To be annoyed about BBC bias regarding the Hungary refugee/migrant situation?

[TheNewStatesman]

www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-117161.html

Here is the original footage; apparently, when this was shown on the BBC and some other news outlets, the men's cries of "Allahu Akhbar" as they threw rocks were edited out.

I don't know exactly what the solution to the migrant/refugee crisis is; the west will certainly have to accept some, like it or not. But can we please see unbiased news footage so we can make up our minds for ourselves? This is blatant manipulation.

I've noticed that that the BBC focuses very strongly on migrant children giving the impression that there are loads of kids there. But when you see long shots it's almost exclusively young men. And they refer to them as Syrians when I think it's been independently estimated only one in five is.

And I don't believe this ended up on the cutting room floor coincidentally. It was done deliberately to present them in a better light.

It suits the media at the moment to lambast the government for their perceived lack of action regarding refugees. (Despite the UK spending billions assisting refugees at source).

Showing groups of aggressive, violent, fit young men breaking the law and attacking the police force of the country they want to get into doesn't suit that view, so it doesn't get shown.

Whereas a picture of one dead child out of the thousands of people that have died this year served their aims perfectly....

bougeuar
hehe

We are so being manipulated with this, the situation is a gift for those who want to jerk us around

YANBU. There was another thread that mentioned a similar incident recently in which the total destruction of a shelter/camp was edited to show only the Hungarian retaliation.

I look at the long shots in a range of media and all I see are huge numbers of young men in their late teens to late twenties, all pretty athletic and fit. I see no old people and few children, except those held up as "evidence". We have been told by many sources that only one in five is Syrian, ( this may not be correct o course) yet the "Syrian Refugees" is used constantly to refer these people.

I do read/listen/watch a range of media coverage and it is shocking to realise the differences in perception.

I think the bias is more than accidental. I think it plays us if we are not careful. The 'media'/ someone decides what public opinion should be and the media reports on this way.

I could not agree more.

I saw the footage you've linked to the other day OP, along with a collection of several other videos that your point exactly. They showed migrants behaving in a less than saintly light, basically rampaging/rioting, pretty much mugging charity workers and stealing their supplies rather than allowing them to distribute things fairly and equally, chucking away food and drink and clothing given to them by charity workers etc., so either rejecting help in the most contemptuous way, or taking greedy and unfair advantage of that help.

The shot we've all seen of the man and woman cowering from police laying on a railway track with a baby in their arms - have you seen the video of what actually happened there rather than just the freeze framed shot of them lying in the ground with several policemen standing over them?

I was very tempted to link to all those videos on here just to see what the reaction was to them. Not because I wanted to prove any kind of right wing anti-migrant point, but just because it struck me how easy it is still, even in this day and age where we have endless filmed footage of things as they happen, for the media to manipulate us with the use of clever editing, to ignore and refuse to show footage that doesn't suit their agenda, showing part of a filmed situation as a stand-alone photo with no context, or giving us part of the story and just hoping that we don't explore further and demand to see the whole/bigger picture.

There's a long running thread on Digital Spy forums ("migrant coverage' in General Discussions) that provides a good counter balance to the BBC reporting, although some of the views are offensive of course, like in all forums, there are some good points and useful links.
I saw the live video cam of the tear gas incident at the Hungarian border and the crowd of young men seemed very threatening, then watched the bbc news coverage and it looked completely different, as if it'd been edited to show the migrants in the best light.

it struck me how easy it is still, even in this day and age where we have endless filmed footage of things as they happen, for the media to manipulate us with the use of clever editing, to ignore and refuse to show footage that doesn't suit their agenda

true, but alternative versions of what happened are available in ways that they were not pre internet

people can share 'citizen generated news', and discuss things in a way which changes the game

then watched the bbc news coverage and it looked completely different

thusly are people altered to the dishonestly of mainstream media

thusly are people altered to the dishonestly of mainstream media
Yes, of course, but I think a high proportion of the UK population are like my parents. They watch the BBC news every day because they always have, and they believe what it tells them. They don't go searching the internet to find out whether its true or not.

I agree that the mainstream coverage is often biased, to the point of being little more than a propaganda tool for the establishment - Jeremy Corbyn and the Scots referendum are the two most blatant examples in recent memory.

But who is guiding the BBC's stance on this particular issue - and what is their motivation?

The BBC is legally obliged to provide accurate, impartial news coverage. Newspapers are not.
We are obliged, by law, to fund the BBC through TV licensing if we have TV in the house, regardless of whether or not we partake of its services. We are not obliged to buy a newspaper.

I live near Bassingbourn Barracks, where the UK hosted some Libian Army soldiers. Three of the soldiers were convicted of raping a man in Cambridge, many of them requested asylum, they ignored the boundaries on the barracks, and when they were taken out on trips to the local Tescos they behaved entirely inappropriately - the poor Danish (female) soldier who was nominally in charge of them was powerless to do anything about them. Tripoli airpot was declared unsafe and therefore it was deemed unreasonable to return them to Libia, at which point things went even further south.

There has been minimal reporting of this in the nationwide press. I don't believe that the (mainly single young men) coming to Europe now will behave much better, if I am brutally honest.

a deliberate attempt to make us feel under threat of invasion

A crisis like this is a 'gift' to those in power, they can spin it and use it to their own advantage
?
We're all pawns in the game ?

a deliberate attempt to make us feel under threat of invasion
suzanne - do you mean the BBC reporting?
It seems the opposite to me, they interview polite reasonable looking people, mostly professionals, teachers doctors etc. As if the BBC wants to show us they are all lovely people and there's no reason to be worried about huge numbers of them living in our country.

Ender, I'm talking about the (mostly radio) coverage I've heard which gives an impression of hoards of people just trying their luck

they interview polite reasonable looking people, mostly professionals, teachers doctors etc
I don't think that matters much.
What registers is 'hoards' of people from a foreign cultural deciding to pitch up uninvited and being allowed to occupy our jobs / houses / schools / hospitals at a time when we all feel that there isn't enough to go round for the existing population

It feels like an invasion ?

Xenophobia is always just under the surface and can be triggered very easily

I suppose we just have to accept that in a complicated situation facts can't be reported without bias because it all depends on context and interpretation.

News services are hugely underfunded compared to say 20 years ago. Some of this inadequate coverage is simply due to there not being enough reporters.

Part of the reason is the drastic drop in newspaper / news magazine purchases by the public. BBC has had similar cuts. Nick Davies wrote an excellent book about this called Flat Earth News.

WildStallions The BBC is so biased. On lots of things. And it IS really annoying. Because people don't expect it to be biased. It's meant to be 'quality'. If I've bothered to watch the BBC news I expect to come away informed. And I don't

I often feel that the BBC is aimed at children. Or that the BBC assumes its audience is a bit dim and incapable of understanding more complex points.

I actually don't like the BBC much any more. It has a monopoly, it seems recently to be constantly surrounded by bad publicity over its presenters (either sacking them after rows or being involved in age discrimination claims by female presenters), and other scandals. I would quite happily not watch it. Too many of its crime dramas seem to be about ever more horrific made-up horrors, such as violent paedophilia murder, or torture (switched on tv on Sunday night just after 9.30pm and immediately saw someone being violently tortured in a chair in supposedly Victorian England). I don't want to sound all Mary Whitehouse, and I like the occasional horror film, but its as if they are substituting violence for quality.

With the refugees, I get the impression they try to present them as delightful well educated people you would be happy to have in your own home. They don't cover the more violent, thuggish young male type and their behaviour at all.

With the refugees, I get the impression they try to present them as delightful well educated people you would be happy to have in your own home. They don't cover the more violent, thuggish young male type and their behaviour at all.

Yes but why are they so keen to get this particular impression across? That's what I don't understand.

Is it because they take such a paternalistic, patronising view of the general public, that they believe them somehow incapable of digesting the truth in an appropriate way? Does the truth need to be purreed and sweetened before serving, lest the public leaps to their own (off-message) conclusions?

There seems to be a policy of trying to focus on the individual, which of course is better than viewing the migrants/refugees as faceless "hordes", but the BBC seems to be overdoing this.
Interviewing professional middle class Syrians is likely to be much easier than trying to talk to shouting, angry young men who don't speak English.

cornflowers Yes but why are they so keen to get this particular impression across? That's what I don't understand.

I think it might be partly to do with the media and the arts being rather left-wing dominated. You only have to look at some of the posts- on here to see the trigger-responses to any suggestion that not all refugees are saints, and to label anyone dissenting as being wicked or evil or stupid. So perhaps these views have more publicity because those in control of media and arts outlets are more likely to have these views in the first place.

Personally, I'd like to see some more intelligent media reporting and investigation from the angle of what long term harm is being done to countries like Syria, who are losing so much of their young able-bodied male population. What happens to the families they leave behind? Is it really as simple as them sending for them when they get established in their country of asylum? Or do many of these families simply get forgotten about and left to languish? Who does the jobs that were previously male-dominated in Syria and how will this affect the demographics there in future? If you encourage all of the decent people to leave, then it will be even more of a hell-hole for those who can't. What do the refugees think about this? Do they want to go back some time or have they give up on their country?