1,863 posts
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jan 10, 2021 22:06:43 GMT
Always disappointed by the disparaging of the BBC when people really mean the BBC News which by its impartiality is always on its back foot but on the whole is excellent at using sub text to build a middle way which is as good it can really achieve and by being equally vilified by the left and right confirms it is particularly good at its remit.
Without Radio 4 my life and knowledge would be diminished,
In Our Time
Great Lives
Moral Maze
Thousands of Documentaries
....
....
I will openly admit I am a child of the BBC, especially the Radio 4 version of life and know of no other Country in the world which has anything comparable.
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 10, 2021 22:20:58 GMT
Always disappointed by the disparaging of the BBC when people really mean the BBC News which by its impartiality is always on its back foot but on the whole is excellent at using sub text to build a middle way which is as good it can really achieve. Without Radio 4 my life and knowledge would be diminished, In Our Time Great Lives Moral Maze Thousands of Documentaries .... .... I will openly admit I am a child of BBC, especially the Radio 4 version of life and know of no other Country in the world which has anything comparable. Let me make this case, then.
The BBC make children's tv accessible at the price of £13 a month via the license fee. In order to watch, say Dr Who, you also have to pay for a news and current affairs culture that, in the view of the maj of Leave voters, has mocked and belittled you for 4 1/2 years, as well as actively promoting a middle class coup (in Peoples Vote).
Unlike Sky TV, the BBC wraps its news and current affairs agenda around the main entertainment channels and hours. Unlike Sky, it doesn't only use its news only channel for news. Instead, it promotes its news agenda on the entertainment channels - a great wheeze, if you can get away with it.
And it relies on enough people having an emotional bond with it from childhood not questioning it's market position in the modern, digital, social media landscape.
If you don't pay, your children cannot watch kids tv (perhaps unlike their classmates), and to do so is to risk prosecution. And if you pay, you are paying to be mocked and belittled. That, for very many, is the reality of the BBC.
This much I know from having spend 4+ hours a day largely trudging round social housing estates in south London (66% of voters in social housing who voted, voted Leave).
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1,863 posts
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jan 10, 2021 22:39:07 GMT
Believe you can choose not to watch the BBC and not pay the licence ‘subscription’ fee and buy Nickelodeon instead. Are you saying the BBC should be free or available for free for those on benefits? it could be if the Politic will is there and would actively support it.
Disney+ does not allow me to subscribe to Pixar alone but does not diminish its right to exist.
To me who disagrees with almost as much as I agree with on BBC News and never considered it a remain platform and thought it’s Political leads very rarely held the Tories to account on the pitfalls of Brexit and I still find £13 a month a bargain and would pay this for Radio 4 and BBC4 alone and will never complain that Radio 1 does not play music I like anymore and never watch CBeebies so deserve a rebate or that it should be split up and allow me to pay only for the Channels I watch.
It is the BBC with its broad remit that makes it the BBC and it will be a sad day when it will become privately owned and hope it remains as is until I am here no more as it is one of the only institutions that instills pride when I discuss what makes Britain special.
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 10, 2021 22:50:34 GMT
How about the BBC fund the News and Current Affairs Dept on its own channel - which the BBC already has, and already uses for news, with advertising (or nominal subscription like The Spectator or New Stateman). Just get rid of the damn pretense of 'impartiality'. Then it can compete in the market place with Netflix as an entertainment provider at about £10-12 a month - again, which it already does to an extent with ITV via Britbox.
People can choose - market forces, no one gets prosecuted, no one is forced to pay for opposition/middle class propaganda. Key: no compulsory license fee as if the digital age hasn't happened.
The whole system is set to go. It requires political will, rather like reformation of the House of Lords. |
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jan 10, 2021 23:01:27 GMT
I already pay £13 a month for the entertainment channels and am lucky to get the News and Radio stations for free.
I choose the BBC over Netflix despite its failings and that is my choice, if someone chose Netflix over the BBC that is an equally valid position.
These days with Smart TV’s we live in a world where terrestrial channels are an anachronism and we are not tied to what someone chooses to force down our TV aerials.
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 10, 2021 23:04:47 GMT
Except the UK criminal justice system says otherwise.
The BBC has had to resort to 'BBC America' - with advertising - becasue non-UK people cannot buy a license fee.
It's properly archaic, a system intended for a pre-digital age.
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1,863 posts
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jan 10, 2021 23:10:48 GMT
Believe you can only be charged if you watch without a licence, no pay no watch and we will soon be in a position to block terrestrial broadcasts to the only truly free channels.
Happy for the watching of SKY, Netflix, Disney+ .... without paying to become a criminal offence as watching any of these without paying is theft.
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Post by Phantom of London on Jan 10, 2021 23:17:03 GMT
Not a "Trump supporter". Where do you get this stuff from. Where is a credible news source though? Disagree Chris Cuomo would make a better president. 😉👌😆 How about the BBC fund the News and Current Affairs Dept on its own channel - which the BBC already has, and already uses for news, with advertising (or nominal subscription like The Spectator or New Stateman). Just get rid of the damn pretense of 'impartiality'. Then it can compete in the market place with Netflix as an entertainment provider at about £10-12 a month - again, which it already does to an extent with ITV via Britbox.
People can choose - market forces, no one gets prosecuted, no one is forced to pay for opposition/middle class propaganda. Key: no compulsory license fee as if the digital age hasn't happened.
The whole system is set to go. It requires political will, rather like reformation of the House of Lords. No one has to have the BBC. Would you really want the BBC replaced by Netflix. |
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 11, 2021 2:19:16 GMT
No. As I mentioned, the BBC has already organised platforms to reshape, to disentangle News and Current Affairs from entertainment. It has a dedicated news channel, it just chooses to wrap its political ideology around entertainment production. It also shares the platform Britbox with ITV - a joint UK product available worldwide, and subscription based.
There are any number of combinations of solutions available, many would suit consumers more. On some channels you can choose the advert or advert-free versions (obv. diff rates).
I just read this on the BBC web site - this is only part of the ever-increasing dated world the BBC want to try and hang on to: Now going to try to sleep again >>> |
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Post by NeilVHughes on Jan 11, 2021 7:38:15 GMT
It would be the ultimate in irony, one of the greatest British Institutions becomes a private and highly likely foreign owned entity due to the the post Brexit political landscape.
Nearly all of my British core values were burnt when we went down the Brexit road and we might as well add the BBC to the fire.
We seem to want to cling onto an outdated imperial world based on some myth of England but god forbid the BBC doing so, at the moment I do not recognise this country any more and have until recently considered myself British, I now will always say Welsh as I cannot sign up to the little Englander vision of our great nation that is all pervasive at the moment.
Tone is a bit stronger this morning as a truck containing critical products did not ship from France on Friday as they could not find a driver willing to take the load, will try again today.
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Post by vdcni on Jan 11, 2021 7:41:28 GMT
And of course what starts today on the BBC, all their lockdown learning programing to help parents with home schooling during this crisis.
Funny enough none of the streaming services or commercial networks are doing anything like that.
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Post by properjob on Jan 12, 2021 6:23:47 GMT
If you want to see what happens if you don't have a major news source that at least attempts impartiality look at the actual coup attempt that is happening in the US.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2021 7:17:03 GMT
The US does have news sources that attempt impartiality. The problem is that there's a sector of the population that believes that an impartial news service is one that reinforces their belief that they're the only true thinkers in a world of fools. Anything that doesn't tell them they're correct about everything is obviously biased. Recently the Trump supporters have started calling Fox News a mouthpiece of the left because it had the audacity to be critical of Trump.
It's the same with the BBC. Hard-left people believe the BBC is too right-wing to be trusted and hard-right people believe it's too left-wing to be trusted, and in both cases it's because it won't tell them The Truth that they want to hear.
I've always felt the BBC is fairly neutral precisely because it's funded from tax (although it obviously isn't going to go out of its way to be too critical of the process that funds it). Unlike print newspapers, where the main aim of every issue is to make sure the readers come back for tomorrow's issue, the BBC doesn't need to constantly pat its viewers on the back and reassure them they're the only people who see the world as it really is.
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Post by Jan on Jan 12, 2021 9:05:31 GMT
..... by being equally vilified by the left and right confirms it is particularly good at its remit. That would be true only if it was also villified by the Blairite soft left that occupies the ground between Starmer and Ken Clarke and includes the LibDems. Do that group regularly complain about BBC bias against them ? Why not ? Taking a centrist position is not the same as being impartial or neutral or unbiased. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jan 12, 2021 10:02:35 GMT
My main issue with most news media outlets is their constant desire to give their opinions rather than reporting on events/facts.
The BBC has loads of editors who love to give their opinions. Hardly a story goes by on the main news pages without us being treated to the opinions of an editor or 'head of'
I do tune these out as much as possible. But it does get tiresome.
There is a sense that the BBC likes to drive a news agenda which means there is the appearance of an official set of lines/positions.
There is also a frustrating amount of non-news being presented as news. The worst of this recently was a big splash given to Lily Allen's views of masturbation within marriage. This has zero news value. But they insisted that they were right to put this on their news website.
There is so much that the BBC does right that their news operation undermines.
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Post by Jan on Jan 12, 2021 10:32:50 GMT
My main issue with most news media outlets is their constant desire to give their opinions rather than reporting on events/facts. The performance of their reporters in the Q&A sessions at the Covid briefings has done much to damage their credibility and reputation in my view - in a forum where they have experts in front of them who have data from around the world who could answer a whole range of factual questions about Covid of interest and value to people they choose instead to normally ask a retrospective political question of the minister "Why didn't you ...." of no practical value to viewers and not only that when they get the inevitable non-answer the next one of them asks exactly the same question. Starmer is the one to ask those questions in Parliament and then they can report on it. |
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 12, 2021 10:50:45 GMT
The problem is that there's a sector of the population that believes that an impartial news service is one that reinforces their belief that they're the only true thinkers in a world of fools. The irony of accepting BBC News as impartial.
It was a great wheeze for decades - up their with the characterisation of socialised medicine as unamerican, and cigarettes make you more manly (male), or sophisticated (female).
It felt appropriate that is was the BBC's own managers who drove the organisation 'off a cliff' in the last 4 or so years.
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Post by steve10086 on Jan 12, 2021 10:58:10 GMT
Very happy with the BBC in general, BBC News, and the licence fee as great value for money. So there  |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2021 11:02:48 GMT
The problem is that there's a sector of the population that believes that an impartial news service is one that reinforces their belief that they're the only true thinkers in a world of fools. The irony of accepting BBC News as impartial.
There's no such thing as a completely impartial news source, which is why it's important to use many of them and reject any stories that aren't corroborated. It's not a problem. The problem is that many people reject a news source for no other reason than because it doesn't confirm what they already believe.
When people say "you can't trust the BBC" it almost always turns out that the core of their complaint is that they disagree with something it has reported, but disagreeing with a news source just means at least one of you is wrong. Anyone who automatically concludes that it's the news source that must be mistaken is already completely lost to fake news. |
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 12, 2021 11:23:28 GMT
And yet the BBC Charter requires impartiality as a condition of its existence. That's been the great wheeze.
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Post by londonpostie on Jan 12, 2021 11:30:40 GMT
The irony of accepting BBC News as impartial.
When people say "you can't trust the BBC" it almost always turns out that the core of their complaint is that they disagree with something it has reported, but disagreeing with a news source just means at least one of you is wrong. Anyone who automatically concludes that it's the news source that must be mistaken is already completely lost to fake news.
This isn't the problem at all. |
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Post by vdcni on Jan 12, 2021 12:14:59 GMT
The BBC's problem, increasingly so, is it tends to take the establishment view and it's approach to balance has been thrown off as arguments have become increasingly polarised and dishonest.
We saw it over climate change as despite the increasing scientific consensus there always had to be someone to provide balance despite often having no expertise or qualifications in the area.
It became more of the same over Brexit when, for example, a expert in International trade will be opposed by one of the growing legion of, mostly, right wing contrarians who litter the scene. They have no interest in telling the truth; just to generate controversy and stir up their base for attention and profit. They lie or mislead repeatedly but just get invited back. Similarly a refusal to challenge a government that has become increasingly dishonest. How many times did the BBC or any TV news ever push back on the description of nonsense like an Australian type deal which didn't actually exist.
And now again and more dangerously with Covid. Toby Young has been wrong every step of the way yet still he gets put up as a lockdown sceptic as if his views should still be considered as useful as medical experts. It's perfectly possible to debate levels of risk and the effect of lockdown with people who know what they are talking about rather than have Young shout out nonsense statistics and distort the results of scientific studies.
Two things the BBC and other news organisations should do.
Don't invite anyone on from any thinktank or similar that refuses to be honest about where its funding comes from. The Taxpayers Alliance refuses to talk about its funding and doesn't actually represent ordinary people so why do they get automatically invited on any discussions regarding tax. Similarly if you work for 'news' organisations that have a history of inaccurate reporting - Spiked or The Canary for example why are reputable news organisations gifting them airtime.
Secondly, consequences for commentators, politicians that knowingly and repeatedly lie on air. Annual bans could be introduced for offenders for example.
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Post by Jan on Jan 12, 2021 12:54:19 GMT
One interesting aspect of bias is in the selection of stories that the BBC (and others) deem to constitute news. This is particularly the case in foreign news where the BBC devotes far more time and resources to USA politics and events than to similar news from EU countries.
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Post by theglenbucklaird on Jan 12, 2021 13:01:40 GMT
One interesting aspect of bias is in the selection of stories that the BBC (and others) deem to constitute news. This is particularly the case in foreign news where the BBC devotes far more time and resources to USA politics and events than to similar news from EU countries. This is very true. But having read your post, I just asked myself if I care about Spanish politics (for example) and find I really don’t. There is something very odd with the US politics in that their system seems to have a lot of entertainment value. I was trying to work out if it was like this pre-Trump. Going to miss it when he is gone, something about a car crash and the need to view |
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Post by Jan on Jan 12, 2021 13:11:51 GMT
Toby Young has been wrong every step of the way yet still he gets put up as a lockdown sceptic as if his views should still be considered as useful as medical experts. That's just balance to giving airtime to Tony Blair as if he's an expert in vaccination. Every single example of supposed bias you give is from your own left-wing viewpoint, which doesn't add any weight to your argument. |
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