I can’t help but agree, the media shapes our views, opinions and more importantly our values…I don’t think the BBC upholds impartiality.
by KingXylariaCordycep
I can’t help but agree, the media shapes our views, opinions and more importantly our values…I don’t think the BBC upholds impartiality.
by KingXylariaCordycep
35 comments
People like yourself and George are either deluded or you are acting entirely in bad faith. Sounds like neither of you actually watched any of the coverage.
You are mad they didn’t censor a political candidate that was polled to win millions of votes as soon as he declared he was a candidate.
The BBC isn’t the only media outlet that provides political coverage.
OP genuinely believes that the BBC is shaping people’s minds and also thinks that a party that got 4 million votes shouldn’t get any air time.
OP believes his opinions are right, yours are wrong and that they need to be “shaped” and corrected by the BBC.
These people’s belief in democracy is skin deep, it only goes as far as them getting what they want. If they don’t like the results then it’s not democracy to them.
Also Monbiot is thick as shit, he genuinely doesn’t understand how hydrology works but feels entitled to write about it in the newspapers. Archetypal midwit lecturing about things he’s not qualified to talk about.
The governments of the past 20 years did more for the rise of Farage than BBC ever did. Every single one ignored one of the voters’ core issues in immigration and it has finally come to a head. All they had to do was lower it to pre 2000s levels and Farage’s lot would be nothing.
Honestly it wasn’t actually that bad this election, like it or not reform do have voters comprising of a significant amount of the electorate and you have to give them coverage equivalent to their projected electoral share.
In the past though the BBC have definitely helped Farage build his platform. The BBC are really bad for giving low ball interviews or moderating panel shows badly where they fail to challenge the reality of what the politician is saying. Sunak and Starmer were both on constantly, speaking entirely in sound bites, and it went completely unchallenged. Farage is another matter and he wiped the floor with most of the amateur hour stuff The BBC threw at him. The BBC tries to project ‘impartiality’ by doing so little to challenge what a person is saying, that they are able to lie and contradict themselves with impunity.
As for where the BBC is most compromised it’s definitely with the think tanks. To start with they are constantly posting articles about the IFS and given the lack of any serious economic analysis of their own they pretty much defer to them on anything beyond simple. The IFS is pretty much pro economic orthodoxy which isn’t a bad thing but the BBC seems to rely on them so much that it can’t provide in depth analysis of its own and that’s an issue.
Shows like politics live would have people on from the Institute of Economic affairs quite often. This is a right ring free market think tank that won’t even declare where it gets it’s funding. If you get a bunch of people together and slap a name on it with a bunch of money added you can pretty much get onto the BBC and spout whatever you want and it will be taken seriously as a legitimate viewpoint and not one someone has literally paid for specifically to enter the conversation on TV.
GB news is another example, they were entirely legitimised by being constantly invited on BBC politics shows, to the point where it probably genuinely raised their profile. Literally anyone with the money could just create a political TV station and the precedent would be that they should be invited onto the BBC.
Obviously there are far more sane and transparent individuals on the right that can be invited to these shows so there’s not really any excuse for this stuff.
“while the Question Time producers have broadly balanced the main political parties, they have frequently relied upon a small number of rightwing guests to provoke entertaining debates.”
– https://theconversation.com/bbc-question-time-analysis-of-guests-over-nine-years-suggests-an-overuse-of-rightwing-voices-232315
Of course everyone accuses BBC of discriminating against their own particular cause and favouring someone else’s. Monbiot, a massive bigot of the left, thinks the BBC favours the right. Right wingers like Farage think the BBC favours the left. The BBC says this shows they’ve got it about right.
George Monbiot is such a tosser, btw. He thinks he’s so smart but he’s not even a good writer.
Uh, yeah, they are biased, towards a left wing viewpoint. Have you been watching the BBC? Constantly going to bat for progressive social positions and shutting down and refusing to even consider conservative ones? I mean Jesus Christ did you even see BBC 3 a few years back, when it was pumping out the definitive progressive content exclusively? Show me anything close to them personally taking a conservative position.
But no, they’re breaking their impartiality for, showing the third most popular political party in the country on TV. Sure. Get a grip.
The polls were showing that Reform were the third biggest party on popular votes. The BBC was absolutely obliged to represent them in their coverage. I think what is being advocated here, is the BBC not giving them relative airtime based on their political views, whick is the opposite of impartiality, whatever your own views.
Monbiot is an extreme left wanker of the highest order and would be a very dangerous man if the opportunity arose. Utterly laughable that the BBC is anything other than a corporation after his own heart.
Think this is a bit rich from GM.
He doesn’t want to people with a centre right, free market view point from getting airtime, but it’s ok for him and his kind with a centre left, or even far left Marxist viewpoint to be given airtime?
I’d disagree, maybe on the bbc this is the case but as a whole , it seems more and more people are being cancelled because they don’t fit the narrative or they’re not left leaning enough and I’m not talking about far right extremists here
So we’re saying that the BBC should abandon impartiality and be guided by their moral stance? Who gets to decide what that moral stance is then? The role of a public broadcaster is not to steer public opinion, nor should it be.
The BBC’s greatest asset in shaping public opinion is the veil of impartiality is claims to have.
Never trust anything any news site says at face value. They all have an agenda because they’re all run by human beings.
Even when they’re not outright lying to you, they’re characterising events with the language they use, they’re omitting important facts or placing them at the bottom of articles, or they’re choosing not to report important events at all.
I get the sentiment, and wholeheartedly share the concern about reform, but what this article is suggesting in principle is that the BBC should be guided by morals and not represent a ‘undesirable’, but prevalent political viewpoint. What would be next, the civil service? That would be a dangerous game. Those advocating for that, whether for the right reasons or not, would be culpable when the same apperatus was used against them by the other side. Impartiality in public media is the first thing to go in an autocratic take-over, so the principle should be protected regardless of whether you/we/anyone is happy with what is being reported. For me, the fact that the left and right both complain about the BBC’s bias to the other side suggests that it does have balance.
I’m far from a Farage supporter, but I do think that this is a ridiculous take. Reform UK was predicted to be the third largest party in vote share, it is only natural that Farage and other Reform figures would get more airtime than the Greens. Also it is worth noting that the BBC and other media interviewed Farage not to give him a platform but to call him out on his policies and ideas and eventually discredit him.
The BBCs coverage of farage was basically full slander anyway. I’m not sure how many people saw this question time, but it’s free on YouTube, watch it, and tell me that they are biased towards farage.
The BBC hate farage and his party and do everything they can to label him racist and reactionary.
This just simply isn’t true. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen panel shows where progressive voices were allowed to speak uninterrupted (despite being wrong and promoting toxic ideologies themselves), while voices even slightly right of center were spoken over, interrupted or cut short.
You cannot seriously claim to be a supporter of democracy if you are advocating for the censorship of a political candidate by the state broadcaster because you don’t agree his views. I cannot stand Farage but in a democratic society he has every right to exist and be heard.
FFS
Put it this way, about 7 years ago a bunch of rape cases collapsed because it turned out the crown prosecution had withheld evidence from the defence which showed the men to be innocent (phone logs, text messages, or straight up messing with security camera footage)
The BBC reported this.
A few years after this it then emerged that the crown prosecution service was imposing targets for successful prosecutions of rape.
In effect, the people in charge of prosecutions were applying undue pressure to get convictions, leading to the affore mentioned corruption of cases.
When talking about this, did the BBC bring on a victim of false rape prosecution? A mens rights activist? a criminologist? Any man what so ever?
No, they brought on a toxic feminist to tell us all how this was bad for women. The targeted persecution of innocent men was bad for women.
These men had their lives ruined for years because of a political ideology that seeks to punish men for existing.
The BBC is very much biased. But its not a right wing bias. Or are feminists right wing now?
Personally I think the fact that the BBC is attacked by both the left and the right for not giving their views enough of a voice means that they tow the line of impartiality very well.
They’re not perfect, and on some issues they will slightly lean one way or the other, but overall they do a really good job on that front.
I remember something Prince Charles, (as he was then,) said. He said climate change was probably the worst issue of all facing the nation so why wasn’t there a dedicated spot about it in the weather report each day.
Ha ha this guy is on drugs, the BBC does the exact opposite….. They shut down and radicalise anyone who is centre/right and they spend all their time pushing the far left woke agenda.
Their lies upon lies prove that they are not fit for purpose.
Progressive voices? Strict controls on academia shuts them out, as does woke media and virtue signalling. Politics being “tactical” also kills progressive ideas in politics. The only positive change so far is the media referring to Angela Rayner as working class, so we no longer live in a classless society? That would be progressive but the stance is again a woke one driven by entitlement and so we are no better off
The prime factor that made Farage take off has been government, not media. People start as anxious about immigration, and if any government had, EVEN JUST AT THE GESTURE LEVEL, taken actions to mitigate in the spaces of immigration as it effects housing, jobs and crime, the three primary areas of concern, then Reform never would have picked up steam.
As it stands, ignoring the problem and accusing any who point it out of being ists and phobes lead to the people who suffered under the problem flocking to the only banner promising to help, and unfortunately that banner was being run by lunatic extremists.
Typical, blame everything but the actual cause of the problem. The BBC certainly isn’t perfect, or even remotely fair, but trying to say it’s their fault Farage became an MP is insane. Probably as insane as those “progressive” voices would be.
No, never underestimate the power of the electorate. And the common sense of the British people who can see through the establishment and BBC propaganda warfare thats been waged against them relentlessly by the extreme left.
And no, they don’t want mass migration either, so get it into your heads because the future isn’t doing to be how you thought it was
If the BBC had ignored people like Farage, then the sole coverage would be left to tabloid newspapers. Wouldn’t you rather a regulated broadcaster reported held these figures to account? The BBC is slightly damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
I think it’s hard to argue that the rise of the far right is the fault of the media when our governments are allowing rampant inequality and decline in much of the country.
The BBC can definitely do better but it’s a stretch to square the blame on the organisation and it only plays into the far rights hands when you start allowing this kind of distrust in the media.
As much as I hate it, Farage has a strong following, just look at % of vote share he garnered after joining Reform.
When “progressives” (I assume you mean leftists) take hold of a party (2019) they get annihilated at the polls.
The BBCs job is to try to be a voice for the general public. For good or for ill they generally maintain a semblance of balance. This is best shown by the number of people complaining that they are right wing balanced is similar to the number of people who complain they are left wing balanced.
What an incredibly moronic statement, how much air time has Farage had? I don’t like him but he got just short of half the votes Labour got. Did he get half the air time or Starmer? Or a fraction of it? And who gets to decide exactly how much air time people without “Progressive” voices get?
Really what is implied is that Farage, who although gets a lot of views for his incendiary statments with very little air time should have none.
I’ve recently begun a course on Introduction to the Roman Empire. In around 400BCE the plebeians rebelled and withdrew to the Sacred Mount refusing to work because they believed the elites weren’t interested in their grievances. Sound familiar? They threatened to secede from Rome. Sound even more familiar? To avoid this the office of the Plebeian Tribune was created to act as a check on the other branches of government. It eventually became one of the most powerful offices. The more I think about Nigel Farage the more he strikes me as an unofficial Plebeian Tribune. It also helps to explain Trumps populism and Sturgeon’s brand of one idea populism in Scotland. These characters rise and people gravitate towards them because a large (at least 50%) of the population in each case is tired of being spoken down to and dismissed by largely educated elites. They also attract others disaffected on the extreme who just want to see the order changed. It’s no longer a Left/Right thing but an Elite/Downtrodden thing where the idea of victimhood and politics of grievance is the driver. I personally think the media is simply reflecting this state of affairs unfortunately without the level of critical analysis as to the causes.
It is a global phenomenon not exclusive to BBC or England or the west even. It is driven by capitalism, which was always fundamentally about lying, and then accelerated further by the emergence of the so-called information-age aka the internet. Which in reality should be renamed the misinformation age.
To boil it all down to its core: it is more profitable to lie and get attention than it is to be precise and have none. Attention and engagement rules over everything else. And until we, on a societal level, make up structures that make lying less profitable than the truth, this is what the market will continue to specialize in.
i mean he got half as many votes as labour didn’t he? similar to the lib dems, I think that means he’s entitled to quite a lot of air time frankly if we are actually wanting the peoples views to be represented and it be impartial.
it’d be interesting to see what the actual air time by parties is because I wouldn’t be surprised to see that just as with their seat counts the tories and labour both being overrepresented as an actual portion of voters.
The BBC used to be extremely biased to the left (especially during Brexit). However, I think they’ve taken real steps towards impartiality these days.
They are not perfect, but they are miles ahead of mainstream UK media. Even thought they state they are left leaning (and I’m right wing), I’m happy with the impartiality they are now offering. I only wish more left wing institutions could be this grown up.
Stop blaming the Media for your failure to learn and to utilize the skill of Critical Thinking. Only lazy people blame the Media or whatever for their failure to exercise personal responsibility to think, analyze, learn Critical thinking skills and to put that to use in their daily lives.
I like Monibot in general, but he does have a slightly annoying tendency to look at everything with “confirmation bias” tinted glasses. In this, he simply ignores anything that doesn’t marry with his argument.
To claim that progressive views don’t get adequate representation on the BBC is simply laughable. Look at any of the right wing groups and they will say it’s all “woke progressives” on the BBC.
What can you take from that? The BBC is probably doing a fairly good job of being impartial. Because they are pissing off both sides equally.