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Comment by Closi | Hacker News Reader

Disturbing? In what sense? Other news sources are paywalled and UK citizens have to pay in tax.

The annoying thing about the BBC paywall is that it is implemented by using different domains, so (for example here) people in the UK go to bbc.com instead of bbc.co.uk

Do you have that the wrong way round? In the UK, you go to bbc.co.uk (and bbc.com redirects to bbc.co.uk). From memory, in the US you get pushed to bbc.com.

I mean that, for example the link here is to bbc.com, and it does not recirect me to bbc.co.uk

It redirects me fine.

I had JS off. If I turn JS on it redirects me. Not "fine" though as it loads the page on bbc.com and then redirects which is slow and annoying.

Wait what? Is the NYT not paywalled somewhere?

I'm not seeing this particular paywall, but disturbing in that the BBC is so awful and stupid at this, presumably.

For many years I would have gladly paid the BBC $20/mo for some way to legally watch Top Gear and Doctor Who. That's it, just two shows and I'll give you more than I give Netflix. They never offered a single legal mechanism available to US citizens, so, well.....don't admit to crimes on the internet and all that.

Have you tried BritBox? It seems to show Doctor Who, but ironically, being in the UK I'm unable to access their site to see specific details.

It was offered much later than iPlayer was for the UK, but to claim they 'never' had an option for US audiences is false when they have had Britbox for almost 10 years

Not only was Britbox launched long after iPlayer and after I stopped watching both of the shows I mentioned (in fact, Top Gear in its 2002 incarnation was functionally off the air before Britbox launched), but the BBC sold their streaming rights to those two programs such that their modern incarnations were never, so far as I'm aware, available on Britbox.

An increasing proportion of UK citizens are deciding not to pay for a TV licence that funds the BBC as consumption patterns have changed.

The BBC will be a zombie in 10 years unless they stop being emotionally driven and sort out their funding.

Good. The BBC is no longer the shining beacon of objective reporting it once was. Let it die and be replaced by something better.

Presumably you get your news content from Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail and UK News?

For what it's worth, I stopped paying the license fee because of how the BBC sucked up to the Tories in the lead up to the 2019 GE. From Newsnight displaying images of Corbyn that made him look like a Soviet stooge, to Laura Kuenssberg leaking postal vote ballot information, to Alex Forsyth saying that Boris Johnson "deserves" the election.

People say that it's subject to complaints of bias from both sides of the spectrum, but I've yet to see comparable concrete pro-left examples.

> how the BBC sucked up to the Tories in the lead up to the 2019 GE

> Laura Kuenssberg

ughh yes so glad that era is behind us. Good riddance.

I don't know whether this is a joke or not, because she's still there.

She is not Political Editor of BBC anymore. She's just a talk show host as I understand it (though still on a HEFTY salary - £410k, fourth highest in the BBC).

Presumably a very difference sphere of influence.

Here's the BBC wanting you to feel that autistic people are scary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48934982

Don't spout shite. The BBC report is objectively what the defence stated in court: namely that their defendant was autistic.

If you've a problem with that, take it up with the lawyers.

If everybody thinks you’re biased, you’re probably not biased at all.

Look at how the BBC reports on the Middle East and tell me you agree with it.

That doesn't address anything unless you stake out and back up your position. Pro-Palestine and pro-Israel advocates both accuse the BBC of bias towards the other side.

Objectively, the BBC downplays what the USA and Israel do over there and doesn't downplay what Hamas and Iran do over there.

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