he maintained, and in cases of accidental death, their hearts should be “buried or burned” to prevent them from being used as donated organs.

This medieval-sounding argument was “normal,” he added later, explaining that it was internationally recognized that HIV is mainly spread by homosexuals – although Russian AIDS specialists credit an epidemic of heroin addiction, augmented by stigmatization of drug users.

No matter. The latest move has hit three major Putin targets in one: the disobedient media, the LGBT community and the West. A bargain for Kremlin spin doctors. But not for the majority of Russians who get their news and views from state-run media. And for whom the information window is steadily shrinking.

Olivia Ward covered the former Soviet Union as a bureau chief and correspondent from 1992-2002. 

World's eye view of Ford's nation undimmed -- yet

 Muddy waters: the world reflects on Rob Ford's city hall. Photo: AFP Geoff Robins/Getty Images

International fame has at last reached Toronto, via Mayor Rob Ford. And not in a good way.

Is being too drunk to remember smoking crack an explanation you would accept from your mayor?" read a tweet from CNN's Anderson Cooper.

“I don’t know what he’s saying, but it clearly looks like outtakes from Tommy Boy,” TV host Jon Stewart weighed in when a second, ranting video surfaced.

And satirist Stephen Colbert, in a mock Ford apology, joked, “have I lied to you about never smoking crack? Yes I have. Is that the worst thing in the world? Does that make me a murderer? No. Have I ever murdered anyone? Yes, but that was in the past. While I was high on crack. In the present, I am not murdering anyone.”

From New York to New Zealand, it seems, everyone has now heard of Toronto.

Writing in the National Post,London-based writer Afsun Qureshi commented, “the one upside of this sad, sorry mess is that the whole winter wonderland, maple syrup, happy clappy, quaint cliché of Canada that still annoyingly prevails in the UK has been re-written just a little. Now we are seen as drugged-up overfed losers with an ineffective police force and a public with strange voting habits. Like I said, thanks for that, Mr. Mayor.”

So is Toronto’s clean-and-safe, tourist-and-business-friendly image up in smoke?

Not according to British expert Simon Anholt, whose Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index ranked Toronto ninth in its 2013 survey for overall image, but only 28th on familiarity (although the latter may have abruptly changed.)

“There is a huge amount of vague, general, positive goodwill tied up in the international image of Canadian cities and provinces, which it would be extremely hard to damage in any serious or permanent way,” Anholt said in an email.

Furthermore, “we don’t change our minds about cities just because of one rogue mayor:  you’d need Ford-type mayors running the city for at least a generation before people around the world started thinking that Toronto was somehow less admirable than the country in which it is located.”

And still on the bright side, Ford has taken over the well-worn stereotype of the “Ugly American” – an out-of-control, loudmouthed, obscene, violent, drunken aggressive slob.” However, “since the one thing everybody in the world knows about Canada is that it’s not America, they will probably regard him as what he is: an anomaly.”

Whew! At least, until 2014.

Olivia Ward has covered conflict, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.
 

Terror's reality TV

                                                              Former U.S. vice presdient Dick Cheney on CBS's 60 Minutes

 

If you watched former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney on 60 Minutes Sunday explaining how his doctors disabled the wireless function on his heart defibrillator, worried that terrorists could deliver a fatal jolt, and thought, "Huh, is this a rerun?" well, then you are obviously a Homeland fan.

Homeland, the hit television series on the CIA, featuring the wonderfully complicated main character Carrie Mathison (played by Claire Danes), featured a story line last season where the vice president was indeed killed in such a plot.

That feeling of déjà vu came again earlier this month when news broke about the U.S. Navy SEAL raid on a Somali villa, while many kilometres northwest, commandos with Delta Force snatched a terrorism suspect off the streets of Libya. (Homeland spoiler alert.) The premiere of the show's third season began with a series of covert raids, although there were six of them and they were all successful (the Somali raid, in real life, was aborted).

So what does this mean, other than Homeland has good researchers?

The public's perception is often shaped by pop culture — lines between reality and TV are often blurred.

Police complain that television has produced the “CSI effect” — a jury member's expectation that there will be forensic evidence in all cases. Then there was Jack Bauer, the protagonist of Fox TV's terrorism drama 24. Bauer always stopped that "ticking time bomb" and almost always did it through torture. The program was so popular — and influential — that, as the New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point met with 24’s creative team in 2006 to ask that they write an episode where torture doesn’t work.

Apparently the show "adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers.”

Zero Dark Thirty has become the historic record for many on the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The movie strongly suggests that tortured interrogations delivered the key intelligence, when the evidence says otherwise. When asked if bin Laden's death vindicated the much-maligned "enhanced interrogation techniques," Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, answered, "No, absolutely not" (a 6,300-page committee intelligence report on the subject, which reportedly cost American taxpayers $40 million to produce, remains secret).

What I'm waiting for is the Hollywood drone movie (yes, Homeland has already had a drone angle). The Obama administration's drone program was back in the news this week with the release of two damning reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International highlighting the civilian victims.

But I anticipate a likely Hollywood plot will focus on a conflicted drone pilot who kills by day and goes to his kid's soccer game at night. That is sure to get good ratings.

On Tuesday, victims of a drone attack in Pakistan are expected to testify before a U.S. congressional hearing. Rafiq ur-Rehman, his 13-year-old son, Zubair, and his 9-year-old daughter, Nabila, are travelling to Washington from the tribal region of North Waziristan, site of an alleged U.S. strike last year. The two children were injured and their grandmother, Mamana, was killed.

We'll see how many people watch.

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of "Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recipient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Saving Syria's Children: "You can't say you didn't know"

A Syrian child in a refugee camp near the Turkish border.                                               (Photo: BBC) 

When "Saving Syria's Children" aired on British television, the BBC broadcast a warning at the start of the documentary: "There are scenes which some viewers may find upsetting."

Shots of children, staring solemnly at the camera with huge, dark eyes. Premature babies, thin and tiny, reaching out to doctors who coo over how small their fingers are.

Then, this: "I think there's been some kind of chemical attack. There's dozens of people that have just been rushed in, covered in burns and some kind of white powder dust. All their clothes are hanging off them."

And that is in the first three minutes. It's bloody, even though there is actually very little blood, and upsetting.

It's bloody upsetting.

BBC reporter Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway were in Syria earlier this year with two doctors from a charity called Hand in Hand for Syria. Dr. Rola Hallam usually works in a pediatric ICU in London; her colleague, Dr. Saleyha Ahsan, in ahospital in Essex, just outside London.

In August, the doctors, trailed by the journalists, travelled close to the front lines to see what conditions are like; they met families who have lost children and homes, yet still bake bread and offer it to visitors.

They spoke to an 85-year-old man who is suffering with diabetes and hasn't had his medication. He and his family have been forced to move from place to place for two years. A tear rolls down his cheek as he speaks to Hallam; she leaves him an emergency food parcel, something she calls a drop in the ocean.

"It's not a home. It's not your health. It's not your medication you need. It's not your dignity back," Hallam says. "It's not your broken heart mended."

After their trip, the doctors return to a hospital in the city of Aleppo. Ahsan is looking after a baby with a burned face; it's difficult, and the doctors are concerned that there's little in the way of pediatric supplies.

Then, cars and vans and ambulances begin pulling up. And people, their skin and clothing hanging off them, start staggering in. They're mostly teenagers. Their school, they say, has been attacked. They are very badly burned, and the doctors are worried they're dealing with a chemical attack. 

"It was a surreal, slow-motion event," Pannell recalls. "The hospital was overwhelmed. And you had these kids writhing on the floor."

In the footage, children look like zombies, shaking, swaying on their feet and drooling in what must be shock and pain.

A father screams at the camera, pointing at the blistered face of his child: "This is my daughter! This is my daughter!"

Ten of the children died.

"I found it difficult not to be touched by what (we) saw," says Pannell, an experienced conflict journalist who has reported from Afghanistan and Iraq, among other war zones. "The overriding thing is nobody can say they didn't know what was happening.

"You may choose to do nothing about it - you may choose not to donate ... and politicians may choose not to act," he says. "But you can't say you didn't know."

"Saving Syria's Children" airs Saturday, Oct. 5 at 10 p.m. on The Passionate Eye on CBC News Network. 

Jennifer Quinn is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter at the Star. As a journalist with the Associated Press, based in London, she wrote extensively about British politics. Follow her on Twitter @JQStar.

"Airing lies" - Al Jazeera journalists resign in protest

 

Al-Jazeera YouTube video reports on the arrest of its staff members by the Egyptian military.

 

As many as 22 journalists have resigned from  Al Jazeera in protest over what they say is the influential Arab network's alleged pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias, according to reports from rival media outlets in the Middle East.

The Gulf News website reported  that Karem Mahmoud, the anchor of Al Jazeera's Egyptian station, announced that the staff quit because of  “biased coverage” of the events in the country, where a military coup last week drove the Muslim Brotherhood and its elected president from power.

“I felt that there were errors in the way the coverage was done, especially that now in Egypt we are going through a critical phase," Mahmoud told another rival network, Al Arabiya.

 Al-Arabiya quoted Al Jazeera correspondent Haggag Salama, who accused the station of “airing lies and misleading viewers"  and said that four Egyptian members of editorial staff at the network’s headquarters in Qatar had resigned as well.

Some other media reports put the number of departing journalists at only seven.

In a statement on its press website, Al Jazeera acknowledged “some Al Jazeera ... staff have decided to leave" but blamed them for holding "partisan political opinions,” according to Al- Arabiya.

It is no secret that Al-Jazeera's owners, the royal family of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, have been vocal supporters of deposed Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi and his Brotherhood party.

That has led to a backlash against the network by the Egyptian military and repression against its journalists in recent days.

The army raided Al Jazeera's offices and arrested its news director.  and arrested other staff members. Al Jazeera complained that as many as 28 of its staff in Cairo were detained.

The  tensions appear to have spread to fellow journalists.

The Associated Press reported  last week that reporters from Al Jazeera were unceremoniously kicked out of a military news conference held in the wake of the army's shooting of pro-Morsi supporters. One journalist demanded the Al-Jazeera people leave and they departed to the chants of "Out! Out!" from the other reporters.

The embarassing resignations from Al Jazeera come as its English-language  network is about to gain "an important foothold in the United States," the  Washington Post reports.

(The network has been available on Canada on the three major cable providers since 2010.)

Al-Jazeera America will debut next month in about 50 million cable homes in the U.S., with several high-profile American journalists including former Soledad O’Brien, the former CNN host and reporter.

________
 

 Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher. 

 

 

Pain and gain: serving the super-rich

 Palm Beach boasts 24 multi-millionaires in a 22-kilometre stretch of mega-yachts and mansions.  Susan Pigg photo, Toronto Star.

Yes Virginia, the super-rich really are different from you and me.

Not just richer, but way more sensitive. And – how do I put this discreetly – more demanding.

In a lengthy Guardian article, Who Wants to Serve a Billionaire, Amanda Gentleman outlined the exacting requirements for would-be staffers.

Like hiding the zippers on yacht cushions so as not to offend esthetic sensibilities, and making sure that the towels are rolled correctly, so ostentatiously-embossed monograms are always in view. Polishing the TV remote to a fine sheen is de rigeur, as is snipping stray threads from the towels.

Billionaire owners of “superyachts” – more than 50 metres long – want staff skills that include “discretion, servility and good ironing.” But not sniveling servility: they must be ready to take pain, and lots of it.

Like the two “yacht stewardesses,” who gamely jumped into jellyfish-infested waters to shield a mega-mogul’s guest with a yen for swimming, while taking dozens of agonizing stings themselves.

Crew are also prepared to stand at attention, sans sunglasses, in blistering sun, for as long as bosses please because the effort of pushing a buzzer for assistance is beneath them.

Personal hygiene is, of course, mandatory for staff, with frequent teeth-brushing, no fashionable stubble for men, or offensively hairy legs for women. “It’s all about the look and the image,” an unnamed yacht association coach told Gentleman. “You can get fired because you’re not blonde or pretty.” Unsurprisingly, manhandling by an employer must be taken stoically, though it might later be reported to a superior.

But the most telling section of the story is the rising demand for butlers. In spite of the 2008 meltdown and Britain’s painful austerity, there are now “more servants in Mayfair than there were 200 years ago,” with demands for skilled high-tech employees who can deal with advanced security systems, entertainment centres and temperature-controlled orangeries.

Unlike Downton Abbey’s beleagured, penny-pinching landed gentry, today’s super-rich have ever-expanding wants, possessions and sense of entitlement. They include exiled Russian oligarchs who have made their money picking the bones of the old Soviet system and Gulf sheikhs sucking up the profits of Big Oil, as well as hedge funders who’ve created their own parallel universe of endless profits. Not the 1 per cent, but the .01 per cent of plutocrats who control a king's ransom in global wealth.

Downton Abbey’s faded aristocrats may be long gone. But Upstairs Downstairs lives.

Olivia Ward has covered conflict, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East, Europe and the U.S., winning national and international awards.



   

 



    

Protests and penguins: Turkish media face big chill

Destroyed TV van at Taksim square in Istanbul last week. While Turkey’s largest city was convulsed  by anti-government protests,  demonstrators took out their exasperation as broadcast media looked away.  AP Photo/Kostas Tsironis

Waves of indignation swept through the Canadian media Wednesday at the news that CBC journalists Derek Stoffel and Sasa Petricic were forced to make an unexpected 11 hour stopover in an Istanbul prison.

The two were hauled in for the crime of photographing workers taking down barricades in Taksim Square, where protesters have been gathered for nearly two weeks, bombarded by water cannons and tear gas.

The CBC team’s treatment was exemplary by Turkish standards.

Courtesy of Foreign Minister John Baird and Ottawa’s consular officials, they weren’t held for months or years of pre-trial detention, charged under anti-terrorist legislation, threatened with torture or denied the right to defend themselves before “Special Heavy Penal Courts.”

Unfortunately, Turkish journalists aren’t so lucky.

Reporters Without Borders calls Turkey the world’s biggest prison for journalists. Last December they identified 72 held in detention, 42 of them in direct relation to their work.

“The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has waged one of the world’s biggest crackdowns on press freedom in recent history,” said New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Authorities have imprisoned journalists on a mass scale on terrorism or anti-state charges, launched thousands of other criminal prosecutions on charges such as denigrating Turkishness or influencing court proceedings, and used pressure tactics to sow self-censorship.”

“But these aren’t real journalists,” is the standard line from the Turkish authorities, who insist that the imprisoned people are subversives, Kurdish separatists, linked with terrorism or guilty of various “serious crimes.”

No surprise then that the coverage of the widespread protests was so limited that Turkish TV viewers got a program on penguins rather than protesters, while the international media reported on arrests, scuffles, and attacks on mainly peaceful demonstrators.

King Penguins from the British Antarctic Survey. Associated Press photo/British Antarctic Survey.

When Erdogan himself publicly denounces journalists, urges cowed media organizations to discipline critical staff members and files defamation lawsuits, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

The economic conglomerates that control much of the media are largely unwilling to risk the consequences of real reporting. Fines against media corporations have caused sell-offs and even greater concentration and cronyism.

That’s also caused a public backlash against the media in Turkey. A news van of a leading TV news channel was demolished in Tacksim Square, and the station’s CEO later apologized for its lack of coverage.

The protests have laid bare the nasty secret that the Erdogan government has managed to keep from the outside world for years: it’s a semi-autocracy masquerading as a modern democracy.

When the demos end, there will be a lot of rebuilding to do for both government and media -- starting with public trust. Chill out, penguins. What the public wants now are watchdogs.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to Europe, South Asia and the Middle East, winning national and international awards.


 



 

 

It's over: Russian leader Vladimir Putin and wife Lyudmila split

 Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russian gymnast Alina Kabayeva at meeting with the Russian Olympic team in Moscow, Nov. 2004. Putin and his wife said Thursday that they had separated and their marriage was over. Reuters/ITAR-TASS/Presidential Press Service
 

 

PERSONAL

Single white Russian male, 60 -- but check out the topless photos.
Looks: think Daniel Craig.
Likes:  tiger-wrestling, treasure-diving, flying with cranes.
Traits: firm disciplinarian
Money: how much do you want?


News that Russian President Vladimir Putin and wife of 30 years, Lyudmila, are getting an amicable divorce may set hearts aflutter from Moscow to Moose Jaw. After all, the taut-torsoed former KGB officer was voted Russia’s sexiest man a mere five years ago, especially by young party supporters.

But step away from that ad.

For years, persistent rumors have matched him up with 30-year-old “rhythmic gymnast” Alina Kabayeva, whose pneumatic image has burst from many Russian websites alongside salacious speculation.

Thursday’s separation announcement, on a Russian TV channel, was brief but vague, with Lyudmila calling it a “civilized divorce,”  because "we barely see each other," and Putin adding that it was a “mutual decision.”  But it was not clear whether the divorce had already taken place.

Few Kremlin-watchers will be surprised.

For the past five years sightings of the couple have been few and far between, and their obligatory appearances together strained. In a rare at-home interview in 2010, they described themselves self-evidently as “married,” while the president cuddled only with his dog.

 
Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila Putina at G8 dinner in Peterhof, Russia, 2006.  (Photo by www.g8russia.ru via Getty Images)

The Russian rumour mill had it otherwise. As early as 2008, a report that the couple was already divorced, and Putin planning to wed Kabayeva, led to a brusque denial and the closure of the Moscow newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent.

But gossip persisted, including unconfirmed rumors that he had fathered two children with Kabayeva, the latest last November. She has said that a three-year-old boy with whom she was linked is her “nephew.” Putin has two grown-up daughters with Lyudmila.

Will the alleged relationship come out from the cold?

Until the mid 1980s Soviet leaders' wives were mostly seen at their funerals, and Mikhail Gorbachev’s public appearances with glamorous wife Raisa raised eyebrows and hackles. Putin has kept to the old ways of secrecy, down to Thursday's tight-lipped announcement.

Whether the ebullient Kabayeva will be as obliging as the discreet Lyudmila Putina is yet to be seen, if indeed the long standing rumours are true.

Kabayeva has posed for magazines semi-nude and wrapped in a fur rug and appeared in “provocative” YouTube videos of her gymnastic routine – proving that she, at least, has nothing to hide.

Olivia Ward covered Russia and the former Soviet Union for the Star from 1992 until 2002.

Metropolis aims to soar over Canada's Superman record

Metropolis--where else?--hopes to wrestle the crown for most Supermen in one place from Calgary this weekend. (Photo courtesy of Metropolis Planet)

If you are into Spandex and kinky red boots, you might want to fly down (by airplane, we presume) this weekend to the small Illinois town of Metropolis.

The appropriately-named location is hosting its 35th Annual Superman Celebration, with autograph signings, a live theatre show and contests.

One of the featured superstars this year is none other than Canadian actress Margot Kidder, best-known for her role as the inteprid reporter Lois Lane in the Hollywood movies of the 1970s and 1980s.

Metropolis (the Illinois version) got its name way back in 1839 --  long before the Man of Steel left Krypton. But it has been trying to cash in on its name for more than three decades.

And this Sunday, Metropolis will try to win back an honour that was stolen by Canada: the Guinness World Record for the Largest Gathering of People Dressed as Superman.  Who knew, huh?

Metropolis, naturally, set the record in 2008 with 122 people, only to be topped first by a U.K. contest and then in 2011 by Nexen Inc of Calgary Alberta.

The company rounded up 437 employees all dressed in the identical Superman costume to launch its "Be a Superhero" campaign for the United Way -  you can watch a YouTube video of the event.

Organizers of the Illinois festival say this year they want to bring the record "back to the United States and more importantly to Metropolis Home of Superman."

It's not as easy as just donning cape and some boots. Official rules state the costumes must have "the blue body suit, the red and yellow 'S' shield on the chest, the yellow belt, the red cape, red boots and the red trunks."

Participants also have to stand in place for 10 minutes, which can take superpowers of your own in a twitchy crowd.

In case you were wondering which outfit to bring out of your closet, apparently both the "Classic Superman and Superman Returns" costumes are considered acceptable.

No word yet on whether you can wear the get-up to be revealed in the new Man of Steel Hollywood blockbuster coming out on June 14.

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher 

BBC report on South Africa's white poverty 'a half-arsed, skewed view of reality'

The Jonck family, South African Afrikaners, pose in front of their house in Orania. Orania is the country's only "purely" white town founded in the Northern Cape province in 1991 by Afrikaners, for Afrikaners opposed to the post-apartheid "rainbow nation", just after the release of Nelson Mandela. (STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images)

The BBC's esteemed World Affairs editor, John Simpson, ignited a bush fire in South Africa this week, with a piece entitled "Do white people have a future in South Africa?"

Mr. Simpson discovered, apparently during a recent trip, that there are white people in the country who are poor.

And so he produced a report that used white poverty as one of its central pillars and wrote a piece for the BBC’s website highlighting white poverty -- to the exclusion of black poverty, which still remains the central fact of the South African experience.

“An appalling piece of journalism,” wrote South African commentator Anton Harber – who happens to be white -- who risked life and limb editing the daring Weekly Mail during the dark days of apartheid.

Harber called Simpson’s effort, “not worthy of the BBC.”

Why?

Likely because the core of Simpson’s dispatch is flawed.

“It seems to me that only certain parts of the white community really have a genuine future here,” Simpson wrote.

That’s true.

It is just that those "parts" represent the biggest part of the white community -- in fact, the vast majority of white people.

Has white unemployment risen since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994? Indeed: from 3 per cent to 5.7 per cent.

But unemployment in Canada is 7.2 per cent; in the U.S. it’s 7.6 per cent; and in Britain, 7.9 per cent.

Among black South Africans, however, it is a staggering 29 per cent, the South African Institute of Race Relations reports.

And poverty?

In 1994 about 2 per cent of whites lived on less than 5,000 South African Rand per month. In 2012, however, that fell to just 1 per cent of whites.

Still, poverty among black South Africans is a mind-boggling 45 per cent.

Simpson wrote with urgency, that, “the people who are suffering now are the weakest and most vulnerable members of the white community.”

Make no mistake: there are poor whites in South Africa. And their suffering is real.

But, proportionately, there are many more blacks who are suffering. 

Viewers and readers of the BBC were served up, “a half-arsed, skewed view of reality,” Harber wrote.

“This piece is a caricature of how the West’s media perceives and portrays Africa.”

We pointed out in a report last December, there are legions upon legions more black people who are suffering now, betrayed by the African National Congress government.

Shockingly, some experts say, most whites are better off now than they were under apartheid.

Their future is very bright indeed.

Bill Schiller has held bureau postings for the Star in Johannesburg, Berlin, London and Beijing. He is a NNA and Amnesty International Award winner, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow from the class of '06. Follow him on Twitter @wschiller