How much do you trust the BBC as a source of news?

[Sausagenbacon]

My dh takes the BBC as gospel. I take it with a (large) pinch of salt, as I think it has baked-in biases. I value the BBC highly, and think we are lucky to have it, by the way.

I'm interested in how other people view the BBC's reporting.

I was on the fence about this until 2 minutes ago . Watching the BBC's coverage of the events of Oct 7th, what did they focus on?
Hamas? The ordinary Palestinians who joined them?
No. It's the fault of the Israeli government 's slow response.
Apparently.
Fuck them

Scotland is a country but it's not a sovereign state.

Yep. So bad : (

I'd get it if they recommended more reliable news sources than the BBC.🤷‍♀️

But they don't. Because they can't?🤔

I work for a commercial rival of the BBC.

There’s not another news org in the entire world that is as thorough and introspective when it comes to journalism. The hoops they have to jump through to get something published are something else. It’s part of the reason I don’t work for them, because quite frankly I don’t have the patience!

Political parties and other countries seek to undermine the BBC because they are the most likely news org to uncover serious wrongdoing in politics around the world. Repeatedly telling the public they are biased is the best weapon they have to dismiss their reporting as untrue (See: Donald Trump)

It’s one of our finest institutions and those who rush to defund it, to commercialise it, or to shrink it should think incredibly carefully about what we would lose and would replace it (nothing would. A commercial BBC is not the BBC at all).

Of course, when you’re publishing thousands of stories a day, mistakes are made. But what other news organisation repeatedly reports and analyses its own mistakes on its own programmes?

Plus, the BBC trains thousands of journalists who go on to create some of the most incredible reporting in this, and other countries around the world. No other media organisation does this in the same way.

Interesting tweet from VCM last night made me think of this thread.

BBC are so diligent and so thorough with their research. Right. Mmhmm.

I absolutely trust the BBC. I think on balance it’s the best source of news available.

Yet they literally cut up and re-spliced together Donald Trump's speech to make it look like he said something he never said. And when caught red-handed doing so, refused to issue an apology. There's honesty for you.

Twitter/X can be pretty good.

No mainstream news organisation is reliable, they are all bought and paid for by someone who has an agenda to promote. The only thing you can do is listen to a variety of sources, including the small independent 'on the ground' sources and then decide in your own mind with a bit of critical thinking and using your own experience, what the most likely truth is.

Agree with this entirely. It wasn’t balanced reporting, they didn’t and still don’t, which is why I don’t believe they are changing, have credible women putting the women’s rights view.

Now I’ve seen it on this issue I wonder whatt else I’ve missed. If you can state that a man can become a woman I won’t believe anything else you say.

I don’t.

It is heavily promoting pro-globalist opinions, (the woke agenda), and skewed reporting on a whole range of issues. The climate is one of them:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/656f411497ae14084ad8d03a/t/66bc6870a7ad654a13b2ac7e/1723623541496/Homewood-BBC-2023.pdf

Often it's not what the BBC report that's the problem, but its what they leave out, ignore, minimise, explain away, or fail to tell you.

I trust it but I also think they choose NOT to report some stories, who’s is a form of bias.

Exactly. If everybody thinks your biased towards the opposing side, you're probably quite neutral.

I trust, and love, the BBC. However I read a really interesting book by ex-BBC journalist Robin Aitken called "The Noble Liar", setting out some social and ethical issues on which the BBC adopts a default position without really noticing. Since reading it, I've noticed it in reporting.

@Justinthekitchen ,

It’s fairly amazing that you try to discredit the BBC climate change coverage with a dodgy ‘paper’ written by a retired accountant.

Yeah, for example it's been 7 days now since the State of Florida launched a big lawsuit against Pfizer for knowingly marketing their vaccine by mis-representing or exaggerating the benefits, and downplaying or concealing the many potential serious side effects of their Covid vaccine.

Now I'm not sure who will be proved correct in the law suit, but an important issue of public health is it not, and one that the BBC should be particularly keen to keep on top of given how heavily they promoted the 'safe and effective' vaccines to the British public.

Yet so far crickets from the BBC! Nothing I could find on their website, or on the first 5 pages of Google when searching for the case together with the BBC.

It's fairly telling that you feel you need to resort to tribal 'ad-hom' rather than discuss the merits or not of the content posted.

I think the issue with the BBC is how limited their news reporting has become, especially with reduced regional and local news.

Yes that’s relevant.

Re those who do still think the BBC achieves their aim then they can have a subscription with that model.

As a brand it sells the idea of high quality non-biased content. If it delivers that the people who want it will choose to pay.

Not at all.

The BBC clearly has an agenda. Any human organisation will. They lean left.

More than privately owned broadcasters, OP. Which privately-owned media companies do you trust, OP? @Sausagenbacon Facebook? Fox? Twitter/X?

The BBC is a great source of power and influence for the UK. Many would love to bring it down.

@Justinthekitchen ,

‘It's fairly telling that you feel you need to resort to tribal 'ad-hom' rather than discuss the merits or not of the content posted.’

More than happy to discuss the reality and impacts of climate change, but it would need its own thread.

Suffice it to say that the science is well proven and the data is increasingly obvious. Virtually no actual scientists in the field are sceptical now.

What i said in my original post was 'how much do you trust the bbc?'
Not, ' what news outlets are better?'
As i said, my dh thinks it's the gold standard, while I don't. Which was brought home to me by the 10 o'clock news last night.

Switching to the BBC.com site when using a VPN is a far better experience. But if it detects you are in UK there is no way they’re letting you avoid Traitors and Gladiators news.