Sunak telling Robin White that biological sex is important live on GB news

[fromorbit]

'Particularly when it comes to questions around women's safety and health, biological sex is important.' Parents need to be involved in schools.

Rishi Sunak is asked 'why should LGBT people vote Conservative?'
GB News forum footage here:
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1757143443111841900

Here you go - I know nothing about Left Foot Forward but this is an accurate summary of the clip I linked

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/02/gb-news-investor-sir-paul-marshall-liked-and-shared-far-right-islamophobic-homophobic-conspiracy-theory-posts/

It's not directly relevant to GC concerns but is relevant to why I think GB news is a dubious source of information. We need actual journalism, not conspiracy theories

It's not directly relevant to GC concerns but is relevant to why I think GB news is a dubious source of information.

All news sources are dubious sources of information. Have a look at the Scarlet Blake threads. There are people who are only just becoming aware that he's a man because all the news websites and TV channels have been referring to him as a 'woman' and using 'she' throughout. Some of them haven't mentioned anywhere that he's transgender and none are spelling out that a 'transgender woman' is a man.

You can't trust any of them. I don't know why you're singling out this one source.

@OldCrone I completely agree. The major news sources are lying to us about Scarlet Blake. You only have to read the threads on this psycho to see how many people were misled into thinking that Scarlet* is a woman.

*I have no idea what Scarlet's original name was. I've seen Alice Wang as a previous name, but of course that is misleading too. The articles are full of obfuscation.

I am very fed up of this "they are all as bad as each other" nonsense. No they aren't.

No other channels have a bunch of current and former MPs from one party fronting their programmes. No other channels as far as I know are donating to political parties. No other channels are flagrantly breaking OFCOM rules and subject of multiple investigations. No other channels have the word "News' in their title but claim to be a "current affairs" broadcaster to get round reporting restrictions.

That's why I'm singling out this source. And those are all good reasons to do so.

The problem with going down conspiracy theory rabbit holes is you end up believing noone because they all seem credible. Whereas the reality is most journalists are professionals and take their job seriously so don't go round spouting off a load of populist drivel without sources, because they don't want to get sued.

Said the conspiracy theorist.

Yeah, whatever. I'm going to post this again:

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/coronavirus-response/fighting-disinformation/identifying-conspiracy-theories_en

It's quite helpful in identifying the difference between a conspiracy theory and a hypothesis supported by evidence.

The BBC should be being held to a higher standard, because they are supposed to be the gold standard and they STILL are not reporting the truth though.

GB news is GB news. You expect less from them. Have you seen the viewing figures for them?

Compare with the BBC and it's reach and reputation. If the BBC say something, fewer people question it because 'it's the BBC they have quality journalism and aren't biased'.

Whereas if the same were on GB news, people automatically go 'its GB news, it's conspiracy unprofessional right wing nuttery' and apply heavy doses of salt or lap it up as they are wing nut conspiracy theorist to begin cos they already got it off the interwebs anyway.

This matters every bit as much but that doesn't help your narrative.

We get It. You don't like the Tories. They are evil and should all die in a ditch without mercy to any as none of their souls can be saved because they attached a blue rosette. No matter what they say on any subject. Cos guilt by association and all that.

Now can we just talk about content and issues?

GB is a niche news source. As if the Morning Star had a channel.

The Guardian is to some extent too, it's very much got an editorial slant. But it positions itself as mainstream and fairly broad. Many other papers fall into that kind of category on the left or right.

The BBC is meant to be neutral and balanced insofar as it takes political positions.

What we've seen though is a real shift across the traditional news media. Pressure from social media, the internet, financial pressures, the 24 hour news cycle, and other social changes all play a part. It's affected all particularly with things like fact checking and a tendency to be click-baity. But it's most affected the more left news sources like the Guardian and, alas, the supposedly neutral BBC.

GB news isn't traditional media, what has happened is that the compromise of so many traditional sources has driven the emergence of new, often more overtly political media. Gender ideology is a good illustration of why - it's because so many people can't get their views acknowledged in the traditional media and stuff is clearly being swept under the rug.

In some ways this increased divison is not great, and they suffer the same problems of click bait journalism, reliance on ever decreasing sources of funding, and lack of fact checking and adherence to the ethics of journalism. On the other hand, there is something to be said for the fact that they are openly partisan, as opposed to the BBC which pretends to be neutral but clearly isn't.

The BBC should be being held to a higher standard, because they are supposed to be the gold standard and they STILL are not reporting the truth though.

Exactly. People trust the BBC, but anyone watching the news today has been lied to about the sex of a murderer.

GB News or the Daily Mail can be dismissed as unreliable, but if people see something on the bbc they believe it. It's far worse that they are now deliberately misleading the public.

And if they don't see it, they often will not believe it happened.

I once read a very disturbing Twitter exchange about gender ideology and men in women's prisons, and one fellow would not believe that any of it was actually going on, as far as he was concerned it must all be people duped by conspiracy theories. Why would he not believe any of it - because, he said, if this stuff was going on, why hadn't the Guardian reported it?

@AdamRyan I don't watch GB news but like most people have seen various clips on social media.

I personally take most criticism of the channel with a pinch of salt.

-From my limited viewing i think they do broadcast a range of views and have both politically left and right commentators, including some Novara Media journalists.
I don't doubt the balance of views is right leaning.

-There IS a difference between news and current affairs, or "news discussion" items. It makes sense to me that there would be stricter regulations around balance for actual news. If the accusation is that describing some slots as current affairs is a sneaky manoeuvre to get around impartiality rules I think that's pretty weak, unless those shows were in any way dressed up as news bulletins.

-As someone who wasted too much time reading the guardian, I remember very well when the channel was announced, the remit was to be news discussion featuring a range of views, to be headed up by Andrew Neil. I thought that actually sounded like a great idea. Around that time Neil was being described in the left wing press as "the only person who could have held Boris to account" (as Johnston dodged an interview with him in the run up to the 2019 GE). On the announcement of GB news, the talk in the guardian both from writers and BTL commenters went from Neil being seen as this bastion of journalistic talent and integrity, to a sinister right wing manipulator. It was bizarre to watch this narrative change in real time. Before a single minute of programming was broadcast, GB news was variously described in the guardian as not to be trusted, an amateurish joke, and a threat to democracy.

The reaction from the guardian, and left wing commentators more generally, to GB news, has always felt to me more like the response to a threat or new rival, a threat to their ability to shape the public narrative, rather than any genuine or principled concern about truth or integrity.

And perhaps the channel hasn't lived up to its initial aim of showing both sides of politically contentious topics, I don't watch it enough to judge, but I'm pretty certain that even if it were meticulously even-handed, it would still be derided by the left, just as it was before it aired.

My father read the Daily Telegraph. Working class and ex-wartime Navy, he was a committed Labour voter until the 1970s, when he drifted rightwards, unhappy with the power and reach of the trades unions. I disagreed with him, but in his paper I one day read a letter from a regular reader, who said that he took the Telegraph because his tutor at University had advised him to not only read a newspaper that would reinforce his own existing views. I thought that was good advice and have kept to it myself since.

Sometimes I think you must be 12 years old. You appear to have no idea at all how the world works.

What will happen to you when all these people are on mainstream channels, which they will be soon as an election is coming up. Will your head explode because all the party leaders are on the BBC? Or will you then say oh yeah the BBC are right wing funded bigots?

I for one would be delighted to see these people turning up not only on mainstream channels but with interviewers who do their homework properly, ask probing questions, and don't let them get away with flannel. It would be fascinating to see how they cope.

I read the same story from different sources. You get information that's excluded from one news source in another sometimes. Hopefully it gives me a more balanced view.

As much as anything, GB are still reflective of a certain position in this country otherwise they would have to audience to begin with. Whether you like it or not. They don't create that audience magically. There was a demand there already because of this sense of not being served by the mainstream channels. Where you have that you need to reflect on what the mainstream channels are failing to do - especially given the BBCs remit is effectively to represent all views and political positions.

With this in mind, it's also worthwhile to listen to, in order to understand what is happening and going on in this country. People with views you don't like think something for a reason. Their issue is very often a very valid one, but the reasoning for how they interpret the world around that issue may differ and be one you don't like.

Take immigration. Does the UK have a problem with migration. Some people say no, it adds to this country etc etc. Others will say it's taking away from British people. Arguably as migration has increased social mobility has reduced for some socioeconomic groups. Are the two connected? I think it's hard to argue it's not. Do I personally think this means immigration is wrong and should be stopped?

No. I do think that this divide about racism takes the focus away from the practical issues such as whether education and training is good and whether enough support is given very early on to kids from families with no aspirations. I think it takes away from conversations about an aging population and how we are handling that. And there's the bitter one about our dysfunctional house building and planning system which is so dominated by NIMBYism.

It becomes easier to shout and scream across the divide at the identity politics rather than get to the heart of the matter about where there are problems, about how cultural issues do actually matter whether we like it or not, and how we find ways to find solutions to these issues that benefit everyone.

If we were doing all that the opportunities for the far left and far right would be fewer as they'd be less dissatisfaction to feed off.

What it comes down to is political echo chambers have allowed us to stop listening to 'the other side' and in doing so stop us from learning to understand the full nature of our society's problems. We only see a problem from one angle so never fully grasp it, so we can't adequately deal with it.

If you don't understand the law of unintended consequences, you don't understand politics and you are unable to produce solutions.

This is about communication. All of it.

GB news isn't going anywhere. Even if Ofcom shuts it down, it'll just spring up in some form online. For a reason.

It's said that you can best fight your enemy, if you understand your enemy intimately. This applies here. Instead of going down the route of ban everything and censorship, work out why banning everything and censorship doesn't work (clue: this is also about truth and power and abuses of power).

It's all very Good People-Left Wing-White Hat-Wonderful vs Bad People-Right Wing-Black Hat-Evil isn't it?

IIRC from the male milk threads, hasn't the BBC been uncritically regurgitating the Right Side of History on how much better male nipple discharge is for babies, compared to the boring old female inferior product? How many of the prolific poster who pride themselves on their particular brand evidence-based dispassionate unbiased rooting out of WrongThink, will be applying the same "ugh, Nasty Taint!" criteria to those kinds of blatant, child-harming lies?

It’s like you think everyone in the world but you is an idiot. We all know that GB News is a biased news channel. We all know to not swallow every one of their pronouncements as fact. If you don’t like GB News don’t watch it. And don’t assume that anyone who does watch it will just absorb 100% of the information as fact. Most people aren’t stupid.

There is no world where lactating males replace breastfeeding women. It is not physically possible. That story is a great example of scaremongering by the media using sensationalist headlines (and incidentally came from Policy Exchange, the same think tank above).

It's a great example of what I'm talking about. Are people who believe it stupid or bigots? No. Are the media who are reporting it evil? No, just cynical. And is the source (policy exchange) evil? I doubt it, but it is non-transparent and has an agenda.

If you can't deal with an opposing view without resorting to black and white, good vs evil, then as my kids say, that's a you problem. But stop projecting your defensiveness on to me.

One of the problems I have with gender identity itself is the concept of righteous truth which only progressive newly enlightened people have access to and bad people don't and have nothing to offer in a debate. And should be silenced.

Life is much muddier than that and none of us can escape physical realities in the search for enlightenment.

One of those realities is you can force others through censorship. Ever.

Did you really just say 'stop projecting your defensiveness' to everyone here with a straight face?

Right ok.

Tone deaf.

But..but…it was the BBC article that brought it to the attention of thousands of viewers! Everyone trusts the BBC dont you know? 🤪

So, in you guys opinion (and not being goady, just genuinely interested), how do you think the Nazis came to power in Germany? Were the Germans more stupid than us? Was there something unique about Hitlers rhetoric in the years leading up to WW2?

I think a lot of our media guidelines and social conventions are in place because we learnt human populations are vulnerable to manipulation by ab agenda, yet we seem to be throwing that learning out now we have the Internet.

Bad Media!!!