Gaddafi, Berlusconi, Mubarak and the BBC

I'm a big fan of the BBC. I catch the BBC broadcasts on short-wave radio as much as I can. It's my antenna into the world.

The BBC does serious and thorough news reporting.

But when it comes to sensationalism, the BBC has had its guilty share. Yes, the BBC just loves a good racy anecdote.

Year after year, the BBC reports on Colonel Gaddafi's official visit to Italy. The visits are only newsworthy because Gaddafi holds en-mass Islam conversion parties, to which flocks of Italian glamor models are bussed.

In November 2009, for example, while attending a UN food summit 200 Italian lovelies were invited. In July 2010, 500 models (!) were rounded up by an Italian model agency. He also invites said models on all-paid-for trips to Libya. Nobody knows how much success he actually has with the Islam conversion, but it obviously makes the headlines. And the BBC thinks it's a story the world can't get enough of.

I don't know if you knew, but Gaddafi will trust only a cohort of female soldiers to be his close bodyguards. In the picture above you see Berlusconi admiring one such. (And the old pope in the background waiting just next in line.)

There's no question that Gaddafi's counterpart, Berlusconi, is a buffoon too. The BBC is currently reporting on his sexual larks involving a 17 year old prostitute called “Ruby” and whether the evidence for the case amounts to enough to bring him to court.

Berlusconi's antics are many, and you wonder if and when the Italian public (the other half; not those who don't already) will have enough. But apparently for the BBC, Italy's political system is in such utter hopeless chaos, it doesn't see it fit to report on the screws that need to be set right for the economy or state. Instead, it's all about Ruby.

Ruby was arrested for theft once and held in a police department in Milan. When Berlusconi heard about it, he made a couple of phone-calls to important people and the police set Ruby free again. Berlusconi maintains his innocence and that he thought the girl was actually the daughter of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Which brings us to Mubarak and the protests in Egypt. At last, we have the news.