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lolstockhausen
For those that say BBC is unbiased
- Thread starter Ilikeitblackplease
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Bias is OK as long as it supports your point of view, hence the CT nuts that rave against the MSM all flock to RT as the bastion of truth and those that decry Fox and the Daily Mail for their right wing bias hold up the Guardian as the paragon of unbiased news.
Soldato
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It's a shame, odious Israel
Did he offend you?
Actually it's because the news always spends a lot more time covering what the Government is saying/doing (because it affects us all) than what the Opposition is saying/doing (which doesn't). All the Opposition want is more air time.
What I love about threads like this one is how it tells you vastly more about the politics of the posters than that of the BBC. As has been pointed out, most people use "biased" with the meaning "different opinions than mine". The fact that the BBC gets attacked by both sides suggests it's pretty close to central. But right-wingers in particular think anything that is not to the right of Ghenghiz Khan is "Left Wing", and thus lump Centrist views into the Left. For whatever reason, Left Wingers are usually more able to accept that their views are to one side, and not central. Hence why attacks on the BBC come from both sides, but more from the Right - because the Right can't tell the difference between Social Democrats and Socialists. Of course, they don't care either.
I was also amused by the idea that the BBC is pro-Israel, given how often it is attacked for being pro-Palestinian.
I disagree and I think your view point is skewed by your own bias. Sure, there is no doubt that some of the anti-immigration supporters who are quite clearly on that side because they simply don't like foreigners but that doesn't mean they don't also have a point.
Just to be clear what the daily mail does is take true stories which are outragous and uses them to push their an anti-immigration or anti-benefits agenda. I don't agree with their agenda but that doesn't mean that they don't have a point when they do find something to cry fowl about. People like you deny it as a non-story and the cycle continues because nothing ever gets fixed.
The bedroom tax has ridiculously bias reporting. The left wing are crying foul that people are being pushed out of their homes or facing financial hardships while the right wing doesn't see why we shold be helping the plebs at all. If a media outlet were to take the stance that while they're in favour social housing schemes they didn't have a lot of sympathy for the couple who have been living below market rate for the last 17 years with two extra bedrooms being forced to move on, that would be centralist and sensible but then lefties pretending to be centralists would label them as right wing.
The beveridge report discussed the benefits trap in the 1940s and suggested we needed to incentive the poor to still work yet we're still struggling with this today. Are you honestly going to suggest with a straight face the the original conception ideals of the welfare state are a right wing ideal and deny the guy had a point?
We can't point out the actual problems with immigration without being branded a racists. Can't deport people who activly hate preach against our way of live and are unwilling to integrate into our society. We can't walk down certain streets in certain towns if you're white because the local community may be hostile to you because of that.
Would you deny these problems exist or are you just going to deny they're problems? These are not centralist problems, these are loony left issues. Only a doormat lets these kind of things happen. The right might not have the answers but they're pretty good at poking holes in problems and are gaining support by doing it. Sure you'll probably brand them stupid, racists or whatever, but the reality is a lot of them are just normal people who haven't entirly bought into an ideology.
Regarding the organ thread you actually like the idea of cohersion of joining the list. In essence it is a requirment that you have to be willing to pay into society to gain the benefits of it. This is a balanced approach and a centralist view point. The reason you cannot fully get behind it is because you're nowhere near the centre in reality. It's a shame because you really don't seem to get that both extremes of the spectrum are ridiculous.
I'm not really sure why I bother with you, you always come across as an idealistic 18 year old.
To be honest giving the opposition air time is largely useless because they'll generally argue against Government policy they even agree with because they're the opposition and they want to be in power.
I dare say you've done the same thing with the second half of that paragraph and I quite disagree. If anything I think it's generally the opposite nowadays, the left has been defined as centre while the right pretty much know and accept they're a bunch of selfish *******.
To be fair it's because it's more complicated than that. The reality is, defining something or someone as the centre is a bit of a misnomer. People are often bias on different side of the spectrum on an issue by issue basis. The bedroom tax is one example where I think right often argue the centralist POV because society seems to support the left. Political correctness gone mad also seems to be a major lefty issue. On the other hand our "left" supports capatilsm and demolished regulation prior to the finacial crisis, because lets be honest, we are obviously right wing there.
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Man of Honour
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All media is biased in some way, the key is not to remove the bias but just understand what it is to read a varied array of opinions. Just choosing what to run with and what not to cover is an editorial decision that will carry some bias, you can never escape that if it's picked by humans.
I think the BBC is very centrist in general. On maybe an issue or two it might be slightly left or right.
UK politics has been very centrist for a long time as well and I think the article does mention that the BBC has been swayed by that position.
Europe has suddenly very recently swung a bit to the right in the last few years and suddenly the BBC is a "lefty" channel.
UK politics has been very centrist for a long time as well and I think the article does mention that the BBC has been swayed by that position.
Europe has suddenly very recently swung a bit to the right in the last few years and suddenly the BBC is a "lefty" channel.
From my experience most resonable humans who aren't trying to push an agenda will actually be able to discuss both side of an argument while understanding their preference is a bias. The whole I can only tell one side of the story isn't a human trait, it's something to do with structured orginsations.
Soldato
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I've worked for BBC, BBCW, ITV, ITN, C4, Sky, News Int, Telegraph, Guardian and the Mail, amongst other organisations.
Generally speaking the print media have very specific agendas that are carefully managed by the Editor though the Sub-Editors.
With broadcast media and bias tends to me as a result of 'cultural momentum' for want of a better term, rather than deliberate agenda setting.
It's all the same people doing the media jobs merry-go-round in these places.
We have a stupid mix of left and right policies that might make us near centre overall but that's a pretty poor explination.
The right wouldn't have a welfare state at all. I believe the centre would have a welfare state(because it makes sense), but the daily mail wouldn't be able to find a single woman with 18 kids making about £50k a year. The left has a benefits trap, which is what we're trying to move away from currently against much duress.
The right wouldn't have free at the point of service health care. The left would. A centralist would look at the econmics and side with the left I imagine.
If you look at both these policies, even with current trends we're still a massivly left leaning state when it comes to them and you can't blame us because these policies totally make sense. Really though who really cares about left / right / centre, I'd rather just see a common sense approach.
When I grew up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was called Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles because the word Ninja was banned on UK tv. I'm not really sure if that was a right of left policy but I think we can all agree it's a pretty ******* insane policy and shows the Government overreaching no matter whose side you're on.
Personally I fully support smaller Government because stupid crap like the above shouldn't exist, the Government needs to get it's noses out of the publics business and get on with providing the type of services that just can't be done without the Government. It's totally ridiculous that parts of our key infrastructure is privatised. The welfare state and NHS is one of the best parts of our country, albiet in the need of tweaks. Mass spying on us doesn't need to be happening. We don't need billions of our tax funds spent on crap like the olympics (to be fair, it's been suggested we broke even so maybe not a total farce). We don't need the Government giving kick backs to the BPI for all media sold. We don't need overly complicated tax systems or more laws than you can know. All these things are created by jobsworths and have pretty much nothing to do with political leanings other than politicians robbing our coffers to validate their existance.
[DOD]Asprilla;24558122 said:
I wouldn't go as far to suggest all broadcast is like that but I agree with regards to news. Go onto BBC news and sky news and you'll see almost carbon copy reporting. Many people claim the BBC is superior but honestly, the stories generally sound like they came from the same person and they probably did.
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Soldato
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The problem with common sense is that it doesn't always look like common sense with the benefit of hindsight. In any case it's generally not a good basis for policy since its all too frequently proved to be wrong.
I think some people need a better understanding of what left and right really mean in reference to UK parties:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010
Soldato
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Exactly.
Associate
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I agree with you on that score. If the BBC promoted Starbucks, Coca-Cola, or Perrier the way they push Facebook or Twitter there would be outrage from the social media morons. These are private companies that don't provide a unique service and get huge amounts of free promotion. The BBC could just as well use e-mail, blogs, "Contact Us" submission forms, or spend some of the millions they lavish on website development producing a variant.
I think the yardsticks are completely wrong on that. New Labour have afaik been classified as slightly right of centre with the Conservatives a bit more to the right. However, both parties are still very much centrist.
Soldato
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They do. The response rates are better though twitter and facebook. These are the mechanisms that people use, simple as that.