Explain ‘doctored’ BBC, AlJazeera clips, Astro

Malaysian satelite broadcastor Astro, is yet to reply to allegations that it doctored BBC and Al Jazeera visuals of the Bersih rally.

KUCHING: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has demanded an explanation from Astro for snipping off 30 seconds of its two-minute news clip on the Bersih 3.0 rally on April 28.

The clip, which was produced by a senior BBC journalist Emily Buchanan, gave a detailed run down on the rally.

It was learnt that ASTRO allegedly broadcasted a doctored-version removing three separate sequences one of which showed a policeman allegedly firing at demonstrators.

The other two sequence were interviews with demonstrators who gave first hand accounts of why they took to the streets demanding for clean and fair elections.

In a statement yesterday, BBC said: “The broadcast of anti-Government protests in Malaysia was apparently edited before it was re-broadcast on Malaysian satellite television, with sequences removed from the original BBC version.

“The BBC is making urgent enquiries to the Malaysian operator, Astro, to establish the facts.

“We strongly condemn any blocking of the trusted news that we broadcast around the world including via distribution partners.”

Astro, which is the only satellite channel to be licensed by the Barisan Nasioanl government  is yet to respond to BBC.

Meanwhile it was learnt from Sarawak Report that  Astro had also allegedly ‘tampered’ with an Al-Jazeera’s broadcast of the massive rally in Kuala Lumpur.

The Bersih 3.0 rally last Saturday, saw an unprecedented crowd of over 100,000 rally for electoral reforms.

The rally which was also held simultaneously nationwide and across 35 countries championed Bersih’s eight demands for electoral reforms.

Among them is the clean-up of the electoral list. Ten and thousands of names of  non-existent individuals still appear on the list.

The Election Commission, which is supposed to be independent and answerable to the Malaysian parliament, is in fact paid for by the Prime Minister’s Department.

It was recently revealed that EC chairman and deputy  are allegedly members of BN lead party Umno.