Better Broadcasting Corporation?:

This article about Darfur is a good example. The opening in particular is powerful:

'A Janjaweed fighter walks hand in hand with a government soldier in the market place of Krenic, a village two hours' drive from Al-Junaynah, capital of West Darfur.'

Men holding hands in Africa if they are friends is perfectly normal- while a man holding hands with a woman (certainly in East Africa) indicates that the woman is a prostitute.

A small, accurate detail, and in the context telling (though, I have to say, mainly for atmospherics).

The BBC has previously run articles that implicated the Sudanese Government in the Darfur atrocites, but I don't think this directness has been bettered:

'The close teamwork of government and militia fighters in Darfur is visible everywhere.'

However, and it's a big 'however', the writer does have a number of observations that amount to a defence for the Islamic Government in Khartoum.

1)Although he claims that the Sudanese Armed forces are not involved, he fails to mention the proven instances of air-support given to the Janagweed in their ruthless campaign. How can this be explained except by direct Sudanese military involvement? It would seem the BBC does not know its own mind over this- since reports like this one contradict it.

2)He makes a number of points about the weakness of the Sudanese regime and its leader, President Omar al-Bashir's predicament. He can't trust his army, his back's 'against the wall', his 'police state' has failed because the country is too big etc. etc. -You know the feeling, when life's all a bit too much.

3)He say al-Bashir was provoked by being 'humiliated' (yep, me too) when 'in April 2003 the new rebel movement, the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), attacked El-Fasher airport in Darfur, destroying several planes.'

Ah, 'humiliated', that word to explicate all evil, is once again used in defence of a brutal practitioner of Islam.

I don't want to minimise the good things in this article, but I do think that there are straw men being set up on the Islamist side of the debate that obscure things.

From experience I think a lot of people feel it's inconceivable that the bleeding hearts at the BBC undersell situations like this. There are over a thousand articles about Sudan on BBConline. Many would say Africa is covered well.

I am not so sure.

As a Nigerian lady-friend said to me one time: 'the problem with Nigeria, there are some very bad men.'

A bit more clarity, a bit less waffle, would go a long way.