Why [do even non british dopers use] bbc.co.uk [for their link/source]?

In My Humble Opinion
1

If this has been done before, I apologise, please feel free to link to the other thread.

Why have you used bbc as your source for a news story?

2

This worldwide webby thingy ding is amazing! it lets you look at “web-sites” from completely different countries!

You gotta be careful about the long distance charges, though.

:wink:

3

Dopers, most of whom are American, almost totally use the bbc. Isn’t there a comparable American equivalent. I just find it strange that’s all. Is the BBC really that good?
Not that I have anything against it.

4

Maybe the BBC just cover more stuff in-depth. And doesn’t take as long to load as a CNN page.

5

I’m an American who likes to see what the BBC has to say about U.S. politics and policies in particular. It adds a little perspective to what we see and here from State-side news sources.

In my opinion, it has been, overall, the most generally reliable source of information during my lifetime – stretching back to WWII. American news corporations have been bought up by only a handful of companies and their priorities are not totally to be trusted. No one news source anywhere should be.

Of course, if I just want to read something that I know I will agree with, I read The Guardian.

6

What really makes the news.bbc.co.uk website be one of my more visited sites is that it has a really easy layout. It’s simple, it’s clean, it delievers a lot of information and it’s pleasing to the eye in a sort of “Don’t Panic” way. I mean looking at the difference between the BBC and CNN it is just so much easier to read the smaller headlines at the BBC.

Opening the BBC news page for me brings up 29 news stories, 8 with a pic and short paragraph. And that’s not counting the scroll.

Now CNN only gives me 11 and only 3 of those have a pic and a short paragraph. And no scroll.

Google’s news beta give me 9 stories, 4 with a pic.

canada.com/national gives me 3 stories (each with a paragraph) and a spotlight.

Add to that the fact that I can go to headlines for 6 different regions of the world it’s a no brainer.

7

I don’t trust the American media, so I like to look at foreign sources, too

I like to see what other countries have to say about us - even if I don’t agree with them.

The BBC is in English, which makes it easier for me to read.

The BBC is in English, which on an English-language bulletin board makes more sense to quote/link to than, say, a source in Finnish

8

Kind of a second to a lot of what has been said:

  1. It adds an additional perspective that is more or less an outsider opinion of US affairs. Which can give an idea of how others view our country’s actions.

  2. It often focuses on events that are glossed over or missing from US News, which can become entirely preoccupied with what’s going on with the Jacksons and miss other important world events.

  3. It’s a decent layout and easy to read through, but still has a fair bit of integrity, as opposed to some English language journals from non-English speaking countries.

  4. They have a lot of good stuff on science and technology that gets little coverage in the easier to access US sites. (I’ve gotten frustrated many times by registration at the NY Times, for example).