BBC, VOA spoiling Somali language with their shoddy journalism

By Mohamed Ahmed Ali

Somalis’ interest in news is legendary. Being nomads, their lives and survival depend on getting the right information at the right time. Reliable people who relay quality information are put on a pedestal.

During the civil war, local radio stations provided the public with life-and-death updates on the goings-on in the country, especially in the nation’s capital, Mogadishu, which has suffered the hardest.

Tapping into this rich culture, the BBC and VOA have continuously increased the hours they broadcast in Somali language. Now both stations air at least two-hour-Somali programs daily.

But these efforts by the two foreign stations didn’t translate into a great, robust journalism. Instead, the BBC and VOA still treat their Somali listeners to a shoddy journalism, poor language and mispronounced words. They focus less on the real issues that are critical to Somalia’s peace, politics, stability and security. Their broadcasts are most of the time shallow and insipid. You don’t hear, for instance, much about the rampant corruption within the government or get an in-depth look into human rights abuses committed by Somali soldiers, terrorists and foreign forces other than what international rights organizations say.

Of course, the BBC and VOA are not squeaky clean. They’re foreign propaganda tools populated with young men — who despite their questionable proficiency in Somali language and little grasp of the Queen’s language — act as reporters, newscasters and editors.

Worse, the two stations seem to have purposefully lowered the bar of their Somali programs.

If polished language skills and impeccable, angelic voice were once recruitment requirements, it’s now clear that no good voice or language competency is a priority. VOA and BBC Somali reporters and newscasters barely observe Somali grammar rules; words are pronounced as weirdly as each individual reporter or newscaster fancies, giving the impression that they’re out to ruin the beauty of the Somali language.

Indeed, Somalia is not the only country that is being targeted by this rather an inescapable propaganda. Countries use the media to create opinions favorable to their interests in certain countries or regions. Hence, the job of the BBC and VOA Somali services is not to glorify Somalis’ values or focus on the nation’s interests. It’s to influence the Somali public.

And Somali staffers are just cogs in the larger machine of influencing the Somali public and destabilizing the nation. A Somali journalist with the VOA or BBC is always at the mercy of his editors whose objectives are to further the interests of US and UK governments that bankroll the two stations – he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Those basic facts have sadly eluded many Somalis who daily tune into the BBC and VOA Somali services and voraciously consume their programs to catch up on the latest news in their country and around the world.

The foreign services’ mediocre language skills and bad journalism should alarm the lovers of the Somali language. The Somali government, like any competent government, should also be alive to the danger of these foreign services that are insidiously targeting the nation’s belief system.

Before 2013, there was a US law that barred the VOA from delivering its programs to the domestic US audience. Senator Edward Zorinsky once called VOA’s broadcast a “propaganda,” saying that its programs shouldn’t be aired to the American people. The US military can only target US citizens with propaganda — popularly known as military information support operations or MISO — “during domestic emergencies.”

The VOA is a part of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, which is a US-funded federal agency that boasts of having a mission whose aim “is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.” The BBG runs all non-military, U.S. international broadcasting, says the VOA on its website. In other words, BBG is in charge of America’s soft-power propaganda machine.

The VOA’s other radio and TV stations include Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, Radio and Television Martí, Alhurra Television and Radio Sawa — all well-known propaganda tools.

In 2013, the Foreign Policy magazine reported that a former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG told it that the agency “is no Pravda, but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways,” referring to the former newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In Somalia, the VOA serves as counter-programming to outlets peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment, said the magazine.

“Those people can get al-Shabab, they can get Russia Today, but they couldn’t get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like VOA Somalia. It was silly,” the source told the Magazine, noting that the BBG’s targets include the Somali community in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The propaganda of the US military is nowadays “more focused on manipulating news and commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting material and images without necessarily claiming ownership,” according to the Washington Post.

As a country mired in a state of political instability for decades, Somalia needs more than ever before an authoritative and reliable source of information, not a propaganda or fake news.

Although BBC’s own charter requires it to be impartial, many have over the years expressed concern over its neutrality.

“The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people. It has a liberal bias, not so much a party political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias,” said Andrew Marr, a former political editor of BBC News.

Poorly-run stations spewing poorly produced or lazily gathered news items have the potential to trigger more problems in Somalia, and can eventually tarnish the reputations of mother stations, the BBC and VOA.

In recent years, the two services, particularly the BBC Somali service, began to end words with the letter “O”  instead of  “A” to an extent that one of BBC’s reporters said “Hargayso” on Feb 28 in a 2pm program. Other examples include: “Cidii gacanta ku soo dhigto. Barnaamijka qaybihiisa soo socdo.”

The websites of the BBC and VOA Somali services are also teeming with mediocre news and feature articles, with the two prevailing punctuation marks being comas and full stops. It is not uncommon to see a whole paragraph with only a one full stop at the end. Foreign names are spelled in English letters, raising queries over whether there are style-books to guide the Somali services’ writing and reporting.

The two stations’ stories read like a dull manuscript, and it’s hard to imagine that such a content is even a part of two organizations that pay a lot of attention to their journalism. Poorly-crafted headlines, marked by inconsistencies and foreign letters, are the norm. There’re, however, instances in which the Somali and English words are mixed up, such as Antonio Conte: Barcelona waan ka saari doonaa horyaalka Yurub.

While, for example, the BBC Arabic does an amazing job and tries to generate its own content that also benefits other services, the bulk of the Somali service’s broadcast is a regurgitation of the English language service, something that even the VOA Somali service doesn’t often do. There must be an awful lot of exciting political, economic, security and social stories about Somalia to report on.

The BBC and VOA must up their game and shed slothful journalists who’re not adding any value to their claim of objectivity and great journalism. The two services must stop playing fast and loose with the Somali language if they want to woo more people.

Somali journalists and media owners in the country must also step up to the plate and protect their country’s national interests, rich history, culture and language.

Ali is a contributor to The Somalia Star.