Geldof and Ethiopian aid - that old story
Suzanne Franks
is professor of journalism at City University, London
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The row between Sir Bob Geldof and the BBC about the diversion of famine aid in Ethiopia has got pretty fierce this week. It arose out of an Assignment programme on the World Service and made front-page headlines as well as generating plenty of noisy comment and accusations. I added my own views, arising out of the work I did for my PhD on reporting famine.
What has passed unnoticed is that Martin Plaut's programme on the World Service was not the first time these allegations have surfaced. Five months ago there was a piece in the Sunday Times by Jon Swain.
Swain quoted the same source - a former Tigrayan rebel who now lives in the Netherlands. And the article even included the same dramatic allegation that 95% of the humanitarian aid which went to the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front in the mid-1980s was diverted to other uses, because there was a war to fight and a movement to build.
Yet the article had no repercussions and led to no rows - although, as I tell my students at the University of Kent, it happens regularly. But this serendipity of news is always fascinating to observe.
Bob Geldof in front of the ship Band Aid I at Tilbury Docks, as it prepares to carry aid to Ethiopia following the success of Band Aid in 1985.