A Corona vaccines story the BBC did not consider newsworthy in English

The BBC News website has a dedicated ‘Coronavirus pandemic’ page, a ‘health’ page, a ‘vaccination’ tab and a ‘Coronavirus vaccines’ tab.

Nevertheless – and despite its vigorous promotion of the topic of ‘vaccine equity’ for more than a year – one recent story does not appear on any of those pages.

Not for the first time, the government of Poland recently donated hundreds of thousands of doses of vaccine against Covid 19 to Iran – the country with the highest national Coronavirus death toll in the Middle East.

However, as reported by AP, Iran rejected that donation.

“Iran has returned 820,000 doses of coronavirus vaccines donated by Poland because they were manufactured in the United States, state TV reported Monday.

TV quoted Mohammad Hashemi, an official in the country’s Health Ministry, as saying that Poland donated about a million doses of the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine to Iran.

“But when the vaccines arrived in Iran, we found out that 820,000 doses of them which were imported from Poland were from the United States,” he said.

Hashemi said “after coordination with the Polish ambassador to Iran, it was decided that the vaccines would be returned.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, in 2020 rejected any possibility of American or British vaccines entering the country, calling them “forbidden.””

Despite that story not appearing on any of the above relevant pages or on the BBC News website’s ‘Iran’ and ‘Poland’ pages, we do know that the corporation is aware of it because it was briefly mentioned on the BBC Persian website’s Iran page. (translation by Google)

Apparently the BBC did not consider a story about the Iranian leadership’s continued disregard for the health of citizens worthy of coverage in the English language.  

 

More from Hadar Sela
BBC Radio 4 fails to disclose an interviewee’s ‘particular viewpoints’
The November 7th edition of the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme included...
Read More
Join the Conversation

1 Comment

  1. says: Neil C

    The BBC has to tow the line and do as they are told by their Iranian paymasters, anything remotely negative about Iran, Islam or indeed the Palestinians will never be printed by the anti-western BBC News, yet the befuddled UK listeners and viewers are powerless to do anything about this racist organisation until the charter is next up for renewal. #defundthebbc

Leave a comment
Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *