Jump to content

The Biased Broadcasting Corporation


bickster

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, peterms said:

The point being made is that the article states that 88% (5,952) of Conservative ads, and no Labour ads, were found to be false or misleading; and the headline presented the issue as being that political ads in general are misleading.

If you don't think that is a slanted presentation, I find that astonishing.

I actually think it's more balanced than most of the articles I've read this week on it. Most have gone for the outrage of the Tory 88%. This is the first article that mentions the LibDem bar charts and the various spurious claims of Corbyn that are also misleading. This isn't in Laura K territory for me. 

This is another of those stories that is getting lumped in with the rest of the BBC bias stories to add to the pile, I don't think it deserves to be in the pile. Are any of the facts stated wrong? Does it favour any one party? I think the answer to both questions is no.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

she shouldn't be visibly taking sides

Is retweeting something without comment taking sides? I've seen lots of people retweet criticism of themselves, for example.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, bickster said:

This is another of those stories that is getting lumped in with the rest of the BBC bias stories to add to the pile, I don't think it deserves to be in the pile. Are any of the facts stated wrong? Does it favour any one party? I think the answer to both questions is no.

Journalists are trained to identify the key points of a story, and to present them prominently, early in the story, before readers lose interest.  This was so decades ago when Harold Evans wrote his seminal work on journalism, and it's even more the case now that the internet has brought many competing sources, and reduced attention spans still further.

In a story about misleading ads, the discrepancy between several thousand from one party and none from the other is very obviously a key point, a staggering imbalance, and clearly newsworthy.  This would be so even if the issue of whether the tories can be trusted had not become a theme of the campaign, which as everyone and especially journaliists covering these issues knows, is one very prominent theme.

This piece of information was buried.  As another journo commented, you have to get past the headline, the standfirst, and 18 paras before discovering it.  Including other information doesn't mean the piece is balanced - it's the use of other and less dramatically newsworthy information ro submerge the key point that is in fact the cause for concern.

I don't believe the author failed to understand the importance, significance or relevance of the point in question.  Neither do I think he has forgotten the very basic principles of how ro write a story, because it would be hard to see how he could hold down the job if that were so.

I don't suppose it is naked political bias and the journo is a tory activist.  I'm more inclined to think it's the BBC wanting to softpedal, avoid criticism from the government (especially with threats about the licence fee being aired this week), and not cause a stir.  That is a problem.

It seems like a failure of journalism on quite a basic level, and one more example to add to a growing pile of concerns about how the BBC is managing its reporting of politics and this election.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is how journos are trained to present stories.

Key point in the standfirst (and whoever adds the headline reflects it), then subsidiary point, then proceed to detail.

It's absolutely basic.

Quote

88% of Conservative ads on Facebook 'misleading'

Thousands of Conservative ads include claims which Facebook’s own third party fact-checker, Full Fact, say are misleading, according to a new investigation.

Despite this, the adverts are permitted to stay on the social media platform.

Analysis by a team from First Draft found 88% of ads posted recently by the Conservatives contained content that has already been deemed misleading by Full Fact. Some of the adverts included questionable content while others linked directly to a webpage with misleading claims...

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since we've spent so much time moaning about the media, here is an example of one of the absolute worst offenders proving that he can, actually, do this stuff properly:

Simple, clear, with some information about consequences, obviously impartial but still stressing the importance of the election rather than performatively rolling eyes at it all. Just do this every time please (and don't tweet so much). 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, peterms said:

This is how journos are trained to present stories.

Key point in the standfirst (and whoever adds the headline reflects it), then subsidiary point, then proceed to detail.

It's absolutely basic.

 

But that wasn't what the BBC story was about, it looked at a wider picture. You want the article to be about point A only, it;s about points A,B, C...

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it apart from you don't think they should have done the story like that. Complain about the BBC when they do show bias (which they have done quite a lot) but stop wrongly complaining about it when they haven't. It completely diminishes the biased reporting argument 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

But that wasn't what the BBC story was about, it looked at a wider picture. You want the article to be about point A only, it;s about points A,B, C...

I have no problem with them covering extra points as well.  What I am saying is that in an article about misleading information, a finding that one party has presented over 5,000 misleading pieces and the other party none, is such an obvious, glaring, central and newsworthy issue that to bury it under these ancillary points as they did cannot be  a normal news presentation (which would have been more like the way ITV covered it), but can only be a deliberate decision to stifle it.  The headline compounds it by talking in general terms about party communications being misleading - the old, old false equivalence game again.

This is so blindingly obvious I can't understand why you don't see it.  It is a case of going easy on the government by not highlighting the astonishing finding of the study.  Presumably this was done out of timidity and fear of retribution rather than love for the tories, but it's unacceptable in any event.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, peterms said:

I have no problem with them covering extra points as well.  What I am saying is that in an article about misleading information, a finding that one party has presented over 5,000 misleading pieces and the other party none, is such an obvious, glaring, central and newsworthy issue that to bury it under these ancillary points as they did cannot be  a normal news presentation (which would have been more like the way ITV covered it), but can only be a deliberate decision to stifle it.  The headline compounds it by talking in general terms about party communications being misleading - the old, old false equivalence game again.

This is so blindingly obvious I can't understand why you don't see it.  It is a case of going easy on the government by not highlighting the astonishing finding of the study.  Presumably this was done out of timidity and fear of retribution rather than love for the tories, but it's unacceptable in any event.

Someone didn't write the story you wanted them to write Peter, get over it

Labour have found to be issuing misleading statements on Twitter, they get retweeted, these are effectively policy adverts - I don't get why you can't see the wider picture. They are all at it in different ways. you want them to focus on the one report you think they should, they haven't they've looked at others too.

It's pretty easy to argue that they've looked at more sources than you want them to. You've not once mentioned the LibDems in these exchanges, yet they are probably worse than the Tories, I suspect it's because that doesn't matter to you, it's all about Labour being whiter than white... and they aren't

They've included the fact you want them to, highly and prominently in the article, they've included others too and thats the bit you seem not to like, they should have concentrated on the Tories and nothing else. Why? And when you've come up with the truthful answer to that you might realise why you're wrong

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

Someone didn't write the story you wanted them to write Peter, get over it

It's not about what I want them to write, it's that the way the story is written flies in the face of the very basics of reporting. 

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

It's pretty easy to argue that they've looked at more sources than you want them to. You've not once mentioned the LibDems in these exchanges, yet they are probably worse than the Tories

It's not about what extra sources they have looked at, and it's not about what the Libdems do with their daft barcharts.  It is about the decision to present an utterly striking difference reported by the study in the way they reported it.  It is about the editorial choice made by the BBC in respect of how this specific story has been covered.

This is not a difficult concept to grasp.  Trying to divert this simple point into being instead about your perceptions of what I would like to see, is odd.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, peterms said:

This is not a difficult concept to grasp

Keep sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting lalalala

By highlighting stories like this you are damaging any campaign to remove the bias from the BBC. Keep on destroying the cause comrade. There's no point in continuing this

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, bickster said:

Someone didn't write the story you wanted them to write Peter, get over it

Labour have found to be issuing misleading statements on Twitter, they get retweeted, these are effectively policy adverts - I don't get why you can't see the wider picture. They are all at it in different ways. you want them to focus on the one report you think they should, they haven't they've looked at others too.

It's pretty easy to argue that they've looked at more sources than you want them to. You've not once mentioned the LibDems in these exchanges, yet they are probably worse than the Tories, I suspect it's because that doesn't matter to you, it's all about Labour being whiter than white... and they aren't

They've included the fact you want them to, highly and prominently in the article, they've included others too and thats the bit you seem not to like, they should have concentrated on the Tories and nothing else. Why? And when you've come up with the truthful answer to that you might realise why you're wrong

If you're a traffic/motorway cop and 4 cars go speeding past you in the space of a minute, let's say those cars are Blue, Red, Green and Yellow.

The Red, Green and Yellow cars are maybe going 10 miles or so over the speed limit but the Blue one is travelling at 120 mph..........which one do you go after?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

If you're a traffic/motorway cop and 4 cars go speeding past you in the space of a minute, let's say those cars are Blue, Red, Green and Yellow.

The Red, Green and Yellow cars are maybe going 10 miles or so over the speed limit but the Blue one is travelling at 120 mph..........which one do you go after?

Which are breaking the law?

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

If you're a traffic/motorway cop and 4 cars go speeding past you in the space of a minute, let's say those cars are Blue, Red, Green and Yellow.

The Red, Green and Yellow cars are maybe going 10 miles or so over the speed limit but the Blue one is travelling at 120 mph..........which one do you go after?

The one you can catch? :) 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

How does she know this..? I thought reporting on postal votes was not allowed until 10pm tomorrow as it could influence people?

From EC

It won't matter, but it should. This seems to be breaking the Representation of the People Act 1983:

ELgucAgWsAIHoXR?format=png&name=900x900

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even if she is lying and has seen nothing, simply reporting that one side is doing worse is against Purdah(?)

Of course, another Laura K moment that benefits the Tories. Who would have thought it...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I fully expect them to laugh it off, but it seems a pretty flagrant violation of the law, broadcast live on the BBC. I've reported it to the BBC and EC to see how seriously they take it. I expect "not very" to be the result.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...
Â