Hacker News Reader

Comment by toby- | Hacker News Reader

You're kidding, right? The BBC have extensively covered the gilets jaunes, including the response of the police and government. They've interviewed protesters, interviewed police, written lengthy articles examining the cause(s) of the protests, and indeed published articles covering the police's tactics throughout the events.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/yellow_vests

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48154777

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46917989

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48983089

etc. You can find hundreds of additional articles. It's absurd how more and more frivolous and meritless these attacks on the BBC are becoming as time goes on.

One further point. You may not be referring to this, but the claim the BBC were suppressed from covering the protests was a debunked claim originating on 4chan (https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/28/bbc-ordered-stop-reporting-ye...).

View on HN

One of the reasons I think, is that the bbc app has a "popular" tab which I think is all most people bother with, and that never has gilets jaunes news. I get all my gilets jaunes coverage from twitter. I'm also not entirely conviced that the "popular" tab is entirely what is popular vs what we the bbc (and above) would like to be popular.

Your links are months old. The Hong Kong protests have much great coverage on the front page than the protests in France currently.

That's simply because they are much fresher. Otherwise the Israel/Palestine conflict would be on the front page every single day.

Of course they are mostly older articles; the protests have dwindled to the mere hundreds, down from over 300,000 nationwide. During the height of the protests, they were covered extensively by the BBC -- it's misleading to criticise their coverage with "BBC in 2019".

The BBC's latest article, which I linked, was 14 July. The BBC aren't alone in this: it's also the most recent French protest to be covered by Reuters, CNN, and other major news organisations.

The Hong Kong protests are still a major, significant event. The French protests have dwindled and are no longer as relevant.

You're honestly arguing the BBC is giving equivalent levels of coverage?

No, they're pointing out that the French protests have been covered in depth. There's no particular reason they should have equal coverage. Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997.

No? I'm not suggesting that.

I don't believe they merit equivalent courage today, in nearly August 2019. No news organisation is covering the protests in France now as fervently as they were when the protests were at their zenith. The recent protest on 14 July (which the BBC covered) numbered only a few hundred, down from hundreds of thousands[1] in prior months.

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nationalday-protes...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com