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Comment by farummi | Hacker News Reader

BBC World News has a similar purpose as Voice of America (VOA) and Russia Today (RT).

The purpose is to deliver the viewpoint of the UK to other countries, such as Iran, Russia, China.

No, you're thinking of Fox News & Daily Mail.

Sure, there is some criticism of BBC news, but I don't think you could ever compare it to the junk filled propaganda machine that is RT.

They both speak for a particular segment of the population, but do not represent the country as a whole by any means, in either case.

EDIT: for clarity, I wasn't suggesting the BBC did either.

I read a lot of RT. Many of their articles are just international reports like AP news and stuff. Don’t really see a lot of propaganda.

Yeah, of course they have to drop some real articles to look legit.

The propaganda is what's in between

Eg. Today's home page, first headline "Russia's 'secret weapon' for winning influence in Africa – and it's not what you might think".

Then have a look at the op-ed pieces that are basically hit-pieces disguised as journalism.

Also, there are things that they do not report (or omit) which is what you should be most concerned about.

This is in every kind of newspaper. You have to learn to discern propaganda from news and learn judgement.

Sure, there is some criticism of RT, but I don't think you could ever compare it to the junk filled propaganda machine that is BBC news.

RT covers factual news. They just choose to cover news that makes America, et al look bad and choose to not cover news that makes Russia look bad. Opinion pieces are of course opinions, not news, and are also usually pro-Russian policy opinions.

The value of a state run news service is that the bias is fairly obvious.

I know roughly who writes the cheques at thr BBC, RT, NHK, or DW.

With privately owned media, figuring out where they're not going to be impartial is a lot more subtle. Who's buying the ads? What other companies are owned by major shareholders or key staff?

World News TV that you get in international hotels is a commercial arm, it's purpose is like CNN international.

World Service - mainly radio, but also TV, is to deliver a UK viewpoint to the world - traditionally "the colonies".

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/history/story/2007/02/0701...

The BBC is quite subtle. It's not fake news and what they report is factual, but the choice of what facts to report makes it crystal clear that they do have an agenda.

A current example: Hongkong. They have headline reporting every time there is a protest while other protests in other countries, and arguably much more significant protests, barely get a mention. This is not a coincidence.

Edit: A lot of the replies to this comment try to rationalise. This is being willfully blind.

Noam Chomsky has written a lot about the issue of raltive importance of reporting in order to manipulate public opinion. This is exactly what is happening because it should be obvious to everyone that there is a campaign against China ongoing.

Hasn't the HongKong protests been going on for a while and with changing dynamics in protests and response. BBC reported many protests, is there one in particular that should of been more reported upon that springs to mind - for me, nope.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=protests

Sure choice of facts and style can and does show a middle-left bias, but as for agenda. If it is that crystal clear, then what is it!

I will say though, the trend of media outlets to report opinions of interviewers as news and for the populus to take those avenues of news and run with them as facts, has been something that plays out upon social media. This then as we have seen, is used by news outlets as sources of news (ala Tweets have becomes news sources now). This does create the potential for massive feedback loops. But then, no media outlet seems immune to that.

Hong Kong is a very recent former British colony, the nature of the protests are unique and there's a large public interest in the Hong Kong protests specifically. This doesn't mean the BBC isn't biased, but the number of articles isn't an indication of bias in the way that people would normally use the term I think. How are you measuring the significance of protests against each other to figure out which deserve more or less attention?

Bingo. HK was a colony and there are a lot of British citizens who became that way via that colonial dominion. It's more relevant to the UK than, say, protests in Peru.

> A current example: Hongkong. They have headline reporting every time there is a protest while other protests in other countries, and arguably much more significant protests, barely get a mention. This is not a coincidence.

Hong Kong is a former British colony with international importance, Chile is not.

Can you give a recent example of a significant protest that lacks a BBC news story?

I haven't said that they are not reported. It's the relative importance given that is obvious.

150+ people have died in Iraq over the last month during wide scale protests. There is an article on this on the BBC's website.

On the other hand, there is almost live coverage with embedded journalists as headline news every time a protester throws something at the HK police, or every time the HK police throws a teargas canister at protesters.

Iraq is not a former British colony, so unfortunately it's of limited interest to British people.

You must be joking. Who ran things there before 1936-41? Who built the airbase at Habbaniyah and was gassing people way before Saddam?

Everyone has an agenda, news and comments are product of people and people are inherently subjective. Moreover, much of written history, as the adage go, is documented by the victors. And even if you try to take it on you to read from broader sources and rank them by some kind of elusive objective reputation, you are still biased in trying to reconsile them with your prior system of belief about how world works.

I think it is still better to have access to the other point of view, and as one frenchman once said, even if you don't agree with a point of view, you should defend the right to be able to say it.

Are any of the other countries with significant protests also colonies of the UK until recent decades? The HK-UK history clearly influences the significance of that event for the BBC’s audience.

Do you have other examples?

>raltive importance of reporting in order to manipulate public opinion.

Well, state your bias? Why did you formulate it as "against China" and not "for people of Hongkong"?

Interesting this was down voted. Presumably HN readers don't think this is accurate? From what I know of the BBC I would say this is a fair comment and that TOR might be needed for people who want to get the UK gov viewpoint in places hostile to their policies, views and positions

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