Interesting Article on BBC's Complete Disconnection With Reality About Covid

[Advance]

Intro:

"I’ve seen from the inside how the corporation has failed in its reporting on the pandemic

I have been a BBC journalist for many years, and in that time I have been committed to impartiality and the corporation’s Reithian values to inform and educate. My despair about the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the pandemic though has been steadily growing for some time. And in early December, as I listened to a BBC radio broadcast, I felt the corporation reach a new low."

Here is a link through the paywall:
archive.md/EIZZW

Maybe a whistle blower from The Guardian will do one soon!

We’ve also stopped watching the BBC news. It’s stupidly biased in so many ways.

@CuntAmongstThePigeons

Little bit off topic, but I completely lost faith in the BBC long before the pandemic. As I became more interested in womens and trans rights and they way in which they intersect, I realised that not only was the BBC horribly biased but actually they're fact reporting was awful.

But I've been a beeb follower since forever and it's completely changed the way I viewed the BBC.

I'm with you on this, too.

with cheap off patent drugs

Oh, ffs. Good luck with that.

Crikey. The telegraph and talk radio, those well known beacons of truth lol. Both right wing tory supporting now suddenly seen as anti establishment. More like influenced by bat shit crazy ERG/covid recovery types .

That article is incredibly biased itself!

For several posters on here it would help to do some research into who owns our various newspapers and media outlets, and what that means for news agendas etc:

www.newstatesman.com/business/2021/02/four-men-own-britain-s-news-media-problem-democracy

www.mediareform.org.uk/media-ownership/who-owns-the-uk-media

www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

Thanks peacock

@Berlinkreuzberg

Crikey. The telegraph and talk radio, those well known beacons of truth lol. Both right wing tory supporting now suddenly seen as anti establishment. More like influenced by bat shit crazy ERG/covid recovery types .

Thing is when it comes to Covid coverage they ARE anti establishment. I find it bizarre too 🤷🏼‍♀️. But the left has become so authoritarian, such is the state of affairs.

I have centre left wing views and I'm not authoritarian. Bit of a generalisation tbh.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Read a variety of sources, don’t expect to find one that is perfectly objective.

This.

What is concerning is the way that individuals like Steve Bannon (former Trump advisor) and other members of the alt right are insidiously influencing public opinion to mistrust institutions like the BBC. Remember the 'defund the BBC' trope that mysteriously appeared. All part of the plan to encourage the plebs to fight amongst themselves and undermine genuinely neutral figureheads. Much like Brexit. All from the same stable. Wealthy elites pretending not to be...

I would also say that it is a natural tendency to favour news sources that primarily reflect your viewpoint (and to want to perceive these as unbiased), and to criticise those that don’t (and see them as biased).

Consuming a wide variety of news sources can be helpful BUT if all those sources are if a similar ‘type’ it gives an unhelpful illusion of lack of bias while instead simply reinforcing it.

I thought this was going to be about how resolutely middle class focussed the BBC was in its coverage of lockdown. All classical music concerts in the garden and that kind of thing. Millions of people were really, really struggling but it was all about the people who had taken up knitting or whatever.

@ILookAtTheFloor

Yes it's a great article and has been widely shared in anti-restrictions circles.

I'm sad that the pandemic has eroded my trust in institutions that I had previously held in such high regard, especially the BBC.

I too now subscribe to a newspaper (the Telegraph) and it has been a breath of fresh air for me.

Yes, the Telegraph is such a well trusted, balanced opinion newspaper, good choice.

There is a consistent anti-BBC bias/message in many of the right wing newspapers (Mail, Sun, Express etc). This is not because they think the BBC is biased, it's because they want it removed from the field so they can push forward with their own, biased, version of the news.

at the Telegraph being unbiased! I am disappointed though in the BBC’s lack of challenge over the complete failure known as Brexit.

The issue I had with the bbc reporting was that it was so scare-mongery and unbalanced.
For example when they were reporting the daily figures, on a Sunday/Monday they would always include a caveat that weekend figures were lower. But on a Tuesday/Wednesday they would never make a caveat to say that the figures were a catch up from the weekend. So it was deliberately designed to scare people

The thing is, we can all point out ways in which the BBC does not say what we want them to say - they have been very silent on schools, for example, and have used photographs of schools that are actively misleading - but whether that is an indication of bias or non-bias (ie EVERYONE has a complaint) is unclear.

Errmmm, the OP source is The Spectator? Leading the defund the BBC charge. Seriously now??

@Ifailed

There is a consistent anti-BBC bias/message in many of the right wing newspapers (Mail, Sun, Express etc). This is not because they think the BBC is biased, it's because they want it removed from the field so they can push forward with their own, biased, version of the news.

Maybe so.

But the BBC’s performance during then pandemic has made me totally reevaluate my view of the BBC.

If their aim was to demonstrate just how much they deserve their place, and deserve a license fee, then they utterly failed.

I’ve taken up the FT (for real news), and the Spectator (for antidote to the constant Covid propaganda). Talk Radio only gets a look in when Radio 4 gets really fear mongering.

'Anti-restrictions circles'

Ah right yourself.

Thanks OP. Genuinely LOL at somebody linking The Spectator to complain that the BBC have lost their way with COVID reporting.

😂

It might not be true but it certainly is believable - Camilla Tominey, in The Spectator , 12/21.

Sounds like a twat tbh and profoundly incurious about anything except Beeb office politics. When you are sneering about having a keyboard cleaned you should get a hold of yourself.

So - read an anti-BBC article in The Spectator, stop watching tv news which has an external regulator to ensure impartiality, start reading the Telegraph instead. Jesus. I mean I don't want to be nasty but that is one of the stupidest ideas I have seen for some time.