BBC bias

[KnightswoodBear]

10 minutes ago, Caledonian1 said:

I pay £8.99 per month - what do you get for £11.99 that I am currently missing out on.

Really torn on whether or not I should formally advise the BBC I do not need a licence or just carry on not paying and getting letters every couple of weeks.....

The £11.99 one gives you 4 profiles and 4k content.

[John Lambies Doos]

Surprised no-one is referring to the BBC as State media, in essence that's what it is.

[Guest TheJTS98]

9 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

An idle thought: have any of the recent retired BBC people turned out to be social democrats? Andrew Neil and John Humphreys have turned out to everyone's astonishment to be hard-line neoliberal reactionaries once freed of the muzzle of balance, anyone at the other end of the stick?

Noam Chomsky was right when he told Andrew Marr that it's not so much that the BBC people (and CNN, and Fox, and any big Western media) are consciously biased - although I'm sure some of them are. It's more of an issue that they get nowhere near those jobs if they don't hold certain views in what is a self-perpetuating cycle.

This is where the BBC bias comes from. They're not about to employ someone with the views of Max Keiser to front their shows. It's just a little world of people who went to the same schools and unis and think the same things.

The BBC aren't about to employ an open Republican as Political Editor. That person would just be vetted out culturally way down the chain.

Edited January 21, 2021 by TheJTS98

[ICTJohnboy]

1 hour ago, KnightswoodBear said:

The £11.99 one gives you 4 profiles and 4k content.

 

I can confirm that.

You're right.

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

5 hours ago, TheJTS98 said:

It is. The BBC provides access to tv series, documentaries, films, live sport and sport highlights to people who cannot afford Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sky, or BT.

It provides educational resources for kids, which are a good option for kids whose parents can't afford to buy expensive books or hire tutors.

It provides free access to language learning materials online (Spanish, Italian, German, and French) as well as English-learning online and audio materials that are among industry leaders in the free-to-access market. It provides cooking resources and tips on healthy eating. It produces programming and online content that supports new music and art in the UK that has not become commercially successful yet. It produces materials to encourage foreign students to come and study in the UK to boost the economy. It produces content for expecting parents. It produces programming in minority languages which no commercial outfit would replace. It provides regional radio content for the whole country devoid of commercial interests.

If you want to call that an organisation that is not a public service, then you knock yourself out.

Removing the BBC's funding would see many of these services disappear or become harder for many people to access. People arguing for the BBC to lose public funding are letting politics infect every area of life. That's not healthy.

I don't want the BBC to stop producing or commissioning comedy or language materials or music shows because Nick Robinson is a p***k.

Almost all of that you can get for free online.  There is no need for the BBC anymore. 

Look at PBS, that really is free, and really is a publisc service broadcaster.  Zero politics, zero news, but some quality programming, and nobody gets charged a penny.  If the BBC wanted to become that fine, but in its current form it needs done away with.

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, John Lambies Doos said:

Surprised no-one is referring to the BBC as State media, in essence that's what it is.

There used to be a pretty strict limit to the power the Government had to influence it, that's getting eroded more and more at a time when paradoxically there's pressure to abolish it. I won't be happy to see American hedge funders the sole arbiters of what we're offered to watch and listen to.

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

1 hour ago, Genuine Hibs Fan said:

I agree there's a lot of stuff that's worthwhile on the bbc and personally I just don't take their politics coverage seriously, but I understand the myriad of reasons people are done with it. The thing is it's gone anyway, between the Tories and the rise of streaming services it'll be a rump before too long and there's almost no chance of making it better. We'll have a few years of streaming service price wars before Disney owns everything and ten years from now the news at 10 will be Minnie Mouse and Chris Hemsworth. 

I would back a public service broadcaster in an independent Scotland but don't think the bbc/license fee would be the model I'd choose for it

A good example of what the BBC is is Scotland right now. Trust in the BBC is lower in Scotland than anywhere else.  Licence fee uptake is lower in Scotland than anywhere else.

Yet two days ago, whilst the BBC is cutting budgets across the board, an increase in the budget of BBC Scotland was announced.  Why is that? Because its a propaganda outlet.  They know we are very close to leaving the UK and are trying to stop it by upping the propaganda.  Also a new Sunday morning politics show on BBC 'Scotland' was announced.

We just had the 20th poll in a row showing majority support for independence, so most people in Scotland now support independence.  But still they are going to be forced under threat of imprisonment to have propaganda broadcast into their homes which will attempt to tell them they don't support independence. You couldn't imagine anything more colonial or disgusting.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Carnoustie Young Guvnor

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

1 hour ago, John Lambies Doos said:

Surprised no-one is referring to the BBC as State media, in essence that's what it is.

That's exactly what it is.  

[welshbairn]

3 minutes ago, Carnoustie Young Guvnor said:

Almost all of that you can get for free online.  There is no need for the BBC anymore. 

Look at PBS, that really is free, and really is a publisc service broadcaster.  Zero politics, zero news, but some quality programming, and nobody gets charged a penny.  If the BBC wanted to become that fine, but in its current form it needs done away with.

PBS is mainly funded by American tax payers, so everybody pays. 

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

1 hour ago, MixuFruit said:

An idle thought: have any of the recent retired BBC people turned out to be social democrats? Andrew Neil and John Humphreys have turned out to everyone's astonishment to be hard-line neoliberal reactionaries once freed of the muzzle of balance, anyone at the other end of the stick?

There will be some, Sarah Smith's dad was the leader of the Labour party.  But again that demonstrates how inappropriate it is that she is presented to us as an honest broker and objective analyst.  She's an absolutely RAGING British nationalist who detests the SNP with every fibre of her being.

[SandyCromarty]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

PBS is mainly funded by American tax payers, so everybody pays. 

Plus corporations, private individual funding, but yes the majority funding is from taxes.

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

6 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

PBS is mainly funded by American tax payers, so everybody pays. 

That's not true

 

PBS is funded by a combination of member station dues, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Datacast, pledge drives, and donations from both private foundations and individual citizens.

 

 

Also

 

Since 53% to 60% of public television's revenues come from private membership donations and grants

[Fullerene]

The BBC employs more journalists than everybody else combined.

Yes, it is sickening when they fawn over the Tory party and Question Time has become a joke.

However, the BBC is able to report from around the world to a much greater extent than others.

[welshbairn]

Just now, MixuFruit said:

Exclusively tax? Or is it paid for by American government expenditure, which is a combination of tax and borrowing?

On which interest is paid by the tax payer and further borrowing ad infinitum. You're lapsing into pedantry here unless you really believe money is free now, and we can just print as much as we like with no consequences.

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

2 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

The BBC employs more journalists than everybody else combined.

Yes, it is sickening when they fawn over the Tory party and Question Time has become a joke.

However, the BBC is able to report from around the world to a much greater extent than others.

The BBC are the ones that put Farage on Question Time 35 times.  Serious questions need to be asked of whether they work in the public interest or not.  Why was he given such prominence?  

[welshbairn]

5 minutes ago, Carnoustie Young Guvnor said:

the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Which is wholly funded by Congress out of tax.

[Carnoustie Young Guvnor]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Which is wholly funded by Congress out of tax.

53-60% of their funding not from tax. And its not a direct tax levied on everyone like the licence fee, its just taken out of general taxation. It also doesn't do any news or politics which is the most pertinent point here. 

[welshbairn]

7 minutes ago, Carnoustie Young Guvnor said:

It also doesn't do any news or politics which is the most pertinent point here. 

[Gordon EF]

The only argument for the BBC and the license fee I can think of is the hypothetical value of a truly impartial news service. They're not as bad as others but they're not impartial at all and so they've undermined their own raison d'etre.

Get them in the fucking bin.

[welshbairn]

I'm frankly gobsmacked by the number of lefties here wanting to hand over UK public broadcasting to capitalist bogeymen like Jeff Bezos and Rupert Murdoch.