this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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Cuts the size of BBC Two's budget needed after licence fee squeeze, says insider (inews.co.uk)
submitted 1 year ago by thehatfox@lemmy.world to c/unitedkingdom
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[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 43 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Baroness Stowell, Chair of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, said: “Decisions about funding mechanisms have to be led by a clear articulation of what the country wants from its national broadcaster, and how it will change for that to be delivered. The BBC needs to be more open and front-footed in setting that out, or else face change being imposed upon it.”

And there it is. The classic Tory playbook: intentionally underfund, declare unsustainable, and open up for private interests; in this case, likely advertising and other types of product placement.

Nothing is sacred to these malicious pricks.

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's not restricted to the UK. Conservative parties across the world use the same tactic. American conservatives have been trying to sell off the US Postal Service for ages claiming it's "unprofitable" while strangling it with regulations and dumb rules like forcing it to fund pensions 70 years in advance.

[–] Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world 20 points 11 months ago

The notion that a public service needs to be profitable is so backwards.

[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Yeah but we're in a UK community talking about the UK...

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

As a Canadian expat, I was actually excited to start paying a license fee when I moved here. I'd grown up on a bunch of BBC dramas and comedies and thought it pretty cool to be able to contribute. I thought the BBC was like our CBC: publicly funded and not controlled by the state.

Then I started living here, and following the BBC coverage of issues I cared about. I was blown away by the amount of propaganda and straight up Tory shilling the BBC does. I cancelled my license fees after a year and didn't look back.

I'm well aware of the Tory tactic of corrupting a service until the public calls for privatisation, but from where I'm sitting, there's nothing worth saving anymore. The irresponsible journalism coming out of there is only slightly better than The Sun, but carries more weight due to their hard earned reputation.

I'd rather see it burn than let that reputation be leveraged to burn the rest of us.

[–] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

straight up Tory shilling the BBC does.

I’d love to see you justify this. The BBC doesn’t shill for anyone as far as I can see. Its coverage generally is straight down the line -sure with a status quo bias.

Some of Laura Kuenesburg’s social media posts were idiotic, but new political editor Chris Mason is excellent in my opinion.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Sure, here's a short list of just some of the terrible shit they did to bias the public toward the Tories:

This is before we talk about their efforts to paint opposition as communists.

A lot of this goes back to 2016 when the Conservatives changed the rules around how the BBC's board was appointed. Basically the BBC hasn't been "arms-length" for years and it's glaringly obvious in their journalism.

[–] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Quite an old bit of pasta, but lets go through them.

  • The Kuennsberg stuff on social media with her shooting from the hip before establishing the facts was bad and she should have been censured.

  • The "deserved majority" - she was describing the conservatives positioning of their strategy from their point of view. Clearly mispoke.

  • The remembrance stuff was a cockup where at 5am someone grabbed a clip from the CMS that had been used the day before for the preview and was sitting in 'recently use'. You don't include Tim Farron and David Cameron in the clip if you are trying to be sneaky

  • The laughter edit was wrong.

  • The Question Time audience issue consists of someone on Twitter alledging the the audience was deliberately stacked to be pro Brexit. I can't find any other coverage alleging that - can you? and if it was this programme, it wasn't just about Brexit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50722313#

  • Question Time and Fiona Bruce claiming Leave was cleared of wrongdoing - Fiona Bruce shouldn't be presenting the programme, in my opinion.

  • The story does actually say who is doing the lying though I agree, having it buried in the second half isn't great. Note the update though, saying that a small proportion of Labour's ads (7%) were untruthful.

  • The Jeremy Corbyn hat thing is just laughable.

I know you say that you've never looked back, but this pasta basically selects all the cockups that occurred on one side to try and paint a picture of instututional bias in news reporting.

You look at the political coverage of the Johnson unravelling, Truss or Sunak and the BBC are giving the government a well-deserved pummelling.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here's a more recent example. The bias at the BBC is palpable. These are not the actions of a public broadcaster. They do however look like what a state broadcaster would say.

[–] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 0 points 11 months ago

That’s some amazingly heavily edited footage there. It’s worth seeking out the unedited version if you want to make the accusations of bias.

So firstly, as you’ll know - the BBC has come under a lot of political attack for refusing to call Hamas terrorists - and still don’t. Theres’s good evidence that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza - and the BBC has covered that.

But genocide is the deliberate attempt to wipe out an entire people and that’s a word that the BBC would argue - like ‘terrorist’ has to be used carefully. It does not simply mean a wilful disregard for civilian lives.

Interestingly enough, the biggest cockup in the BBC’s coverage during this was, was the misreporting of the explosion at the Gaza hospital as being due up an Israeli missike strike that flattened it.

This was jumped on by critics of the BBC as a flagrant example of anti-Israel bias.

Bottom line, the BBC is imperfect, but tries to report impartiality. People with strong opinions dislike impartial reporting.

[–] christophski 1 points 11 months ago

The public is never the one calling for privatisation, the government do that