# Is ABC showing BBC news reports? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 6, 2003, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850 "2003-04-06T10:57:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tuco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tuco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuco)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2003, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/1 "2003-04-06T10:57:03Z")
Over here in Britain, very often the BBC shows news reports from Iraq submitted by American ABC correspondents. I was just wondering whether ABC news shows BBC reports or not, and how this arrangement is organised. Thanks in advance, Tuco. ---
**Author:** ![Tuco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tuco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuco)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/2 "2003-04-07T11:45:01Z")
… and I’ve just seen ITV show a report from a CNN correspondent, do any British reports get onto US TV? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/3 "2003-04-07T11:48:54Z")
And Sky News keeps running Fox reports :rolleyes: - any reciprocation there? ---
**Author:** ![Marduk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecd19e/32.png) [@Marduk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marduk)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/4 "2003-04-07T12:10:07Z")
Well, I don’t recall any specific bbc reports as of late. But I do remember that I’ve seen “foreign” reports. So yes its possible that we get BBC reports here. Its just that they don’t exactly flaunt where they get their reports from. Also if your getting Fox “news” over there… I’m sorry. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/5 "2003-04-07T12:15:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Marduk \* > \*\*Also if your getting Fox “news” over there… I’m sorry. \*\* Murdoch owns Sky and Fox, so it was only a matter of time before cross-pollination occurred. Sky’s quite gung-ho (though not in comparison to the US stations) but their main fault is making mountains out of mole-hills. “BREAKING NEWS! Man walks out of building! He might or might not be important!” Oh, this is in GQ. Sorry. I’ll shut up now. ---
**Author:** ![Future\_Kid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9dc877/32.png) [@Future\_Kid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Future_Kid)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/6 "2003-04-07T12:15:59Z")
BBC News 24, before the war started, used to show a half hour news report from ABC every night. I’ve also seen ITV using CCN reports. So they may have had the same sort of deal in their rolling news channel before the war. ---
**Author:** ![everton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecb155/32.png) [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/7 "2003-04-07T12:26:47Z")
I’d be very surprised if **jjimm** gets his news from Sky/Fox. I’ve yet to meet anyone who watches Sky for anything other than sports, but you have to take it as part of the package to get the cable/satellite channels you really want. [This report](http://media.guardian.co.uk/bbc/story/0,7521,869480,00.html) from last January explains how the BBC have been planning to expand their tie-in with ABC to increase their profile in the USA. It remains to be seen whether the deal will happen, but it suggests that some of the reports currently being shown on over two hundred stations over there have come from the BBC news teams already. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/8 "2003-04-07T12:33:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by everton \* > \*\*I’d be very surprised if **jjimm** gets his news from Sky/Fox. I’ve yet to meet anyone who watches Sky for anything other than sports, but you have to take it as part of the package to get the cable/satellite channels you really want. \*\* Sky does indeed come with the basic Dublin cable monopoly package (without which one is limited to the Irish channels, which, no offense to anyone Irish, suck bigtime). However, being a news slut, I have Sky’s rolling news on for much of the time I’m at home. So I do actually get some of my news from it. I tend to change over to the BBC or Channel 4 when their reports come on. ---
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/9 "2003-04-07T13:54:40Z")
I haven’t seen anything from BBC on the mainstream broadcast or cable networks, at least not with any regularity. There was an [article in the Washington Post](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34033-2003Mar26.html) March 27 (will be online for free for two weeks from that date) about BBC reporting of the war. [/quote] “BBC World” [is] a global broadcast whose tone is so different from that of the American networks that it sometimes seems to be examining a different war. [/quote] The article cotnrasts the British reporting to the U.S. networks, and goes on to say that in its effort to provide balanced reporting, BBC has drawn criticism from all sides. (The tacit conclusion is that the U.S. networks tell the public what they want to hear instead of the facts.) The local public TV stations in DC rebroadcast BBC World. ---
**Author:** ![everton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecb155/32.png) [@everton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/everton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/10 "2003-04-07T14:38:49Z")
That’s an interesting article, **CookingWithGas**. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise anyone who is used to BBC coverage that they are being criticised by all sides. The article deserves a few comments and corrections though: > [@](#): > > “The Beeb is a mandatory government-run service staffed with the usual people who go into government-run media, i.e. left-wing hacks,” British expatriate Andrew Sullivan writes on his Web site. “The BBC is increasingly perceived, even by sympathetic parties, as the voice in part of the anti-war forces. . . . How the Beeb ceased to become an objective news source and became a broadcast version of the Nation is one of the great tragedies of modern journalism.” I have no idea who Andrew Sullivan is, but his comments are just factually incorrect. Although a substantial amount of the BBC’s funding comes from a UK tax, it is emphatically not “government-run” in the sense that the government party has any editorial control over its coverage. It is against UK Law for the government to influence the BBC and the corporation is frequently criticised by governments for being anti-government. In any case, if the government _was_ able to influence its coverage it would be pro-war. You should also understand that the _Morning Star_ newspaper has a communist editorial stance (and a tiny circulation), and the _Times_ is very conservative. Their views are more a reflection of their own bias than an ability to criticise the BBC objectively. I do try to keep an objective viewpoint towards most news stories, and I respect the BBC (and Channel 4) for their general lack of bias. It really should be emphasised that reports from both these sources regularly provide commentary from a pro-war and anti-war perspective, and they give coverage of both positive and negative reactions to the war from within Iraq, from other Arab countries, European countries, the USA and the UK. Different BBC reporters disagree with each other even within a single broadcast. It assumes the audience is intelligent enough to derive an accurate perception of the truth from amongst this variety. You can decide for yourself if an American audience could be expected to treat the news in a similar way. BTW we do get blatantly pro-war bias in the coverage from ITV News, which is the other major terrestrial network. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2003, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-abc-showing-bbc-news-reports/166850/11 "2003-04-07T15:07:01Z")
Sullivan is a Murdoch mouthpiece who rants in the Sunday Times, and is much beloved of our dear friend **december**. To add to what **Everton** said, it’s better to think of the Beeb as being publicly-funded rather than government-run, with a strict mandate for independence.