Hacker News Reader

Comment by batista | Hacker News Reader

I stopped reading the news at one point -- for a couple years -- because of its persistent lack of depth. I realized that reading 100 BBC articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would leave me knowing virtually nothing about it, other than some factoids, whereas the same time spent reading books would be worthwhile.

Not to mention that you would have read 100 articles from a single source that is a government-controlled channel of information from a country that is partly responsible for starting the Israeli-Palestinian mess in the first place.

View on HN

There's so much wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start. The BBC is pretty much the gold standard for un-biased reporting, regularly taking the government to task on issues of the day. As John Humphreys said to a minister once before interviewing him, "I'm not here to make you look like an idiot, but if you choose to, I won't stop you".

It even takes itself to task hugely, as shown recently when a BBC reporter was destroyed in an interview about how much better the Sky and iTV coverage was than the BBC during the capture of Tripoli, by another BBC journalist live on air.

Impartiality and being un-biased are different things.

The BBC is pretty much the gold standard for un-biased reporting, regularly taking the government to task on issues of the day.

It's only the "gold standard" for mainstream sources, which is not saying much. For people shopping for more accurate information elsewhere, it's nothing to write home about. Would you take your technical reporting from the BBC? Well, I wouldn't take my world affair's reporting either.

That said, I have worked with the BBC several times in the past (and other outlets, as a stringer). No mainstream coverage is accurate, and a lot are just used to justify a point the reporter has already made. Don't be fooled by spectacles like a BBC journalist "destroying" another BBC journalist on air.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com