Racism and the BBC

[Kathryn]

I've been listening to BBCNews24 during the day and it occurs to me that
while they wouldn't dream of making racist comments about coloured or asian
pople they seem to have decided that the Germans are fair game. Just over
the course of two sports bulletins today I've heard two fairly offensive (in
my opinion anyway) comments, both of which have been repeated. In themselves
the comments weren't too bad I suppose but the BBc seem to be hellbent on
portraying all Bavarians as lederhosen wearing, sausage eating stereotypes.
Firstly they were referring to the end of morning competition at the
European Athletics and said that the Germans were "all off eating their
sausages" and then later they visited the beer tent and (in a report about
the UK successes) said that "the Oompa band aren't playing God Save the
Queen quite yet, actually they aren't playing anything worth listening to at
all!" (Which bearing in mind the tent was full of people listening to them
struck me as just plain dumb anyway).
Apart from being downright rude these comments really struck me because
firstly if they'd made similar comments about the Indians or Pakistanis
(whichever team it is we're playing cricket against currently, I don't know
I'm not watching it) their switchboard would no doubt have been flooded with
complaints but because it's a group of Europeans they seem to think they can
insult them all they like! Jeeze - it's no wonder we Brits just came bottom
of a survey about European tourists if we go around with these attitudes.
The second thing that struck me is that while I wouldn't have been surprised
with comments like this being printed in the Tabloids the BBC are supposed
to be 'serious' journalists, I couldn't see the Telegraph or the Times
printing stuff like that.

So why is it that it's practically a criminal offense to insult coloured
people but the 'Frogs' and the 'Krauts' are fine, and if they complain we
just say they have no sense of humour?

K