The BBC on the Rack | Hacker News Reader

The BBC on the Rack

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37 pointsTomte54 comments

>The left’s critique of the BBC hasn’t been restricted to the undefinable question of bias.

I like the way that slipped in there. Is the question of bias undefinable? Or can we define it as "The person who was in charge of editing the BBC's 2010 news coverage went on to be the Director of Communications for Number 10". Or maybe "The presenter of the BBC's flagship toptical debate programme has a history of making factually inaccurate statements about the the Labour party", or "The BBC repeatedly appoints key Conservative journalists to flagship programmes".

I mean, this isn't undefinable, it's very easily definable. For those in the US who may not understand this, imagine you had a state broadcaster funded by taxes, and it had been putting on shows presented by Roger Ailes.

I mean it's really quite basic, people shouldn't be going back and forth from political positions to the independent state broadcast. The state broadcaster should have an open and accountable procedure to deal with factual issues. Neither of those are true, and these systemic issues don't have a neutral political outcome.

What about the rest of the organisation?

What about it? The non-current affairs content is often excellent, especially the BBC4 channel. The further from current affairs, the less the pressure to engage in both-sidesism.

"Both-sidesism" doesn't necessarily result in bias, but it does make the content worse; having leftwing nonsense and rightwing nonsense in the same show will result in an equal weight of complaints from both sides, but that doesn't mean the public has been well-informed.

Perhaps the solution is to stop publicly funding the BBC (and NPR)? They are popular enough to survive on their own. Then all of the arguments are moot.

Perhaps those in favour of continuing public funding of the BBC can explain why people should be forced to pay a licence fee for a channel they don't watch. You get a criminal record - not a minor issue for anyone - if you persist in not paying if at the same time you own and use a TV even if you use it to only watch Japanese wrestling on a non-BBC channel. How would this go down in the US? If you hack your TV to make it impossible to attach an aerial (old style) or a cable service which excludes BBC you might get away with it. I'm not informed on that.

Same reason you pay for fire service even if you don’t burn your house down. It’s a public service, available to you if you want it.

It used to be the case that you required a TV license merely to possess a TV. This is no longer the case, and you can possess a TV without a license as long as you do not use it to receive any broadcast media. You also need the TV license to use the BBCs online media services, but if you also opt out of those, there's no need to pay the fee.

The BBC claim they can detect if you're watching, but this is of course, bullshit. The TV receives broadcast media - it doesn't send anything out. The only way they can catch you is in the act, if you leave your blinds or curtains open and they can see the TV playing live.

The main tactic they use to make people pay the license is constant intimidation and threats. There is a form you can fill out to clearly state that you do not use a TV for any of the purposes which require a license fee, but this has little use as the bullies will still come knocking even if you fill it out.

The main thing people need is awareness that they do not need to pay the license fee to merely own a TV for watching Netflix or anything not covered by the license. If one of their cronies comes knocking, you tell them to get lost. If they come again, threaten to report them for harassment. If they take you to court, you explain that you don't use the TV for any of the covered purposes and the BBC pays your court costs and leaves you alone after that.

> It used to be the case that you required a TV license merely to possess a TV.

This has never been the case.

Worse in Germany. In the past, you paid for public broadcasting if you possessed a device capable of receiving a broadcast - independently of what you used it for, or if at all. Even that wasn't coercive enough for the powers that be, so now it's just a household tax, no way of escape left.

> The TV receives broadcast media - it doesn't send anything out.

Old school CRT TVs and monitors most definitely rebroadcast what they are displaying [1]. Modern TVs still do, but not at the same power levels. I would guess that a tempest attack on a modern TV is very difficult. I don't know if the BBC has ever used any of these techniques. But it's not impossible.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28codename%29

Seriously, that was ridiculous. Their bias is practically worn on the sleeve.

I will never forget the way the BBC "covered" Corbyn, with the heavy handed propaganda techniques and constant repetition of patently ridiculous smears. Meanwhile, that BoJo prick had his gaffes covered over, such as [1].

I'll never forget how the BBC "covered" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and David Kelly.

The original article mentions ever so briefly how the BBC "covered" the troubles - it was a constant stream of one sided filth for decades. To this day, coverage of those years remains sheer propaganda, though with less naked venom and foaming at the mouth.

So, when people write articles like this implying the BBC walks a tight rope of bias, my stomach churns. Like the Guardian, they never deserved their reputation and have gotten tremendously worse in the last decades.

[1] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-boris-joh...

> Like the Guardian, they never deserved their reputation and have gotten tremendously worse in the last decades.

Thanks for the comment. As someone from outside the UK I know very little about the BBC. Could you elaborate on your views regarding The Guardian?

The parent comment does not represent the views of most British people FYI.

The Guardian has come under fire recently for having a pretty anti-trans editorial board. At the same time, it's still one of the more left-leaning broadsheets in the UK.

The Guardian presents itself as Britain's establishment left newspaper, but undermined Labour's leader, the most effective left wing leader in the country, constantly and consistently for years.

The Guardian being fake left wing might not be the view of the average Briton, but Chomsky and Klein would agree. The average Briton voted for Brexit then Googled what it meant after they won. Also, I'm not British.

Left wing leaders should not be immune from criticism from the left-leaning press. Much of it well deserved I would say, as would a good number of his MPs. His replacement (announced today) has a mountain to climb

> I'll never forget how the BBC "covered" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and David Kelly.

Are you serious? There was a whole government-sponsored inquiry over this that kneecapped the BBC basically because it had covered the intelligence that led up to the war critically.

Yeah - they sure shut the fuck up about that inquiry when David Kelly showed up dead in a field two days later didn't they. They called it a suicide and never brought it up again.

Much like how the BBC has "covered" torture, collateral murder, and the likes which Assange and Snowden revealed - better than the tabloids, and not nearly good enough.

I’m sorry, but your facts are wrong. The inquiry was around the events leading up to David Kelly’s death, not the other way around .

And re: whether he was murdered - pretty much everyone who knew David Kelly, including his wife, called it a suicide because there was absolutely no evidence that his death was anything but a suicide.

I don't know who you're trying to fool, this thread was scrubbed from the front page. Anyway:

He gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the 15th and 16th of July, and was found dead on the 17th.

...

> One of the witnesses who gave evidence to Hutton was David Broucher, the UK's permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament. In 2002 or 2003 he had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded; Kelly had replied "I will probably be found dead in the woods".

Don't remember BBC making much of a deal of that quote.

His wife was probably scared shitless and in no space to fight. And there were many who didn't find the official line credible including doctors, the former leader of the Conservative Party, and MP Norman Baker, among many others. Try checking your own facts before calling people wrong.

Yes, lots of people don't find the official line about the Kennedy assassination or the 9/11 attacks or the MMR vaccine convincing but hey, I don't pay attention to them either.

The idea that you know more about David Kelly's state of mind at the time than his own family is sort of galling.

I mean, the right has a similar critique of the BBC: 'the outgoing Leader of the Opposition's Director of Communications learned his trade from his daddy running the whole BBC', 'The presenter of the BBC's flagship topical news discussion programme has had successful complaints held against her about her treatment of a right wing guest' and 'the BBC is frequently accused of having a liberal bias by its own journalists, including some who aren't notably right leaning or confrontational'. And it's equally insubstantial about actual reporting - with complaints about that having been upheld on both sides for various programmes over the past.

Apparently people who present political programmes sometimes have political views and differences of opinions, and sometimes get hired by partisan bodies. Who knew? FWIW the current Director of Communications for the Conservative Party in Number 10 is a guy who was previously employed by an outspokenly Labour-supporting tabloid to chase round previous Conservative PMs dressed as a chicken during election campaigns. And the BBC's most outspokenly conservative journalist Andrew Neil is someone the left were desperate to see interview the Conservative party leader in the run up to the election on the basis they expected Neil to absolutely savage him.

> the left were desperate to see [Andrew Neil] interview the Conservative party leader

Indeed but it was because all the other party leaders had submitted to his interviewing and it was seen as blatantly unfair that someone with a track record of, let's be nice, wildly inaccurate and misleading statements should be able to skip the process.

Agreed. But it was also because regardless of his politics being largely aligned with Johnson's and if anything further to the right, Neil could be relied upon to aggressively question Johnson on his inaccurate and misleading statements and track record in government (more so than some of the lighter interviewers who I suspect have considerably greater issues with Johnson and his platform). If they'd thought Neil's [undisputed] personal bias would have lead him to softball or even stan for Johnson rather than challenging all the candidates equally toughly, it would have been different.

You've missed my point, the point isn't that a right wing person is on the BBC, the point is that the BBC shouldn't be political and by having prominent partisans employed and having a revolving door between the "non-partisan" BBC and political organisations you fundamentally create a political organisation that is an arm of the state.

It doesn't matter who the Conservative party have as their director of comms, it matters that there's a revolving door between a state broadcaster and the political orgnisations that they are menat to be covering.

> For those in the US who may not understand this, imagine you had a state broadcaster funded by taxes, and it had been putting on shows presented by Roger Ailes.

As a British person living in the US, this is absolute nonsense.

Roger Ailes used his television network to aggressively present a one-sided view that demonised progressivism, and fed baby-boomers a steady diet of Republican talking points every evening.

The BBC has done nothing remotely similar – but it makes a very convenient punching bag for supporters of the previous opposition leader – a man who had the ardent support of the party faithful, but who was incapable of translating that into national appeal.

The BBC has been doing pretty badly. For example, you may recall that there is currently a global shortage of every single consumable required for coronavirus testing. The BBC has been running multiple articles a day pushing the narrative that this is actually a local political failing of the current party. They're particularly keen on the angle that the government has failed because they're not testing NHS staff, meaning they have to self-isolate unnecessarily. Almost no countries in the world have enough tests to systematically test their medical staff. A few of the more affected cities in the US have started doing it recently, and Germany is probably at least capable of it as of a few days ago, but that's more or less it. Also, all the current tests give a false negative on about a third of people who have the coronavirus, so telling medical staff or anyone else not to self-isolate based on them is a terrible and dangerous idea. Public Health England's contact tracing program specifically told people who'd tested negative to remain quarantined for the full waiting period because of this.

From your comments, I'd almost believe the government were doing well, rather than overtaking Italy in deaths per day at this point on the curve:

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

All the reports you've mentioned are also echoed throughout the UK press.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/02/shambles-cha...

Even the Telegraph - a massively pro Tory paper that has had Boris Johnson as a writer - is ripping into the government over its testing.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/thursday-morning...

> Almost no countries in the world have enough tests to systematically test their medical staff.

Key word that... 'almost.'

It can be comparable to other countries and still be a failing. Our task here isn't to beat Germany, or China, or America. It's to beat the virus.

We need to compare our availability to our needs, not to Germany's availability.

Am I the only person who didn't recognise the domain and clicked on the headline hoping for a rackmounted 1980s microcomputer?

The BBC deserves our eternal gratitude for having broadcast Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Today's BBC is as connected to Monty Python as Fox News today is to season 4 of the Simpsons. Probably less.

BBC today is not just BBC News.

Has anyone done any quantitative measurement of the BBC's bias? I feel like there must be some way to do it using sentiment analysis and other news sources as references somehow.

An unbiased view of bias? Is that even possible?

IMO, the BBC can't be very biased because all sides accuse it of being biased against them!

But then one might argue that accusing the BBC of bias against your side is a calculated approach to deflect accusations of bias in favour of your side.

This is indeed what the right does.

And the right would say it's what the left does. Your turn.

Just because two opposing sides claim to have the correct answer, doesn't mean there isn't a correct answer.

I agree! I just don't think 'You're biased!'/'Nuh-uh, you're biased!' gets us any closer to it.

“The bbc” is a large organisation with many reporters and editors.

Those reporters and editors put out biased content from the left and right.

There are good arguments that the BBC do not criticise the current government and some people take that to mean that they support the government. That is exacerbated by the fact that David Cameron appointed prominent Conservatives to directorial roles in the BBC.[0]

But yes, the news they put out is not unbiased- it’s just that they have bias in all directions depending on who is writing and editing.

[0]: https://www.ft.com/content/7ba884c2-176d-11e6-b197-a4af20d55...

Generally, I think "the bbc" is centre-left (upper-middle-class flavoured).

Their positions on most issues conform to that faction.

I know what you mean but I think it's unhelpful to define it in terms of left/right. I'd describe them as having a bias towards the typical metropolitan liberal outlook.

The reason I'd describe it this way is that it's much more apparent on social issues and certain aspects of international relations, where they don't even seem to understand that other viewpoints might exist. On economics they seem to have at least some awareness that there are a spectrum of viewpoints and take a more consumerist view as often as they do a soft left view (although they still never really seem to consider libertarian or harder left viewpoints).

the BBC can't be very biased because all sides accuse it of being biased against them

I don’t think that’s true. For example you won’t find many Remainers claiming that the BBC was pro-Leave. Nor would you find many opposing Scottish independence saying the BBC was pro Scottish independence. It clearly does “take sides”.

The traditional left-right axis doesn’t work as a model here. The BBC’s bias is towards the opinions and interests of upper-middle-class Londoners, some of which would be traditionally be considered left and some of which would be right.

It depends on the show and the presenter. John Humpfreys was very pro-Leave -- there was one segment on the Today program where he was interviewing someone advocating for a people's vote and angrily asked them how working people would feel betrayed (or something to that effect); meanwhile, he was very soft when interviewing Gove and other Tories. The same applies to how the Today program focused its vox pops on Leave-voting areas.

Likewise, if you look at something like The News Quiz, that and the presenters/guests are left wing and pro-Remain.

The BBC's bias can be considered as pro-State. While some of their journalists and presenters have their own biases, the overall direction they take is to act as the mouthpiece of the government, particularly for international coverage. For domestic coverage, there is enough representation of the opposition to at least make it look like democracy is working and that people aren't being manipulated to do exactly what the State wants them to do. They hold the government to scrutiny on minor issues where there's a difference in the views of the opposition, but on major issues where both parties are united (for example, on going to war), the BBC simply repeats what they're told to.

Some people do, such as how often right-wing vs left-wing guests appear on various shows. I’m not sure how useful these stats are though.

For e.g Nigel Farage moaned that the BBC and Question Time is too left wing, when ironically at the same time he was invited on the show more than any guest in its recent history.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nigel-farage-set-record-question-t...

That is not ironic.

How many other right wing guests did they invite?

This is typical la-di-da lefty nonsense, thinking you can deflect from your negative behaviour by presenting shallow statistics.

Hey, guys! isnt like so funny cuz...look at the number!

The BBC routinely imposes their favoured races onto representations of British history and culture. I suppose that is "right wing". Is that what you are getting at?

It is ironic, the person whose views are most represented on the programme is complaining his views are under-represented? That's ironic.

As for how many other guests did they invite? Go and look it up, they have a publicly disclosed formula for which views gets represented and it's based on prior election performance and current polling during election cycles. Which is why it's so funny - it's just a nonsense to complain about the number of right wing guests.

Alternatively, the fact that the BBC is so bad at finding a broad selection of conservative voices to put on shows like Question Time that they keep on having to invite Nigel Farage back is a good demonstration of how their political leanings are causing them to fail at representing conservative views. I'm sure I've read a damning analysis of the BBC's process for finding conservatives to invite on and its failings along these lines.

It is you and this other person that are making this claim.

Provide the evidence to support your claim.

Or, just for fun...name 10 other genuinely "right-wing" figures they have on.

Corbyn was smeared as an anti-semite with "evidence" every bit as good as Vice's "evidence" on Stallman.

BoJo had his gaffes covered with kid gloves, the BBC going so far as to pass off obviously fake footage to make him look competent. Despite his talk of "watermelon smiles" and "picaninnies", or the horror Tory policies had inflicted on Britain's vulnerable, or the srious, international lies Johnson was caught in, the BBC gushed on how affable and charming his persona was.

I would love a quantitative analysis, but I don't need one to see the truth. They can't be trusted much more than the Daily Mail or The Sun.

You probably aren’t interested because you have made up you mind already, but are you aware that the use of the watermelon smiles etc was in an article to satirise the kind of attitude that would use those terms? An article critical of outdated colonial attitudes.

There are methods of media analysis, basically taking every story and grading on certain parameters, exposing potential biases, positive or negative angles and such. It's journalism 101.

From my perspective I pay more for the BBC then I do for either netflix or prime, yet get less value from it personally than either.

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