The BBC - How?

In My Humble Opinion
21

The BBC must strive for impartiality according to its Charter, which is continually reviewed independently (and indeed, by the viewers themselves). Should any employee or production be found to be in breach of the Charter, there will be grounds for summary dismissal. Should a viewer or anyone else complain that a certain article or programme is not impartial, that complaint is rigorously assessed. The Charter means that there is simply no comparison between it and private networks like Fox and Al-Jazeera, who can pander to their audience’s prejudice’s and ignore the complaints therefrom.

Now, of course, an institution which strives for impartiality has no guarantee that they’ll succeed, and it does fail occasionally: they were recently reprimanded by the government for targetting Bush over Katrina. But I think a good gauge of impartiality is how much your reporting pisses off both sides of an issue, and I think the BBC does that regularly.

22

Well, whether they failed or not again depends on your opinion. But ‘reprimanded’ is far too official a word. Unofficial whinging by government ministers is more accurate a term, in the long approved fashion of whinging of bias that we’ve already mentioned in this thread. The BBC stated that they have received no official complaint, and the government have received just as much unofficial flack back about it.

23

GriffinMaxwell writes:

> As an American looking across the pond over to England, I’ve only seen a
> certain small part of the BBC, namely BBC America on some obscure channel on
> my television.

Say what? Of course you’ve watched far more BBC over the years than just what you’ve seen on BBC America. PBS has always done a lot of British TV shows, and about half of them are BBC. A number of other channels do a fair amount of British TV, including A & E. A lot of documentaries shown on The Discovery Channel and such like are actually British/American co-productions and are thus often partly BBC.

24

Welcome back Ianzin not seen you around for ages.

…and, although the BBC is seen as fairly independant, sometimes one can see the leaings of government through various agencies in its output, one example would be our governments justification for war in Iraq where both sides of the argument were put, however the arrangment of the debate was such that the propoenents for war rarely had the last say, and certain dissenters somehow never quite recived the coverage they might have.

When those plainly dodgy files on George Galloway were magicly discovered in a burnt out Iraqi ministry building, it got extensive coverage, however, when their validity was discovered to be extremely suspect, it didn’t get quite the same amount of publicity.

During a major strike, the miners, during the Thatcher era there was an incident at the Orgreave coke plant works.

I won’t go into the politics of the strike, and I’ll confine myself to the BBC coverage of that incident.

Footage of what happened at Orgreave appeared to show striking miners attacking the police throwing rocks and running away when charged by mounted police.

What actually happened was that the police directed striking miners into a field far away from the Orgreave Coke works, and when they realised the deception, the miners had a rally and once this was over, they turned to leave.
The police then charged them with horses, unprovoked (it is a matter of record made clear in court).
Theminers retreated , or more to the point, ran away (their leader was arrested), until they reached a drystone wall, which they used as ammunition against the oncoming police.

Three years later, all the attempted prosecutions for public disorder had been thrown out, and during these cases, the tv footage was crucial evidence, and it was discovered that the running order had been heavily edited.
Once this was discredited in court, the BBC had to issue and apology for its misleading broadcast, but the events were long over and so was the urgency.

Why would the BBC have edited this footage in such a way as to portray the miners as a rabble attacking the police, when it was virtually the other way around ?

Well, like it or not, many saw this miners dispute as a fight for democracy, on both sides, and as such, the BBC were called upon to do their duty.
All I’m saying is, that the BBC can be independant, but only up to a point.

25

The BBC published a correspondent’s description of NO Mayor Nagin as “genuinely heroic”. To call this merely unfair or biased would be extremely charitable.

26

I don’t follow what your point is here. The original ‘discovery’ was by the Telegraph, not the BBC. And the subsequent discreditation certainly seemed to be as thoroughly-covered, if not by the Torygraph itself.

This is an important observation, because it backs up the argument that you’ve not really seen the BBC in action. You’ve seen the some of the most lightweight and commercially-oriented aspects of its output.

27

I’d have thought the title “Viewpoint” made it pretty clear this was an opinion piece :rolleyes:
Even if it were not, selective quotation of individual examples from such as vast output would demonstrate nothing.

28

And let’s not forget that panegyric on The Archers. Pure pro-Labour propaganda.

29

I thought the Archers was more Conservative in its output, especially in its apparent support for fox-hunting and other “field sports”

30

I think you guys/gals are looking into this too hard if you find political bias in The Archers.

31

And don’t forget The Magic Roundabout was full of political subversives.

32

Another factor with the BBC is simply that it’s not American. They’re simply uninvolved in many American issues, which, from the point of view of the American audience, would tend to make them more impartial. So even without the different advertising situation or charter, there’s already a tendancy for an American to view the BBC as impartial.

33

The BBC are showing right now How Euro are you? and it’s so blatantly pro-Euro that I can’t watch it. Comments which are not pro-EU are cut off, those which are pro-EU are given full play. They’ve found some manifestly false ‘loony’ anti-EU press headlines without balancing them with true ones.

34

Hmm, I just saw one rampant anti-Europe comment, based on false statements, being accepted without question. Like others have said, if it pisses everybody off, it’s got its position correct.

35

This thread is better suited to another forum than General Questions.

I don’t think it rises to the level of Great Debates, so let’s take your opinions over to…IMHO.

Moved. samclem GQ moderator

36

Like any long-standing and large organisation, the BBC is conservative, small ‘c’. Inevitably it’s going subconsciously to favour the status quo and mainstream. So don’t expect too much in the way of revolutionary subversion. This equally applies to its coverage of news and determining what should be broadcast as ‘news’. But this is something that all large media companies are prone too and a reason why everyone should view news coverage on all media with a critical eye.

The BBC is, IMHO, one of the better ones, simply because it doesn’t have a commercial agenda anywhere near the scale that others do. Fox News, on the otherhand, (to take the other extreme) is clearly driven by News International’s asperations. It simply favours in its reporting the politicians that will allow the parent company the most profits.

37

Pro-EU people were caricatured as sophisticated types who holiday in “Chiantishire” - not really a negative characterisation. Anti-EUers were depicted as moronic Little Englanders clad in Union Jacks and venturing no further than Bognor Regis for their hols. It was biased.

38

But was it inaccurate? :slight_smile:

39

I should think that the five B.B.C. channels would be more akin to what we call “networks” here. So far as I know, the United Kingdom has an equivalent to what we call “stations” in the United States.

A television station is a broadcast (not cable or satellite) entity assigned to a specific city or metropolitan area and its license directs it to serve that area. The number of stations in a specific locale, and the signal strength of those stations, are set according to its population.

An individual station may acquire programming any way it pleases, and stations usually employ a combination: producing it itself (usually only local news programming), purchasing it directly from independent producers and syndicators, and affiliating itself with a network.

40

then don’t.

How right you are. What they should have are giant union flags, the dambusters march playing on repeat in the background, and pathetic caricatures of various european nationalities in stocks, with Richard Littlejohn handing out rotting vegetables to to the audience to throw at them.