Thursday, March 29, 2007

BBC Mistake

The BBC has a small link on their news front page for a quiz on the Falklands War. It's accompanied by a small graphic- you'd think that it might be one of the iconic images of the war- perhaps the Royal Marine yomping with a Union Jack tied to the antenna of his radio. But no, this is the BBC we're talking about so they used this image-

You might be forgiven for wondering what I'm on about but to anyone with any knowledge of the British Army or the Falklands War (say someone making a quiz about it) it's obvious that this is not a British soldier- that weapon in silhouette is the very distinctive Steyr AUG, an Austrian firearm that's also used by the Irish Army, but not the British or Argentinian forces involved in the conflict. Seems like such an easy thing to get right, doesn't it?

What bothers me is that if the BBC makes such foolish errors about little things like this, about which I know something and can guard against, what other mistakes are they making about subjects or topics on which I'm not so expert?

As I'm expected to pay the continually rising cost of the TV Licence in Britain to fund the BBC I expect them to, well, do a better job than this.

UPDATE - A commenter tips me off that there is a Steyr AUG link to the islands- the local RM cadets use it. If you follow the link and check out the picture gallery you'll also see the kids yomping with SLRs. Poor wretches- and the MoD thinks that the L85 is too heavy for fully grown servicemen? These cadets could teach them a thing or two. Anyway, my initial point still stands- the anniversary of the Falklands War and the BBC use a modern image of a group not involved in the war to illustrate it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

G'Day. I'm not sure if you'll read this ever again - but the Steyr does have some relevance to the Falklands in that it is used by the Royal Marine cadets on the islands.

Regards
Tim

Jay.Mac said...

Many thanks for the tip- I hadn't realised that any RM cadets had purchased the AUG. I've had a quick look but I can't find information on any other cadet forces using the AUG. Is the Falklands unit the only one?