Media crimes

Two related pieces in the press this week:

Disasters escalating four-fold as climate change hits poor hardest, says Oxfam

"Natural disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, from an average of 120 a year in the early 1980s to as many as 500 today, says international agency Oxfam in a new report, "Climate Alarm," today. The increase in these extreme climatic events is in line with climate models developed by the international scientific community."

Similarly in the Independent: Climate change: how poorest suffer most

"Monsoons displaced 14 million people in India, seven million in Bangladesh and three million in China which has seen the heaviest rainfall – and second highest death toll – since records began. Cyclones blasted Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Hurricanes devastated the Caribbean and Central America, killing more than 1,600 Mayan people in Guatemala. Droughts have afflicted Africa, driving 14 million people from their homes."

These stories hardly hit the mainstream news. Last nights BBC TV news headlines focussed on Labour's latest scandal (the illegal funding from David Abrahams) and local news on a missing dolphin and how the police want to sell baby clothes. While the Labour fiasco needs reporting (and investigating by the police), and dolphins are great animals, where is the concern for the poor in the world?

The BBC is pretty good in comparison to the likes of the Daily Mail and the Sun. These papers are read by millions yet are complicit in not only a failure to report the most criminal of all activities, climate change, but seem to be concerned only with celebrities and how England must come first. Their attitude to the world is criminal.