BBC censors its own archives
nationalreview.com
nationalreview.com
This is a massive simplification which somewhat undermines the overall article. The government does not automatically own or have the copyright of the material broadcast by the BBC, definitely not in the strict IP sense. The BBC is a 'public corporation': neither a private corporation nor a government department. Furthermore, it generates revenue independently of the license fee, e.g. from sale of content overseas (and advertising on its .com site, as opposed to the .co.uk site we see in the UK).
I'm not saying that the BBC is right or wrong to modify it's historic content, just that the argument that the content is publicly owned is flawed.
So while I agree they shouldn't be doing this, I wouldn't use the "publically funded" argument. It muddies the waters and makes rebuke easier.
> Cough fuel duty
Revenue from fuel duty isn't exclusively used to pay for the road system. Same for vehicle excise duty. As with most government spending, road building and maintenance is paid for out of general government funds. Hypothecation is rarely used in the UK tax system.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01...
When much of this content was made, there were not even VHS tapes or streaming sticks, meaning the only thing a television would have been used for was the BBC. And you can't argue that it was not compulsory - BBC ran scare campaigns for decades about their "TV Detector vans" to fine people who didn't pay.
To me, the method might be different, but that doesn't change the publicly funded status.
I don't care if it wasn't funded the same way as roads. It was still publicly funded, just in a different way. I believe that anything that had compulsory public money going into it should be properly archived, be it film, or software, or old documents.
You'll be pleased to know that the archives are intact! You can even view off-air recordings at https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/bob/
The article is only talking about broadcast repeats.
For the purpose of this article, though, they are "intact" in the sense that the archives themselves are not being "censored", right? Only broadcast repeats from the archives (which remain untouched and, for want of a better word, intact.)
What would not be acceptable would be to delete original content that has already been created because it's unsuitable for modern sensitivities. The best approach could be to offer the adaptation and have an option to watch the potentially upsetting content. I think broadcasting content that, for instance, promotes racism, homophobia, or misogyny, violates the BBC's mandate "to act in the public interest". OTOH, pretending it never existed also goes against that mandate.
There is no compulsory public money going into the BBC, as evidenced by the fact that I was not required to pay a single penny to the BBC for the 36 years I lived in the UK.
This is putting aside the argument that were it to be publicly funded, it must be properly archived. I don't know where that entitlement comes from.
That's because everyone benefits from roads, not just motorists. I make this argument constantly in California related gas tax discussions...
The majority of wear and tear on roads is due to large commercial vehicles. Most of the cost and benefit of roads is transportation for the good you buy not the people they move.
The mental gymnastics around funding for the BBC (and other government owned medias like CBC) is really interesting. Ultimately funding comes from the government, no matter what.
It's just that instead of writing them a check, they give them the privilege of collecting a tax (and the government decides how much they can collect). I don't understand why some people try so hard to muddy the water around this to make it sound like these broadcasters are not government sponsored. It's very dishonest.
Note that these pain points could end at any time by simply… making the BBC/CBC private entities that must fund themselves by simply making content that people want to watch. That’s what everyone else is already doing (and if you look at companies like Marvel and Disney, is extremely profitable).
The organisation has a duty to serve all members of the UK.
Removing language which degrades segments of this audience, is clearly within its remit.
A dogged determinism to 'not rewrite history', is not.
I'm thankful you're not on the board.
> Removing language which degrades segments of this audience, is clearly within its remit.
If this logic stands, it can be used by any government/ organization as a reasoning for censorship. Well done.
Slurs against minority groups, aren't necessary.
For example, when Disney Plus was new, I decided to watch Peter Pan with my kids. One was 4, and one wasn't even two. Curiously, I couldn't find Peter Pan in the "kids" mode, so I switched back to the adult mode and put it on. There was a very subtle warning about "outdated cultural references," but I didn't think much of it as I've seen Peter Pan a few times.
The Disney Plus version reintroduced "What Made the Red Man Red?", an extremely racist musical bit. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Made_the_Red_Man_Red%3F) In the past, this song was cut from the VHS and DVD version. (And I have vague memories of wondering why the lost boys returned to their tree dressed as Indians.) I had no idea that this was put back in the movie. My jaw dropped when the song came on. I was in so much shock that I didn't think to skip the scene.
Now, I have no problem preserving the uncut film, and making it generally available! But I also would prefer to show my young children the cut version of the film, and only show them racist material when they're old enough to understand why it's wrong. (After all, those who forget history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history.)
Watch your mouth young man! It's "dressed as native Americans".
Both to be honest.
>"American Indian" is not a term particularly frowned upon.
Are you saying that or have you asked a native American?..because that's the whole point i try to make.
Then again, a friend of mine who's Apache asked me to use the term "Native American": "The people who want to be called Indian are ignorant people from the reservation." Which, wow. Seemed kinda presumptuous to me, but whatevs.
Apparently, some Indians find "Native American" offensive, and some Native Americans find "Indian" offensive. Just ask directly, is your best bet.
This video is from CGP Grey's educational channel and it is an essay/study on different people's (in particular Native Americans) views of the name "American Indian".
Having grown up with Peter Pan on VHS I can assure you it was not cut from the US VHS release (at least not the ones in the white plastic clamshell cases that Disney VHS releases in the 80's/90's came in).
It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist. Guess what? It's also called "black magic" in Serbia since centuries ago, when noone here ever saw non-white man. Black in this context symbolizes darkness, and fear we feel in the dark. Not a skin color.
Btw. "roleplaying" cowboys and indians was a pupular childhood game in 80-ties here. Although Indians (I'm using this term since it's still the only one used around here) were typically portraited as bad guys in movies, they were as popular as cowboys in our games and many children wanted to be like them.
Surprisingly (but maybe I missed a memo), the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), is in fact defined in terms of master and slave devices; but, I'm not aware of any movements to redefine it. The embedded systems world has not (yet) been cleansed and re-educated.
It's a new Puritan era.
That's just making stuff up. IIRC, "master branch" comes from "master copy," which has long established usage and connotations of "thing you make copies from." My educated guess is that "master" in this case ultimately comes from the idea of someone who "mastered" a craft and created an item that less skilled workers would then copy to mass produce. "Main" lacks those connotations, which actually makes it more confusing.
If you want to use a different branch name, fine, but please don't make up BS justifications for doing so.
Honestly, if you're looking for an alternative that's about as intuitive as "master," "root" is probably a better choice than "main" (at least given the branching system I've always used).
This broke one of my package managers the other day. New employee couldn't get up and running.
If anyone from Facebook/IGListKit is reading this, go pound sand. Can't wait to remove your lib entirely.
That might well be the problem. Some people will regard that as "cultural appropriation" regardless of the surrounding circumstances. That is, even if the "appropriated" subculture is totally okay with the practice, it's still considered wrong - apparently, the new standard is other cultures must always live totally isolated from the "dominator" culture, as if in a zoo or under a viewing glass, for the sake of hipster-like "authenticity".
It's "extremely racist" because the new requirement by certain ideological groups is that depictions of certain ethnic groups has to be done with extreme sensitivity, otherwise they're racist. It's an extremely high bar (e.g. I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied). The result seems to be a general expungement of Native American imagery in the US, even of some stuff created by Native Americans themselves.
> It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist. Guess what? It's also called "black magic" in Serbia since centuries ago, when noone here ever saw non-white man. Black in this context symbolizes darkness, and fear we feel in the dark. Not a skin color.
First they go after the mockery, then they of after the innocent stereotypes, then they go after the things that just have a coincidental relation (because they can't stop).
I think what you are missing here is that there is no history in the US of genocide against people of English or French descent. The US has a long history of exploiting American Indians, forcibly relocating them at gunpoint, or just killing them outright.
Part of what made this possible was systematic dehumanization of American Indians by portraying them as ignorant savages who were incapable of being "civilized" due to their race. This is the exact dehumanization that Disney was engaging in for laffs in Peter Pan.
Obviously, we need to do more to make up for this history of injustices against American Indians. But I find that those who speak loudest to justify racist caricatures against them are the ones least likely to want to do anything to redress those injustices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Massacres_of_Native_A...
> I think what you are missing here is that there is no history in the US of genocide against people of English or French descent.
I'm not missing that, and I'm well aware that kind of logic is used to justify the different standards. However, those justifications aren't terribly relevant to what I was describing, which was the standards themselves and their results.
As an aside, that justification isn't terribly satisfying, and has some pretty significant rough edges/internal contradictions (e.g. implying that racist/stereotyped depictions are OK so long as there's "no history in the US of genocide against" against the stereotyped group).
For example, making their skin literally red. Potentially artistic license, but also very odd considering that isn't a real skin color. Or stating that they were white to begin with and then were turned red, implying a type of deficiency/aberration from "normal" white. Plus the term "redskin" was used historically as a pejorative and associated with contempt, derision, condescension, or sentimental paeans to the noble savage. The stereotype of huge noses also is frowned upon since it was used to make claims of their savagery and brutishness unlike the civilized Europeans. (See also stereotyping Jews as having big noses)
Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language. This is probably the biggest issue. The tribes actually had a full language for communication, not just a bunch of grunts.
It also takes something that would have very specific and special meaning, a war dance, and turns it into a party dance.
The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid since she's a girl instead of letting her join in the fun.
The lyrics never say that the native were once "white" and turned red. It says that they're red because they've all been blushing. The "white" skin color is never mentioned nor even implied, anyone can blush and it has nothing to do with skin color.
> Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language.
The song gives actual words in some constructed native language, together with their translations. For such a short and simple text, the implication that they can do a lot more than just grunt could hardly be any clearer!
> The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid ... instead of letting her join in the fun.
They're showing that their native culture encourages women to work and make themselves useful to their community and tribe, and that their contributions will be properly valued in return. Have you never heard of the Ant and the Grasshopper? It was quite a popular story among native Americans, despite originating in the Western world.
Do you have a handy link for that? Google cannot find anything useful for me right now that isn't just some people on Quora...
Not just with magic but the idea of white/black, light/dark as a placeholder for good/bad qualities being racist. Seems much more obviously related to illumination than color to me (scary/bad things happen in the dark/blackness/night).
This is a bit of problem for us outside of USA. We don't experience US culture from everyday interactions. We mostly get it online where many things are exaggerated and polarized more than in reality.
So, is there a controversy around "black magic" the US or not?
That I can't answer being outside the US myself, alas.
Many of the tribes still in existence today refer to themselves, in English, as "Indian" or "American Indian" (and many Native American) but most just use their actual tribe name. "Native American" is a weird term to be the "PC" term as it's very Euro-centric. I think the outrage culture's issue over the term "Indian" is a lot more being offended on other's behalf than the parties themselves being offended. At the very least, they're grouping together a lot of different tribes who have different opinions and treating them as a monolith which, to my eyes, is the thing we shouldn't be doing.
I don't see why "native american" has to be euro-centric. They are the people that were living before the europeans (and middle-eastern, asians and africans) arrived. Those are also american now (as in: they are now citizens of a nation in the american continent), but I think we can distinguish the original population as "native".
On the other hand I (personally, as a mixed race native american, I know other people don't mind) quite dislike the term "indian" as it stems from a confusion that europeans had many centuries ago...and somehow they haven't bothered to correct it?
Take it as an opportunity to learn and raise antifragile kids.
The whole thing should be a non-issue though now, because they have their own platform (iPlayer) with which they ought to be able to provide both versions in a user selectable manner (with necessary age checks if that's deemed necessary, as it is for certain content already on there). This gives the ideal compromise, as it doesn't rewrite history whilst ensuring that people who may be offended have an option suitable for them.
This leads into the other thing they should be pushing to achieve, which is to get much more of their archive accessible to UK license payers - clearly 100% would be a tall order but it's a good target.
Just about every debate about ‘censorship’ I’ve encountered ends up with people debating the meaning of the word itself. And, there is a sizable contingent of people asserting only the government can censor. It’s already too late.
The Family Shakespeare publication shows that was the case back in the 1800. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler
> What the hell went wrong with the western world
This, to my reading, implies that there was a time when things were "right" in the western world. And, at some point, something went wrong.
I'm old enough to remember when the only things that weren't censored were the racist and sexist bits.
Now, a ridiculous number [1] of Americans support censorship. We have surveys showing most college kids want to ban “hate speech” and heterodoxy [2] (big problem- who gets to define “hate”?).
The ACLU is backing away from defending free speech; here’s a former director of the ACLU [3].
Journalists now regularly host intelligence community propagandists [4] and support “fact checking” and government mandated bans on “misinformation” [5]. Again, who decides? And not just who decides what the facts are, but who decides what facts to check? Who decides what is “misinformation“ and what are the consequences if the holders of this power are shown to have misjudged?
[1] https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/20/the-new-censors-polls-...
[2] https://thompsoncenter.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/509...
[3] https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams...
[4] https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/23/cnn-msnbc-15-spooks-mccab...
[5] https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/misinformation... and https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/11/9/journalists-iop...
That's definitely not the case in the UK however. And literally never was. The UK has a law banning "obscene publications". It has strong libel laws. It has a broadcasting regulator who can tell the BBC or any other broadcaster (including cable ones) what to do. There is no change to the status quo here.
The ACLU has gone to shit, but that's because all institutions go to shit.
> Journalists now regularly host intelligence community propagandists
I hate to sound like a broken record, but "now"? I just don't know what media you watched that didn't do this. Maybe pick up a used copy of any Bagdikian from the 80s/90s? Or Project Censored?
I feel like young people who grew up on the internet, saying whatever the fuck they wanted because the tendrils of capital and the state hadn't figured out how to stop them yet, have no awareness of the very recent past. And it somehow turned them all into John Birchers.
The reason corporations are woke now is because right-wingers, centrists and apolitical pseudo-libertarians are going to vote in their interests no matter what happens. The only people who potentially oppose them are also woke, so the effective thing is to focus on getting as many of them as possible to ignore everything but racism/sexism/homophobia, which profits couldn't give half a shit about, instead of focusing on our kleptocracy, which is a necessity for profits.
I understand that the situation is oppressive, and violates your sense of justice and your basic ideals of an open society. Society has never been a spherical cow, it's been a production system sitting on the backs of women, minorities, and wage laborers. If you only notice the suppression of speech when it's largely aimed at scientific racism, men's rights activists, and people fighting for the right to spread disease, that says something about you: maybe not that you're a bad person, but that you're a young person, or a sheltered person, or that you've been inattentive to the world until it encroached on your ability to complain about affirmative action or accuse China of being an ancient evil enemy trying to kill us all.
Other people are trying to pay their rent and eat. You might have trouble trying to pay your rent and eat. But if so, name a single thing that woke fascism is keeping you from saying that's materially important to your life?
All I can say is: First they came for the Palestinians... then they continued to come for the Palestinians while white dudes were protesting for the right to say that women naturally hate math.
The shift is clearly more of one from ideas that certain groups consider to be of no value ("vulgarity") to stuff which they consider to be at least relatively valuable "the treatment of casual racism as completely normal behaviour which shouldn't provoke any reaction and might actually be funny, because that's just how things were in the good old days".
The type of edits engaged in have not changed at all, merely the subject matter, which has always had an ideas and politics and offence-based dimension but now takes a somewhat less conservative stance on what is and isn't appropriate. Arguing a threshold has been crossed because casual racism has replaced other things like homosexuality or mocking royalty on the long list of reasons the BBC might deem a sequence inappropriate for broadcast in certain contexts isn't a principled preference for freedom of artistic expression or the circulation of political ideas, it's a culture warrior's opposition to antiracism specifically .
One minor nit: the Sinn Fein revoicing was done by the BBC, but not for that reason. The government had required them not to broadcast SF and IRA 'propaganda' and the revoicing was a way to get around that ban. Thatcher was, apparently, livid.
The BBC production could have been using a later edition (possibly based on the First Folio from 1623) which censors all the references to God and other blasphemy like "zounds", which is short for "God's wounds". You where almost certainly following along with an edition where the editor had restored the original published text from before the act was created.
One episode of the show was particularly uncomfortable to listen to. It was an episode which featured an abused wife - beaten by her husband. I can't recall the full context of the episode, but basically it turned out that she was happy when her husband beat her - 'because it showed he loved her' (not a direct quote).
Whilst I agree this episode should be available in some form - it could be important to show some people's attitudes at the time towards domestic abuse, I think that it would be totally appropriate to remove it from the series if the series were being broadcast at tea-time, in a slot which would normally be a light-hearted comedy.
They don't repeat the black and white minstrel show from the 1970s at all. Shoud they? No.
Working in the preservation area, and being aware of what the BBC has lost over time, the title immediately had my interest. But this isn't a serious piece of journalism at all. The author doesn't make any attempt to verify the claim, and liberally decorates his piece with specious references to Orwell. He doesn't appear to know what an archive actually is, and thinks the BBC is 'state owned'.
It appears to serve little purpose than to ensure the header and footer are visually separated in a pleasing way.
It's unfortunate, because there is a nuanced discussion to be had here, about whether re-broadcasts should be modified (e.g. should we be okay with that if there is a disclaimer?), but the conversation gets derailed immediately because many people only read headlines. But of course, they know what they are doing, trying to get a rise. They could have easily used a more accurate, but boring, title such as "BBC re-broadcasts differ from archived versions."
I don’t get why grown ups need to be threated as kids. I am doing same for little ones, but why for grownups. Times changes, what is or not ok changes. In that case maybe adding some context commentary would be fine for those who dont know history. But erasing it is not cool
If it's barney the dinosaur to make the dinosaur less pink, I don't care.
If it's stuff which was used to haul the country to war on Iraq, I do care.
That seems less like harmless cleanup as much as it does a directed PR campaign on behalf of the perpetrators and their associates at the BBC.
People, e.g. do not need to be protected from the fact the Hitler was a pretty good painter, lest they think in classic black-and-white disney-villain stereotypes, and give the next Hitler a pass just because "he can't be that bad if he's such a good painter".
Equally, I have no trouble celebrating good works by people who were later found to be objectionable, as long as the works themselves are worthy in isolation. Human nature is flawed, sometimes deeply so, the good can coexist with the bad, and there's no better reminder than this.
And I haven't even touched the whole "every hero is some other guy's traitor (and vice versa)"
The articles being sanitized are a subtle attempt to distance the BBC from the above scandal by removing the public's access to reporting that tied their employees and facilities to (now) known abusers.
There's a film from the 80s, Broadcast News, where a charismatic upstart anchor doctors an interview to make it appear he was crying after hearing a young woman's tale of sexual abuse, and when his producer and potential love interest discovers it, she abjures him professionally and romantically.
Journalism ethics would dictate that the BBC account honestly why they are changing the past. They can republish the articles (corrections are not a new concept) and link to the old ones with a "trigger warning" if they wish to, but to make it appear there was less involvement than there was, and to use the victims' feelings as an excuse, is nothing if not wrong.
I do think it's going to stop people ringing OFCOM to complain that the TV/iPlayer is still broadcasting that disgusting man like he's a lovable guy.
If they wanted to control the PR narrative, they'd hide references to him as a notorious paedophile or questions about whether the BBC staff working on his programmes should have known, not Jim'll Fix It.
> Because it is so old, much of the material that the BBC has been altering is not available to purchase or download, nor broadly owned on physical media,
That's not true. The majority is available to download via either official or unofficial archives. Huge amounts of BBC material was released on cassette and CD.
If you watch a movie on an aeroplane, it will quite often be edited - both to remove excess sex and violence and - duh - mentions of plane crashes!
If you watch BBC shows syndicated in the USA, they'll have advert breaks edited in.
This is such a non-story.
This article is about repeat airings.
This has always been going on, it’s just now so easy to track. The funny thing about editing the past is that those living automatically win, so it isn’t much of a fight.
It seems people would rather edit the past than be offended. This behavior certainly fits well with our understanding of modern sensibilities.
Other comment mentioned "Peter Pan," and the unsuitability of some of it for modern kids... Why aren't kids allowed to know that people once thought of things differently than we do now? We tell them "someone discovered the earth was round" even though thats arguable, but on this subject the fear of controversy mandates ignorance and silence?
I don't wanna teach my kid that, and didn't.
It's arguable that "someone discovered the earth was round" or that "the earth is round"? Because I'm pretty sure that neither of those is actually arguable.
Indeed, having to defend the position that the Earth is in fact round can help you gain understanding and have confidence in your conclusion.
Not to belabor the point, but the idea that the Earth is flat is actually natural. It seems to be flat based on our senses. I think it’s a great teaching moment about how things are not as they seem.
Its easy enough to say "the earth is a ball" because you've been told, but how can you prove it?
If you mean "it's not likely everyone thought it was flat until someone said 'wait, it's round!'", yeah, sure, I agree. If you don't, what do you mean?
> Its easy enough to say "the earth is a ball" because you've been told, but how can you prove it?
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018EGUGA..20.5417K/abstra...
Same way Eratosthenes did in 3rd century BC to get his fairly impressively accurate estimate (39,060-40,320 km; real is 40,075km) for the Earth's circumference. Or do the laser shining through holes in boards on the salt flats. Or go to that huge long lake in Canada and note that you can't see the other side unless you raise your camera. Any of those will give you results that show it to be roughly spherical.
A big full-screen disclaimer. That this material no longer conforms to current standards, or was made by persons who are now considered bad. Continue at your own discretion.
Or even have a scrolly banner or watermark in the material itself to prevent it from being stripped of the disclaimer by others. But preserve the historical record.
It's not a matter of someone actively seeking out content on a webpage. Its a matter of, say, leaving the radio on in the background when you are cooking, and hearing content with outdated language and ideas.
That's bad enough though. They are making "woke cuts" [1] to old shows, lest their viewers question the universality of cultural norms by being exposed to an unfiltered version of the past.
Sure, the unaltered versions are probably accessible somewhere, but that doesn't make what they doing "not censorship" and ok. It would be like saying that the Hogwarts Library wasn't censored because you could find the banned books in the Restricted Section or elsewhere. At least Hogwarts had the defence of being something of a high school.
[1]: The Telegraph: BBC makes 'woke cuts' to archives, including Dad's Army https://archive.is/Y5nJw
I think it's extremely important that mass media organisations are held accountable to what they publish, given their reach. As such I always wonder if there is a collection of revisions that major news articles have made, especially in this age that it's simply a page on a URL.
There is archive.org but has someone identified the noteworthy alterations?
Somebody really said that? Hmmm, do they align with my politics or not? I'd better find out before deciding to be outraged or dismissive....