this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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To be fair to the BBC, they're 'supposed' to report the facts without judgement. How successful they are at that is debated endlessly, you can find anyone of any political flavour who will swear blind the BBC is 'obviously' biased against 'them'. They can't win no matter what they do.
See: More than 100 BBC staff accuse broadcaster of Israel bias in Gaza coverage
They're not trying to be fair, they're trying to be pro-israel.
They’re so committed to showing “both sides” that they platformed a cis lesbian rapist to complain that trans women are conspiring to pressure lesbians into sex.
Nah, I remember back when Corbyn was the leader of the Labour Party and the BBC gleefully participated in the campaign to slander him, including in a news program having as a background a large picture of him digitally altered to put a Soviet hood on his head.
I also remember countless "two side" discussions hosted by the BBC on things like worker rights or the Environment were they put a professional politician on the side against it facing a total amateur on the side for it.
The BBC's "two sides" has always been a multi-layered propaganda format, starting by the small detail that any social and political subject which is not ridiculously simple has more than 2 options to interpret and tackle it - in other words, more than 2 sides - and going into the above mentioned point that their supposedly open "giving equal voice to both sides" is actually controlled by their choice of the subject matter, who represents each side and even the interviewer's take on each side and accompanying materials (a typical example would be them reporting as event as "such and such happened" when the source is IDF versus "According to Hamas such and such happened" when the source is Hamas).
The BBC are very sophisticated in how they do it, but their output is heavily spinned and propagandistic.
It's not factual reporting when one side refuses to interact with the truth
That this is a very poor excuse at propaganda because the BBC goes out of its way to use "loaded terms" when it comes to adversaries of the empire.
Here is an example from yesterday. https://youtu.be/34Ta0IcQi-E?t=85
Impartiality goes out of the window when the BBC needs to remind everyone that "the Palestinian health ministry is ran by Hamas which is designated as a terrorist organisation in America, the UK and Europe" every single time the death toll in Gaza is brought up as well.
I thought sun already set on that
"The unprecedented attack on October 7th." is here to justify Israel slaughtering tens of thousands of starving civilians.
They had a bazillion complaints (and still get them) that they report the figures at all and that they don't treat Hamas being a terrorist organisation as a statement of fact. For a couple of weeks after the October the 7th attack, the reporting was more neutral, and the whole rest of the British press was up in arms about the BBC being antisemitic, and the current situation was the compromise that calmed it down. In a world where Israel having done nothing wrong ever is somehow part of the Overton window, this is what counts as impartial. Impartiality is a bad thing when it's forced to apply to viewpoints divorced from reality.
Watch the video I linked if you are not convinced. I considered the introduction to be rather long so I timestamped over it. But it sounds like you might need to watch it from the beginning. The video is not about Hamas by the way. That is only another example.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-israel-gaza-letter-tim-davie-bias-palestine-b2636737.html
They are not impartial on this one
I'm all for impartiality. But if a dude says "We should kill everyone who isn't like me!" You don't have to say "Before you judge, let's hear his side." You can start judging immediately.
The problem for the BBC is that not all stories have equally valid opposing views but they are forced to treat both sides equally at all times.. So as the world drifts further and further to insanity, their reporting makes crazy positions seem legitimate as they have to be aired alongside more mainstream views.
It worked OK when the world was fairly stable and political positions were close together. It doesn't work when political positions are so polarised and extreme.
Case in point: Brexit. The BBC really struggled in challenging extreme positions and outright lies during the brexit campaign.
Unfortunately though I'm not sure there is much alternative. Its fat from perfect but provably the best a public service broadcaster can try to do. At least it tries to provide the facts so people can make up their own minds - that in itself remains laudable.
Definitely agree with you there. In an effort to appear balanced they try and present different sides of an argument as if they're both valid. I guess that's how Farage got on so much.
One of the newsreaders said after leaving that they could easily find 60 economists willing to say brexit would be disastrous, and 1 saying it would be good. Come the show, they'd present one of each to demonstrate balance, but it was very lopsided. Before he went mental, they had Graham Linehan and his wife on a current affairs show to tall about the stress of getting an abortion in Ireland. The producers were then lambasted for not having a pro-abortion person on.
Although, IIRC, the original director general in his diary wrote "the government know they can trust us not to be truly impartial." You never get Anarchists or Communists on discussion shows.
hey maybe they did. any anarchist & communist with a brain understands that the majority of people will have a knee jerk reaction and shut down if you utter the various trigger phrases (such as "anarchism/communism has some good points"). so they'd probably water down their beliefs for easier digestion
but if you mean an outspoken anarchist who gets invited to talk about anarchism then yeah you're right, this isn't happening unless for a joke or to make them a scapegoat
They've had Alexei Sayle and Will Self on question time, and they're both pretty Hard Left, but while they criticise corruption and current affairs, never get to suggest anything hugely radical.
If both ends of the spectrum are saying it, they're probably threading the needle pretty well.
that is not sound logic
"Both the Palestinians and Israelis are saying they are being treated unfairly. This means we are treating both fairly". - enlightened centrist after Biden refuses to send one shipment of 2000 pound bombs to Israel.