Finally a good use for my license fee!
(Aside from David Attenborough documentaries, they’ve always been worth it)
(Aside from David Attenborough documentaries, they’ve always been worth it)
While I agree that no news corporation should ever be censored and should be accessible to all including the "dark-web", the level of clickbait / fake-news level content on the BBC website is getting ridiculous in some areas and contradicts with their duty to be fair, impartial and balanced as the only UK state broadcaster privileged with a royal charter.
Apart from the actual World News section, the front page + newsbeat section is completely littered with frivolous cringe-worthy content and memes that isn't worth paying attention to, neither is purchasing the TV license for.
edit: also their "reporting" on anything climate related is amazing. It's no wonder that extinction rebellion, a movement originating in the UK, has as the first demand to "tell the truth". At first I was confused because climate change in my media consumption was a regularly occurring topic. But then I checked the bbc website. See [1] for a screenshot. This is at a time, mind you, when the whole of Europe was shattering temperature records left and right, and Greenland was melting. And they choose to report on a thumb wrestling tournament.
[1]: http://muchmuch.coffee:8989/blobs/get/&Jwu6gu4Ub33VBWbmz6YbT...
It’s easy to prove this isn’t true, by looking at its Brexit output. The BBC represents middle- and upper-middle-class London, regardless of who’s in power in Number 10, and regardless of any other part of the country.
That said, I often see both sides of a debate complaining about the bias of the BBC. So long as that is the case then we can reasonably assume they are doing a fair job of walking the fine line between both sides.
This is absolutely not true, because unscrupulous parties are careful to complain vociferously (and shamelessly) even about coverage that is heavily skewed in their own favour.
Since the Andrew Gilligan debacle (where the BBC sacked a reporter and apologised profusely over the self-evident truth he had reported: that Tony Blair lied about Iraqi WMD), the BBC has gradually transformed itself from a public broadcaster to a state broadcaster. The only time you hear a reasonable balance of views on an issue these days is where the governing party itself is split on it.
This has been the BBC response to criticism of its news reporting for a long time now.
However there are very few debates which have only two points of view, and the very act of reducing every issue to a "both sides" argument is a real problem for the BBC (well, for me anyway!)
It's not even confined to clickbait, the articles are getting seriously dumbed down too - you'd think many of them were written for children!
And it's not even confined to online - the news section on Radio 1 is an absolute joke these days - if the online content is dumbed down, then this is seriously dumbed down to the point where you'd think it was for pre-school children!
So, in a way, if BBC wishes to remain accessible among people who are used to... certain popular British news outlets, it shouldn't isolate itself in an ivory tower. If BBC's domestic target demographics have a poor reading level, that's likely more of a Britain problem than a BBC problem.
There's probably also an aspect of serving populations inside Britain who don't speak English as their first language. The BBC's mission statement[1] also mentions mirroring Britain to the world, which likely increases the need for accessible language.
This is a basic soft power strategy anyone seeking global relevance should pay attention to.
"Undercover at a 'seduction bootcamp’"
"The peasant whose binge drinking went global"
"'Why I'm desperate to get rid of my bum implants'"
"We spent a morning in Rick Astley's home studio"
"Lizzo credits writer of 'DNA test' tweet after row"
I well I suppose that makes a change from:
"'I’m a Muslim artist inspired by the female body'"
"On stage at a Jewish queer club night"
To be fair I guess having Tor access to that content is probably needed in some locations. I just wish it was presented separately to genuine news content.
If you open up something like the World section (and subsections), you'll get a lot of good reporting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world
I also find the shows From Our Own Correspondent the Global News Podcast to be world-class news sources.
The main problem I have is not a lack of good content but filtering good from frivolous.
You'll see that in the technology section too.
For every insightful article you'll find 3 discussing "so called "computer mice" are a way to interact with a so called computer"...
(maybe it doesn't get stripped bc the flag is encoded as [U][K], two "letterlike symbols" but still it's the first time i've seen one!)
edit: yeah, my cat got removed :/
I guess they're distinguished by unicode block: the regional indicator letters are "Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement", and emoji are "Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs". still not sure why remove them though
System Preferences → Keyboard → Show input menu in menu bar