Item — HN Reader

> Finally a good use for my license fee!

While I agree that no news corporation should ever be censored and should be accessible to all including the "dark-web", the level of clickbait / fake-news level content on the BBC website is getting ridiculous in some areas and contradicts with their duty to be fair, impartial and balanced as the only UK state broadcaster privileged with a royal charter.

Apart from the actual World News section, the front page + newsbeat section is completely littered with frivolous cringe-worthy content and memes that isn't worth paying attention to, neither is purchasing the TV license for.

4 comments

I think one of the issues the BBC suffers from is that in the attempt to be impartial they can sometimes give undue weight to crack-pot ideas.

That said, I often see both sides of a debate complaining about the bias of the BBC. So long as that is the case then we can reasonably assume they are doing a fair job of walking the fine line between both sides.

I often see both sides of a debate complaining about the bias of the BBC. So long as that is the case then we can reasonably assume they are doing a fair job of walking the fine line between both sides

This is absolutely not true, because unscrupulous parties are careful to complain vociferously (and shamelessly) even about coverage that is heavily skewed in their own favour.

Since the Andrew Gilligan debacle (where the BBC sacked a reporter and apologised profusely over the self-evident truth he had reported: that Tony Blair lied about Iraqi WMD), the BBC has gradually transformed itself from a public broadcaster to a state broadcaster. The only time you hear a reasonable balance of views on an issue these days is where the governing party itself is split on it.

I think the Andrew Gilligan debacle, and the more recent Naga Munchetty issue, are both symptoms of the BBC falling over themselves to appear impartial at the expense of common sense.

> "both sides"

This has been the BBC response to criticism of its news reporting for a long time now.

However there are very few debates which have only two points of view, and the very act of reducing every issue to a "both sides" argument is a real problem for the BBC (well, for me anyway!)

Indeed, the fact that so much of British politics in recent years has be reduced to a binary proposition is probably a red flag.

I agree strongly with this - there has been a slow but steady decline in the quality of BBC news content over the past decade or so.

It's not even confined to clickbait, the articles are getting seriously dumbed down too - you'd think many of them were written for children!

And it's not even confined to online - the news section on Radio 1 is an absolute joke these days - if the online content is dumbed down, then this is seriously dumbed down to the point where you'd think it was for pre-school children!

A random selection of headlines shown on the linked page:

  "Undercover at a 'seduction bootcamp’"
  "The peasant whose binge drinking went global"
  "'Why I'm desperate to get rid of my bum implants'"
  "We spent a morning in Rick Astley's home studio"

This isn't even what I'd recognise as a bad day for the Beeb News site. Some days they just report on Twitter spats with headlines

  "Lizzo credits writer of 'DNA test' tweet after row"

reproducing each tweet in turn. ...actually that's from today too.

I well I suppose that makes a change from:

  "'I’m a Muslim artist inspired by the female body'"
  "On stage at a Jewish queer club night"

which I'm sure are great magazine content if that's your sort of thing but I'm not sure are really headline "news" IMHO (both also from today).

To be fair I guess having Tor access to that content is probably needed in some locations. I just wish it was presented separately to genuine news content.

While it looks frivolous, that's probably some kind of attempt to attract... common people to the news front page. We don't have access to BBC's analytics so it's hard to determine if this technique manages funnel the unwashed masses towards quality content.

If you open up something like the World section (and subsections), you'll get a lot of good reporting.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world

I also find the shows From Our Own Correspondent the Global News Podcast to be world-class news sources.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsng

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nq0gn

Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. I also agree that From Our Own Correspondent is first rate.

The main problem I have is not a lack of good content but filtering good from frivolous.

You'll see that in the technology section too.

For every insightful article you'll find 3 discussing "so called "computer mice" are a way to interact with a so called computer"...

This is a double-edged sword. I can admit up front that don't have a very flattering view of the most popular British commercial news outlets. But they're popular.

So, in a way, if BBC wishes to remain accessible among people who are used to... certain popular British news outlets, it shouldn't isolate itself in an ivory tower. If BBC's domestic target demographics have a poor reading level, that's likely more of a Britain problem than a BBC problem.

There's probably also an aspect of serving populations inside Britain who don't speak English as their first language. The BBC's mission statement[1] also mentions mirroring Britain to the world, which likely increases the need for accessible language.

This is a basic soft power strategy anyone seeking global relevance should pay attention to.

1 - https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/mission

They seem to have made it their task to report in depth on every single violent crime in the country. Being from Germany and having never lived in the UK, this is weird to me. For a crime to end up on tagesschau.de (the German equivalent to bbc.co.uk/news ) it needs to be of... well... national interest. This just seems like yellow press, honestly. Or is there something I'm missing?

edit: also their "reporting" on anything climate related is amazing. It's no wonder that extinction rebellion, a movement originating in the UK, has as the first demand to "tell the truth". At first I was confused because climate change in my media consumption was a regularly occurring topic. But then I checked the bbc website. See [1] for a screenshot. This is at a time, mind you, when the whole of Europe was shattering temperature records left and right, and Greenland was melting. And they choose to report on a thumb wrestling tournament.

[1]: http://muchmuch.coffee:8989/blobs/get/&Jwu6gu4Ub33VBWbmz6YbT...

They say the BBC bend to the wishes of the current government, they seem in recent years to be bending towards the Daily Mail, using fear-mongering to attract clicks and viewers, ignoring climate change protests to not put off car owners. Joining in with the newspapers by smearing anyone who speaks against the Tory party.

They say the BBC bend to the wishes of the current government

It’s easy to prove this isn’t true, by looking at its Brexit output. The BBC represents middle- and upper-middle-class London, regardless of who’s in power in Number 10, and regardless of any other part of the country.

I don't regard them as serious news service now. On the normal national news slots they present a dumbed-down precis of what the Government would like you to hear. For serious new coverage we watch Channel 4 News which isn't afraid to cover controversial and government-critical topics.

I didn't read their domestic news section, but their world news section is pretty interesting if not contrarian. And I'd say the tor node is for the world news section as people around the world aren't all that interested in british domestic news.