to say the BBC might be imperfect but

[user427654]

A lot of people here don't appreciate the value in what they have, and it would be beyond foolish to let this institution be decimated.

When I say here, I don't mean on MN, but in general in the UK

It’s been obvious for a few years that the BBC was biased on many issues.

Now it’s known to be fact that they have behaved disgustingly with their editing, essentially changing what a person has said. That is not journalism, it is slander and fake news - the type you would expect in China not the UK.

In my opinion the BBC should now be disbanded - it simply can’t be trusted as an impartial news source. I expect there to be a petition about it soon enough.

There is always room to debate what impartiality looks like in practice - whether that’s is moment by moment, programme by programme, or measured over the output as a whole.

Impartiality doesn’t mean, for example, that you have to give every opinion equal weight, and it doesn’t mean you can’t make a judgment based on evidence. The BBC doesn’t have to be impartial on whether the world is round, or give The Flat Earth Society as much credence as…well, anyone else! For the BBC it also doesn’t mean having to be impartial on fundamental democratic principles - freedom of speech, the right to vote, etc. All of this is online in their guidelines.

Amongst all that, and all the other judgments that have to be made I’m sure there is lots to disagree on. I think the fact people might disagree on some of these decisions is less important than the aspiration - the fact that these guidelines exist, and they have said that they will try to follow them.

I much prefer that to a news organisation that makes no promise whatsoever to try to be impartial.

Reform being overrepresented is an example of the very problem I'm talking about. Their having so much more time than the Greens and Lib Dems is not fair or balanced.

I've thought this past year - though think they blame polling data but it's not one of the issues I saw raised where they had clear biasis and outright misinformation.

I broadly agree with what you're saying, but anyone can say they're trying their best to follow guidelines, and then...not, I don't really think that's good enough, and I don't think they actually do try to follow them on some issues at all.

I'm not a defund the BBC kind of person or anything, I just think there have been some glaring examples of the BBC not trying to be impartial, and in some cases, it hasn't been a one-off but a sustained way of doing things (the trans issue, for example).

Thank you. You've summed up my point very well.

Well two points. One is that economics is a pretty soft science and economists have a history of getting things horribly wrong. See the GFC, Project Fear, Brown selling all the gold and BOE inflation forecasting.

The other is that not every voters priority is short term economic benefit first second and third.

A lot of people might for example want to trade more political independence in the long term for less economic growth in the short term.

If people thought that the best way to run a country was solely on economics we could get rid of the government and voting and stick a technocrat in there with a degree from LSE instead.

There's a reason why we don't.

Of course the Panorama program wasn't made by the BBC, but they should have vetted it before it was shown, as usual lack of funds.

it didn't need the BBC to hammer the point home with a made up news segment.

I don't disagree with your larger points, but it's worth noting that it wasn't a made up news segment. It was misleadingly edited only in that it didn't make it clear there was a time lapse between the two statements he did make, and, in that time lapse he said other things.

I wonder if the Beeb will decide that panorama is more trouble than it's worth. Particularly as this hasn't come that long after the expose of the Panorama interview with Princess Diana, which revealed that Martin Bashir mocked up fake bank statements in order to gain access to her.

In my opinion the BBC should now be disbanded - it simply can’t be trusted as an impartial news source.

No.

I have many issues with BBC and there are many questions about the funding model but disbanding them would be ridiculous. There is no chance that a new broadcaster rising from the ashes would be anywhere near as neutral or verifiable.

Personally it's nice to have one broadcaster that's not continually interrupting my thoughts and enjoyment to sell me something.

Whilst I'm furious with them for damaging trust we have to remember that these issues arise on topics where there is no neutral ground so its hard to adopt an impartial position.

• You either think Trump was fighting for justice or you think he was guilty of insurrection.
• You either believe trans women are women, or that they're still men.
• You either believe Israel is defending itself against a murderous enemy or that its a genocidal regime.

But on so many other topics (excluding the awful Woman's Hour) I do believe the BBC does the best an organisation can.

In this case the focus was on a 12 second excerpt from an hour long documentary produced for the BBC by an independent production company. No one seems to have suggested that the documentary was anything other than fair and balanced (as long as you watched the whole thing, and not just those 12 seconds).

Yes they have. From Prescott's memo:

One week before polling day, the BBC aired an hour-long Panorama special called: Trump: A Second Chance?

I watched the programme and found it to be neither balanced nor impartial – it seemed to be taking a distinctly anti-Trump stance. Critics of the Republican presidential candidate vastly outnumbered those who argued for him. What examination there was of reasons for Trump’s popularity seemed to me insufficient given the overall balance of the programme.

Given what I took to be the anti-Trump nature of the programme, I of course assumed there would be a similar, balancing Panorama programme about Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris the following week. I remain shocked that there was not.

I raised my concerns at the EGSC and David Grossman was asked to review the programme.

He concluded the main contributors to the documentary were heavily weighted against Trump, with just one supporter against ten who questioned his fitness for office.

Worse still, David highlighted alarming concerns about how Panorama had edited Trump’s speech to his supporters on January 6*, 2021, the day of the Capitol Hill riot ...

It has become increasingly clear that the BBC and its proponents, as well as many left-leaning politicians, journalists and media outlets, would prefer it if everyone focused solely on those 12 seconds of shamelessly doctored footage and ignored the overal bias in the Panorama episode and the BBC's wider coverage of the US election.

Also to be ignored are the BBC's inaccurate and irresponsible claims regarding racism and the role of BBC Verify in these, the selection bias of its push notification service, particularly regarding immigration stories, its failure to engage with criticism of the overly simplistic and distorted narratives put forth in its factual history programming, the effective censorship over several years of any views critical of gender identity ideology by its LGBTQ news desk, coupled with its constant drip-feed of stories celebrating all things trans (and for some unfathomable reason, drag queens), its failure to cover huge stories such as the leaked WPATH files or the Darlington nurses' tribunal, or give any coverage to detransitioners, the role of its style guide in its misleading news coverage of violent male offenders who say they are women, the systemic problems within BBC Arabic which have led at times to it becoming a blatant mouthpiece for hamas, and the newsnight programme which repeated dangerous inaccuracies about the humanitarian situation during Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Most of all, the BBC would prefer it if we ignored the failure of its executive committee to effectively deal with any of these issues.

As background to all the coverage of a storm in a teacup about a 12 second clip of someone everybody knows is a wrong'un anyway, and the stories of the whole thing being a right-wing coup, it's worth reading the memo in full, available here:

https://archive.ph/F5K38

Even if Trump is a wrong'un who deserves to be misrepresented, and even if there is some kind of power grab going on by right-leaning members of the board, there are still important questions to be asked. Are the issues raised in the memo true, and if so, have the BBC responded adequately to them? Are we happy with a BBC that behaves in the way descibed in this memo?

I know I'm not.

I agree on the trans point, although perhaps that is an example where some people believe (with absolute certainty) that their opinion is so objectively correct that it represents a fundamental democratic principle (ie they see their position as representing the view that no one should be discriminated against). , That leaves them unable to acknowledge that the opposite view is valid and also needs to be heard.

When that sort of blind spot happens it is hard to convince people it is even there, which is why achieving perfect impartiality can be so incredibly challenging.

Broadly that Michael Prescott is considered to have potential conflicts of interest. Among other things (years as the political editor at the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times), his PR firm advises rival media companies, and he's friends with Robbie Gibb who is on the BBC board and who was instrumental in the launch of GB News.

Except we have no readable local news websites, absolutely covered in ads and you can hardly read down a story without another window opening, or subscribing after reading a paragraph of what might be a really important local issue. Facebook is utter trash for ‘news’ and anything local issue just to generate comments from mostly hateful people. I use the BBC website for news and longer reads, it’s actually really good for that and included in the licence fee. I’d hate to see ad free news axed and I can decide for myself if there’s biased views in the headlines.

So you don’t think that loads of people voted for all that NHS money on the bus?
And Project Fear was correct.

I don't disagree with your assessment either when you put it like that (so we're agreeing not to disagree 😁)

However they were absolute idiots to imagine that, in today's climate, then someone somewhere wouldn't find out what they had done, put the worst possible spin on it, and use it to call for heads on blocks. This is why I am angry with them on this topic - for scoring such a spectacular own goal.

On the "trans rights" (anti woman) and pro Hamas issues - I am actually angry with them. It's beyond disgraceful. I am angry with them for reprimanding a woman for a slight eye roll on the basis of 20 complaints (some of which, I have heard, came from BBC staff themselves). A little while back there were 103 complaints to Radio 4 about the language being used at 6.30pm on Call Jonathan Pie. The complainers, from what I gathered when I heard the report, were basically told that they were over sensitive. Double standards bloody everywhere.

They really are digging their own grave here. I don't want the BBC to go. I want them to be better.

I think it's probably too far gone as the major problem seems to be the people, and you can hardly sack all of them and start over. The vast majority of employees seem to share the same worldview, which has diverged significantly from the public. Maybe this is because so many seem to have gone to the same schools and universities, and have hopped between the same few companies like the Guardian and Channel 4. And anyone who is not from this background is being hired by people who are, with orders to respect 'BBC values'. It's unlikely many rabid Reform voters are going to even apply, and if even they did it's difficult to see how they'd get - or keep - the job when their interviewers regard them as worse than Hitler!

As a pretty centric definitely-non-Reform voter who doesn't believe putting a dress on a man makes him a woman, I wouldn't apply there as I'm pretty sure I'd find it an intolerable workplace. And I imagine if I had worked there, I would have tried my hardest to leave a few years back. I doubt I'm alone. So the people working there and those applying will be the exact same as the people who have caused this mess, who don't even seem to understand what they've done wrong, and so can hardly be expected to have the ability to put it right. And going by the list of potential replacements for Davie I saw, they don't show much interest in learning from their mistakes; they're all either BBC or Channel 4, or both.

@PencilsInSpace - are you taking each separate allegation in Prescott’s memo as having been proven?

A lot of that seems performative to me - the idea that a documentary on Trump (one of the most divisive and talked about figures of the decade) would need to be followed a week later by another hour long documentary on the (frankly not hugely exciting) Kamala Harris just to even things up feels to me like a misunderstanding of how impartiality is supposed to work (and definitely a misunderstanding of what the UK audience was actually interested in watching!).

I’d also be interested in hearing a broad cross section of views as to whether the documentary was actually biased. I’ve read other reports that overall it was very balanced (and it is is also allowable for a programme maker to form a judgment based on evidence).

If this was being broadcast in the UK during a UK election and was about a person standing in that election then I’m sure the rules would have been much, much tighter. But it wasn’t, it was a documentary about politics in another country, shown to a UK only audience almost entirely made up of people who were interested in the personality of Donald Trump, but not able to vote or affect the result in any way.

I really don’t think Prescott was actually “shocked” buy this for one moment - but he certainly wanted to give the impression he was for when the memo was handed to the Telegraph.

The COI was regarding Prescott's proposed role in helping to select the next chair of OFCOM. Obviously any industry insider helping to choose who regulates them is a COI.

https://archive.ph/9nv4J

Is it a conflict of interest for an independent adviser, board or exec committee member or other senior BBC staff to have previously worked for other media companies? If so, there are probably quite a few people who need to go!

The idea that being friends with someone on the board is a COI is laughable.

It's hard to separate fact from what's flying about in all cases like this, but the insinuation is that Prescott was appointed in the first place at least partially due to Gibbs's influence.

I didn't mean friends as in, are occasionally at the same dinner party.

One thing that's for certain is that the UK old boys network is too small and too tight.

As a retired journalist (not UK media) I was horrified and outraged by what the BBC did with the Trump quote.
I beggars belief that they thought could do this, even more that they somehow thought they had the right to do it.
I'd have been sacked forthwith if I had done anything remotely comparable during my 30-year career. Indeed, colleagues were shitcanned for less.
I find myself increasingly disappointed by the BBC and think a radical overhaul of the institution and its funding is long overdue.

This is the Argument to Moderation fallacy.

I haven't watched the Panorama episode, but I did, unfortunately, watch Trump's speech in real time, and he did actually say all those things, albeit with other things in between.

There is nothing remotely comparable for 'balancing' from Harris, by the way. It's like saying because you gave air time to a nuclear detonation you have to give equal air time to a fireworks show.

But... since Trump's speaking that day added up to at least an hour, how should a news show, after the fact, have presented it?

So true op!

if you have lived elsewhere and seen the state of news and other programming you would realise what we have.

the panorama thing was last winter, nobody cared until the torygraph started a politically motivated campaign

You said no-one had suggested that the documentary was anything other than fair and balanced. I am pointing out that that has been very strongly suggested.

I am asking whether each of the claims in the memo is true and if so, what the BBC has done about it.

We know it's true that Trump's speech was doctored. What have the BBC done about this since it was highlighted to them six months ago?

Is David Grossman's claim true that in that documentary there was one pro-trump supporter v. ten against?

Was there any critical coverage of Harris in other programmes?

You seem to be claiming that the documentary was balanced but also that it doesn't matter that it wasn't balanced because it's what a UK audience wanted. I think that's a huge assumption and UK audiences might have appreciated coverage that went some way to explaining Trump's popularity (beyond the usual 'they're all thick bigots' line) and why US voters were not keen on Harris. The result must have been thoroughly bemusing for those who relied on the BBC as their one 'impartial' news source.

I don't care why Prescott wrote the memo or whether he was feigning shock or not, although I am yet to see convincing evidence that he wrote it in bad faith. I care about whether the claims are true. Have any of the claims, which cover a variety of topics, been shown to be false yet?