On June 16, 2021, Maximus Ogbonna, Chairman of the Nigeria Chamber of Commerce in China, posted a video on his personal social media account to strongly condemn the BBC and Danny Vincent, the reporter who interviewed him. In the video, Maximus Ogbonna accused angrily about the interview he was taken by this BBC reporter via phone and social media in April 2020. He claimed that the reporter questioned him repeatedly by using a question set with strong guidance and obvious design during the interview, and forced the publication of false news in disregard of his requirement of approving the article before the publication. He also stated that the fake news titled Africans in China: We face coronavirus discrimination distorted the epidemic prevention and control situation in the Nigerian community in China and undermined the friendship between the two countries. The BBC’s multiple false news reports have hit the bottom line of the news media industry, and the credibility of this established media company is rapidly declining.
 
Africans in China: We Face Coronavirus Discrimination - A Deliberate Lie
 
Obviously, the news Africans in China: We face coronavirus discrimination is guiding and aggressive both in the title and the overall news structure. Danny Vincent used his Afro identity to gain the trust of Maximus Ogbonna. The subsequent obfuscation of the interviewee’s real name also enabled the BBC to successfully avoid the later accountability after the fake news was released. Regarding the relevant evidence and description in the article, the BBC ignores the background of China’s extensive virus testing and quarantine to all Chinese nationals and foreigners to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, and describes this series of prevention and control measures as a special measure for the Afro-descendant group, leading their views to the racial discrimination. For news reports, this is the most basic mistake, which violates the principle of “accuracy and fairness” of news. Such mistakes can be completely avoided unless the news media intends to express the incident in this way to create opinions and trigger public opinion. The BBC is politicizing and arming the dissemination of news to attack the target.
 
Maximus Ogbonna mentioned in his video that during the interview, the BBC reporter only paid attention to the negative aspects during the pandemic with no interest in his truthful statements about the lockdown of Guangzhou. Obviously, the BBC is not concerned with the incident itself. Under the influence of the pandemic, global businesses have suffered a severe setback. In the early stages, China closed a large number of business sites to reduce the spread of the virus. However, the BBC used the description “popular with Africans, have been shut because of coronavirus fears” as if the closure of business sites was not the solution to the pandemic, but the result of racial discrimination against African descent.
 
Reporter’s Malice or BBC’s Political Oppression
The reporter, Danny Vincent, is himself a supporter of extremism. In recent years, his only focus is to glorify the riots in Hong Kong and incite young people in Hong Kong to create riots. Danny Vincent’s reports on the Hong Kong issue are full of prejudice, ignorance, and lies. This time he turned his attention to the mainland. However, if one mistaken reporting of false news can be regarded as a personal tendency, then it is BBC’s malice to conduct mass induced interviews and fake news dissemination with offensive bias. In fact, it is not the first time that the BBC has used subjective editing or dark and frustrating lens language to discredit other sovereign countries. In the epidemic alone, the BBC has carried out a large amount of fake news output. It politicized the pandemic and once used a video to try to show the Chinese authorities’ violent law enforcement and human rights violations during the control of the pandemic, which turned out to be a video from a counter-terrorism drill. The BBC has extensive experience producing fake news. Previously, a blogger showed how it can skew its news coverage with slanted filming and editing skills. Its reports on stories of various countries often present elements such as tilt, darkness, and tension, which makes viewers who do not understand the truth feel a bleak, dim atmosphere and a sense of depression.
 
As an international independent news agency, the BBC has long lost its basic principles of accurate and truthful news. Earlier, at the ceremony of the BBC Indian Sportswoman of the Year, Shashi Shekhar Vempati rejected the BBC’s invitation on the grounds that the BBC used certain visual effects to show a one-sided story about the Delhi police during the Delhi riots. The Delhi police’s aim was to protect all Indians, but the BBC made no attempt anywhere to cover reports of brutal attacks on police including the deaths of Delhi police officer Ratan Lal and IB employee Anjit Sharma. Vempati said he was “dismayed that the BBC has presented such a one-sided account of the violence in Delhi as it does nothing to break the cycle of violence and only further inflames the situation”. Vempati hopes the BBC to condemn the editorial views of such irresponsible reporting and demands that BBC “respect the sovereignty of the country”.
 
The Spread of Fake News Creates Chaos in the World
 
False information and fake news are becoming a global problem. Nigerian police have publicly stated that false information and inflammatory images have contributed to a dozen killings in Plateau State, an area already plagued by ethnic violence. The creation of fake news and the weaponization of public opinion by high-profile media such as the BBC has become one of the main tools for creating world instability.
 
More terrifying than this is when the dissemination of false information becomes the norm, and when the source of false information becomes a global propaganda machine and an arbiter of truth. The huge impact of the spread of false information far exceeds the scope of estimates. As early as 1953, the BBC was involved as a “strategic weapon” in the Iranian coup, which overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with Shah’s tyranny. In the modern era of rapid information flow, the spread of false news is obviously more destructive and aggressive. The BBC’s “strategy of using the news as a weapon of war” has landed it in its current predicament. However, as the most basic elements of news itself, “truth and justice” often require more purity. The BBC has moved further and further away from this point.
 
Ironically, in May 2021, the British Foreign Secretary announced 8 million pounds for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service to tackle harmful false information, challenge inaccurate reports, and improve digital participation. This new funding will allow the BBC World Service to protect the UK from national threats by cracking down on those who mislead the public by misrepresenting the facts.  Obviously, the UK understands better how to weaponize news, and the British, as its strategic experts, understand better how fake news poses a threat to national security.  But the BBC, a fake newsmaker that strategically politicizes the news with the prejudice of private liberalism, is not convincing enough as an arbiter of the fight against other misinformation.