Global News Podcast - Podcast Rankings and reviews

The BBC Global News Podcast delivers on its promise of the best news, interviews, and stories from around the world. The World Service staff (reporters and presenters, along with the editors, producers, and the rest of the behind-the-scenes team) represents the gold standard for quality, in-depth, and responsible journalism. I greatly appreciate the variety of stories and the depth of coverage. This is my absolute favorite news source - I couldn't live without it!

In the story of TI having his doctor’s hymen checked, it was irresponsible of the BBC not to include the fact that the state of the hymen has very little to do with whether or not a woman has or has not had penetrative sex. Women can be born without hymens, they can have penetrative sex and never tear their hymens, and they can tear their hymens from activities entirely unrelated to penetration. By omitting this data in their story, they play a part in the continuation of this patriarchal misinformation and practices.

Your reporting on the Greek refuge camp crisis offers a misleading sense of who these people are and why they fled their homes. You describe them almost invariably as ‘migrants’, a catch-all and pejorative way of describing anyone seeking a better life. In fact, most people crammed into the awful Greek camps are fleeing much worse conditions back home that, in many instances, European countries have played a part in creating - notably in Syria and Afghanistan. As such most are bone fide asylum seekers who deserve refugee status. The term migrants smacks of self-seeking self-advancement - people trying to ‘take advantage’ of European standards of living and welfare systems - when the vast majority would prefer to stay home, if only conditions allowed. The loose language used by many of your correspondents is the opposite of helpful (to your listeners) or fair to those long suffering people (in the literal sense of that word) warehoused on Lesbos and elsewhere in Greece.

This is an outstanding summary,
roughly 25 minutes twice a day, of news from around the world—and I do mean around the world. You’ll get US politics but unlike NPR it’s not obsessive-compulsive about US American news. Instead you get a lot from Africa, South Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. I really appreciate it and find it invaluable—a great way to start the day, end it, or while doing chores in between. Yes, it’s not perfect and yes it reflects UK interests and biases but there’s nothing else remotely as good out there.

The number of times this podcast has featured two men talking to each other about women’s bodies is outrageous. If they cannot find women experts, surely they can afford to hire women presenters. Whether it is about women’s sport or women’s health, I’m sick and tired of women being excluded from conversations about women. Perhaps the BBC should consider whether it wants women as listeners.

Shame on BBC for broadcasting recordings or any representation of hostages made by combatants holding those interviewed.

Broadcasting audio recordings of an elderly Israeli held by Hamas as if the portrayal represents anything other than the interests of the captors is so inappropriate, invasive and absurd as to represent a total disregard of a vulnerable person.

BBC may be without a moral compass, or without a business ethics compass, if this is considered acceptable.