The Biased Broadcasting Corporation

[HanoiVillan]

32 minutes ago, blandy said:

With the time machine, him never being made leader is what I'm thinking. Not specifically Corbyn could've done better, but Starmer, Cooper, Benn, Burnham..many names, would have done better.

I'll make this my final comment here, as we're obviously going off-topic. However, I doubt that others would have done much better on this specific issue. If Labour centrism were massively popular, it wouldn't have been rejected at the general election a year before the referendum, and the problem for the Remain campaign wasn't not converting Labour voters (who voted for Remain in roughly the same proportion as Lib Dems). The problem was that the political coalition that gave Cameron a majority cracked, and he didn't bring Tories with him. It's very unlikely that making a Labour leader (any Labour leader) more prominent in the campaign would have increased the Labour Remain vote by more than it would have turned off 'moderate' Tories. 

There's a large element of 'if my aunty had balls, she'd be my uncle' in your argument. If Labour moderates were popular, they'd win elections. Sure. The problem is they weren't popular amongst either the electorate or the Labour party membership in 2015. 

[HanoiVillan]

 

[LondonLax]

5 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

 

He’s probably right on the broader point.

In the current media age, where more and more people are digitally streaming television, a ‘TV license’ is a bit of an anachronism. 

A number of other European countries who used to have TV licenses have now got rid of the ‘license’ and instead fund the national broadcaster from general taxation. 

Whether the Tories would maintain the funding of the BBC by other means after abolishing the licence is another question...

Edited December 9, 2019 by LondonLax

[chrisp65]

24 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

 

 

So, there’s this scorpion, and it asks a frog to carry it across a river...

[Xela]

The thing with the BBC is that the right criticise the BBC for being a leftie marxist organisation. Its hated by everyone, which probably means its actually somewhere in the middle. 

 

 

[chrisp65]

25 minutes ago, Xela said:

The thing with the BBC is that the right criticise the BBC for being a leftie marxist organisation. Its hated by everyone, which probably means its actually somewhere in the middle. 

 

 

1998 rang, it would like it’s truism back. 

[tinker]

The BBC should be spending our money on local news, current affairs and locally made programs . It's ridiculous that large proportions of our population go completely unrepresented while still having to pay for the privilege with a tax. 

I see program after program on food in France Italy but none , not one on our local restaurants, farmers , butcher's . Same as wild life , nothing on our wild animals , everywhere else accept blood Britain . 

 

[chrisp65]

17 minutes ago, tinker said:

The BBC should be spending our money on local news, current affairs and locally made programs . It's ridiculous that large proportions of our population go completely unrepresented while still having to pay for the privilege with a tax. 

I see program after program on food in France Italy but none , not one on our local restaurants, farmers , butcher's . Same as wild life , nothing on our wild animals , everywhere else accept blood Britain . 

 

Is that true?

I don’t know where you are, I guess a good guess would be the Midlands? BBC Wales constantly has programmes, literally about local restaurants and farms and butchers etc.. There’s currently a series about Italian immigrant families in the Valleys, a couple of local chefs got two series following them around Wales BBQ’ing the schizz out of anything they could find. Even Derek the weatherman has a series where he just walk about a bit. Good local footy coverage too (via Sgorio).

You can’t go out for a walk without a road being closed for filming. 

 

Ooh, just remembered the pick of the bunch ‘Wild Wales’, literally walking around the streets looking at **** pigeons and snails and frogs. Like Blue Planet, but all filmed in Tonypandy.

Edited December 9, 2019 by chrisp65

[bickster]

14 minutes ago, tinker said:

The BBC should be spending our money on local news, current affairs and locally made programs . It's ridiculous that large proportions of our population go completely unrepresented while still having to pay for the privilege with a tax. 

I see program after program on food in France Italy but none , not one on our local restaurants, farmers , butcher's . Same as wild life , nothing on our wild animals , everywhere else accept blood Britain . 

 

You clearly watch at the wrong time. Food and nature are two of the things the BBC excels at. Nothing on our wild animals? Countryfile, Spring watch. British Chefs - Saturday kitchen takes up most of Saturday morning. These things are not what is wrong with the BBC

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, Xela said:

The thing with the BBC is that the right criticise the BBC for being a leftie marxist organisation. Its hated by everyone, which probably means its actually somewhere in the middle.

It's also possible that if everybody says you're doing a bad job, that it's just really obvious you're doing a bad job.

[chrisp65]

She’s deleted this now, turns out it was filmed and she was tweeting lies.

 

[chrisp65]

 

She’s literally unbelievable.

 

 

[chrisp65]

 

 

[peterms]

26 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

She’s deleted this now, turns out it was filmed and she was tweeting lies.

 

It's supposed to be fundamental to journalism that the journo checks what they have besn told, and doesn't simply amplify stuff without some independent basis for believing it - especially when it comes from someone with a vested interest in getting a particular line taken.

[HanoiVillan]

Within minutes of Kuennsberg tweeting that, several papers had stories up on their websites claiming the 'assault' had happened, with only her tweet as a source. She wasn't the only one who tweeted the same thing; both Bob Peston and Paul Brand had near identical tweets. They have all since retracted and claimed they were misled by those damn mischievous 'senior Tory sources', who, of course, they won't name, despite having been utterly burned yet again.

[Dr_Pangloss]

C*ntberg is a **** disgrace.

[HanoiVillan]

Sarah Manavis:

Why the BBC needs a social media overhaul

'The BBC is, you could say, having a bit of a weird one. Concerns about the impartiality of some of its most prominent faces have long been a semi-regular topic of conversation among viewers, Twitter users, and indeed BBC staff – but such calls were largely ignored, with complaints typically either too niche or too weak to warrant penalising anybody. But ever since the start of this election, some of the BBC’s most senior staff have begun to creep into the territory of questionable partiality and have clearly landed themselves in the space of social media cluelessness.

[...]

Although Kuenssberg has one of the most serial cases of fat finger syndrome in this cycle, there are plenty of others making their way to centre stage. Andrew Neil, who is often lauded for his impartiality when grilling politicians from all parties, has a Twitter feed that is almost exclusively composed of retweeted content from the Sun and the Spectator – the latter of which he sits on the board for. Even Emily Maitlis, who has mostly escaped this trap, posted an extremely biased tweet on Thursday, heavily criticising the Gender Recognition Act and taking a stance on gender self-identification. She was also spotted today liking a tweet criticising Boris Johnson, saying his rhetoric was “fuelling racism in British society”.

There is an increasingly prevalent social media problem emerging at the BBC. And the problem isn’t strictly in the staff guidelines themselves (although their lukewarm vagueness doesn’t help). No, the problem at BBC is not that the rules are especially vague, but that senior broadcasters consistently flout them.

When it comes to impartiality, the BBC’s staff rulebook lists a few basic principles: not stating who you voted for, not advocating an opinion on policy or “controversial subjects”, and not endorsing one side of a political issue that is currently hotly contested.

[...]

“We should consider whether we should post particular content to our social media accounts where we think it could put contributors at risk of significant harm – particularly when they are young or vulnerable,” the guidelines read, and a look at Neil’s timeline shows he repeatedly quote-tweets people with small follower-counts, to argue their presumably critical opinions (Neil, it’s worth remembering, has a follower count of over 996K). I say presumably because nearly all the accounts he quote-tweeted in the last month have disappeared – a reliable sign that the person was getting so much abuse that they locked their account, deleted the tweet, or deleted their Twitter entirely.'

https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/12/bbc-needs-social-media-bias-overhaul-laura-kuenssberg-andrew-neil-emily-maitlis

[Chindie]

Yes. But we need to decide how this is Labour's fault.

[mjmooney]

BBC 6 O'clock news, from Leeds General Infirmary: question to female paramedic about whether she'd trust the Tories with the NHS. She had literally just started to speak as they swung across to some fat sweaty porter with no teeth who grunted: "I've always bin Labour me, but I'm votin' for Boris, to get Jezza out". 

[HanoiVillan]

I mean, it's still on the paper's websites, as are various assorted other lies (protestors were paid to be there, protestors were bussed in). Luckily Bob Peston shared this misinformation with his gazillion followers before somebody did his **** job for him.