
The BBC on the Rack - Tomte
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n06/james-butler/the-bbc-on-the-rack
======
Traster
>The left’s critique of the BBC hasn’t been restricted to the undefinable
question of bias.

I like the way that slipped in there. Is the question of bias undefinable? Or
can we define it as "The person who was in charge of editing the BBC's 2010
news coverage went on to be the Director of Communications for Number 10". Or
maybe "The presenter of the BBC's flagship toptical debate programme has a
history of making factually inaccurate statements about the the Labour party",
or "The BBC repeatedly appoints key Conservative journalists to flagship
programmes".

I mean, this isn't undefinable, it's very easily definable. For those in the
US who may not understand this, imagine you had a state broadcaster funded by
taxes, and it had been putting on shows presented by Roger Ailes.

I mean it's really quite basic, people shouldn't be going back and forth from
political positions to the independent state broadcast. The state broadcaster
should have an open and accountable procedure to deal with factual issues.
Neither of those are true, and these systemic issues don't have a neutral
political outcome.

~~~
notahacker
I mean, the right has a similar critique of the BBC: 'the outgoing Leader of
the Opposition's Director of Communications learned his trade from his daddy
running the whole BBC', 'The presenter of the BBC's flagship topical news
discussion programme has had successful complaints held against her about her
treatment of a right wing guest' and 'the BBC is frequently accused of having
a liberal bias by its own journalists, including some who aren't notably right
leaning or confrontational'. And it's equally insubstantial about actual
reporting - with complaints about that having been upheld on both sides for
various programmes over the past.

Apparently people who present political programmes sometimes have political
views and differences of opinions, and sometimes get hired by partisan bodies.
Who knew? FWIW the current Director of Communications for the Conservative
Party in Number 10 is a guy who was previously employed by an outspokenly
Labour-supporting tabloid to chase round previous Conservative PMs dressed as
a chicken during election campaigns. And the BBC's most outspokenly
conservative journalist Andrew Neil is someone the left were desperate to see
interview the Conservative party leader in the run up to the election on the
basis they expected Neil to absolutely savage him.

~~~
zimpenfish
> the left were desperate to see [Andrew Neil] interview the Conservative
> party leader

Indeed but it was because all the other party leaders had submitted to his
interviewing and it was seen as blatantly unfair that someone with a track
record of, let's be nice, wildly inaccurate and misleading statements should
be able to skip the process.

~~~
notahacker
Agreed. But it was also because regardless of his politics being largely
aligned with Johnson's and if anything further to the right, Neil could be
relied upon to aggressively question Johnson on his inaccurate and misleading
statements and track record in government (more so than some of the lighter
interviewers who I suspect have considerably greater issues with Johnson and
his platform). If they'd thought Neil's [undisputed] personal bias would have
lead him to softball or even stan for Johnson rather than challenging all the
candidates equally toughly, it would have been different.

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makomk
The BBC has been doing pretty badly. For example, you may recall that there is
currently a global shortage of every single consumable required for
coronavirus testing. The BBC has been running multiple articles a day pushing
the narrative that this is actually a local political failing of the current
party. They're particularly keen on the angle that the government has failed
because they're not testing NHS staff, meaning they have to self-isolate
unnecessarily. Almost no countries in the world have enough tests to
systematically test their medical staff. A few of the more affected cities in
the US have started doing it recently, and Germany is probably at least
capable of it as of a few days ago, but that's more or less it. Also, all the
current tests give a false negative on about a third of people who have the
coronavirus, so telling medical staff or anyone else not to self-isolate based
on them is a terrible and dangerous idea. Public Health England's contact
tracing program specifically told people who'd tested negative to remain
quarantined for the full waiting period because of this.

~~~
summerdown2
From your comments, I'd almost believe the government were doing well, rather
than overtaking Italy in deaths per day at this point on the curve:

[https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest](https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest)

All the reports you've mentioned are also echoed throughout the UK press.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/02/shambles-
cha...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/02/shambles-chaos-
ridiculous-what-the-uk-papers-say-about-covid-19-testing)

Even the Telegraph - a massively pro Tory paper that has had Boris Johnson as
a writer - is ripping into the government over its testing.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/thursday-
morning...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/thursday-morning-news-
briefing-questions-without-answers/)

> Almost no countries in the world have enough tests to systematically test
> their medical staff.

Key word that... 'almost.'

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notreallyauser
Am I the only person who didn't recognise the domain and clicked on the
headline hoping for a rackmounted 1980s microcomputer?

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GnarfGnarf
The BBC deserves our eternal gratitude for having broadcast Monty Python's
Flying Circus.

~~~
Ackshully
Today's BBC is as connected to Monty Python as Fox News today is to season 4
of the Simpsons. Probably less.

~~~
muglug
BBC today is not just BBC News.

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IshKebab
Has anyone done any quantitative measurement of the BBC's bias? I feel like
there must be some way to do it using sentiment analysis and other news
sources as references somehow.

~~~
joosters
An unbiased view of bias? Is that even possible?

IMO, the BBC can't be very biased because all sides accuse it of being biased
against them!

~~~
goatinaboat
_the BBC can 't be very biased because all sides accuse it of being biased
against them_

I don’t think that’s true. For example you won’t find many Remainers claiming
that the BBC was pro-Leave. Nor would you find many opposing Scottish
independence saying the BBC was pro Scottish independence. It clearly does
“take sides”.

The traditional left-right axis doesn’t work as a model here. The BBC’s bias
is towards the opinions and interests of upper-middle-class Londoners, some of
which would be traditionally be considered left and some of which would be
right.

~~~
sparkie
The BBC's bias can be considered as pro-State. While some of their journalists
and presenters have their own biases, the overall direction they take is to
act as the mouthpiece of the government, particularly for international
coverage. For domestic coverage, there is enough representation of the
opposition to at least make it look like democracy is working and that people
aren't being manipulated to do exactly what the State wants them to do. They
hold the government to scrutiny on minor issues where there's a difference in
the views of the opposition, but on major issues where both parties are united
(for example, on going to war), the BBC simply repeats what they're told to.

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UK-Al05
From my perspective I pay more for the BBC then I do for either netflix or
prime, yet get less value from it personally than either.

