Talk:Criticism of the BBC/Archive2

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The BBC is openly Anti-Semitic

Compare these two statements: "On the occasion of the birthday of the great prophet, and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people – with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial – forgave those 15. This pardon is a gift to the British people."

From the BBC: "On the occasion of the birth anniversary of the great prophet of Islam, and on the occasion of Easter and Passover, I would like to announce that the great nation of Iran, while it is entitled to put the British military personnel on trial, has pardoned these 15 sailors and gives their release to the people of Britain as a gift."

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6526615.stm">See for yourself here. You will not find any other report that includes the word PASSOVER.</a>

The BBC is explicitly lying for Ahmadinejad - barefaced lying to cover up his genocidal anti-semitism. If Wikipedia values freedom and civilisation it ought to cover this. Maybe not on the BBC page as such but at least somewhere public.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.204.162 (talk • contribs) 2007-04-10

See Talk:BBC. Pit-yacker 02:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

New article

At the BBC main article, a new section Criticisms of the BBC has appeared. This quickly grew so large and was so disruptive to the flow of the article that editors - myself included - have removed it in the past.

Nevertheless, a small group of editors have spent considerable time defending the section, putting it back, expanding it and finding all manner of sources to support it.

With that level of intense support, removal of the section is not possible but creation (strictly, re-creation) of this article seems sensible, practical and useful. Certainly I can see no reason why not to do it. Be bold! is something of an important rule here at Wikipedia!

Your comments on this are welcome, of course (this is a wiki) and efforts to clean up the resulting article here are also most welcome (the sources need formatting; counter-opinions, which the creators of the section sadly haven't had time to include yet, need adding; a bit of wikification and a rewrite of my introductory paragraph are both needed). ➨ ЯEDVERS 21:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Israel

Whilst it's obviously the case that there is substantial controversy about the BBC's perceived bias or lack of bias in relation to reporting on Israel/Palestine, I think there are many other areas where the BBC often attracts critiques, ranging from excessive expenditure and unaccountable use of license-payers' money, to over-extensive competition, lack of direction, failure to apply moral standards to programming and many others. I wonder if people would object if we slightly reduced the emphasis on the contemporary middle east and increased material on other aspects of BBC criticism? MarkThomas 20:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I think the creators of the original section in the BBC article might object (I haven't had chance to notify them of this move yet) to a reduction. Personally, I think it would be a good idea. But, as a compromise, adding all criticism of the BBC, no matter on what subject (and also defence of the BBC as a counterbalance against a lack of neutrality) would be a good idea. Thanks! ➨ ЯEDVERS 21:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
AFAICT the issue the last time it appeared was that crticisms of bias were in BBC News and not in the main BBC article, (the problem being that apparently criticsm wasnt prominent enough) so I have a feeling even this compromise of restoring this article will not be acceptable to all. FWIW, IMHO, the BBC is too massive to include everything on a single page, I see the main page as an abstract summary of the BBC with links to other pages reflecting sub-departments. At that point the main article should have had a small number of criticsms about the BBC as an organisation as a whole and not various bits that are chiefly about BBC News.
However, other few points:
1. If we are to have this page, could it be a good idea to move the criticisms of BBC News to this article as well. AFAICT otherwise we are going to end up with two completely contradictory articles.
2. In addition to defence from the BBC, I think it would also be wise to have a strict regulation of the sources (perhaps Wikipedia:Reliable_sources might be useful). There are far too many misquotes, delibrate misinterpretations, quotes taken out of context, cherry picking of sources (I think particularly of the Martin Walker quote: I'm sure with a bit of effort another newspaper leader that was positive about the report could be found) and the like, often sourced from sites with a hidden agenda to proving the existence of partiality on the part of the BBC bias, being posted on these pages.
3. I agree we need some real criticisms (as opposed to a list of various rantings) of the BBC as outlined above by MarkThomas. I had hoped that we could have had a sensible measured section in the main article, unfortunately as some members seem to insist we allow rants on any personal axe grind, I agree that there is no choice but to farm this off to a separate article. The problem being, I fear the real valid criticsms of the BBC will be lost in amongst a sea of hand-picked quotes to prove various conspiracy theories. Pit-yacker 21:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely with all three points here. I have no idea how to implement them without a lot of work (although sometimes one just has to sit down and be a keyboard-monkey on these things!) and, whilst I was aware that I was likely to be sparking an edit war with someone, somewhere by boldly creating this, I hadn't banked on it happening across multiple articles... although I'm old enough and ugly enough to cope! So, can we draft proposals here, between all who are interested, on how we can make this article a good 'un? It has encyclopedic scope, but, as you say, it also has scope for ranting. Perhaps we can all work together on a plan for a sourced, neutral article on the subject? ➨ ЯEDVERS 21:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
As a preliminary step, to tidy things up I have merged in the criticsms of BBC News section, and left the same stub that is in the main BBC article. For now I have more or less copied and pasted, with the exception of the two Israel/Palestine Conflict sections where I have attempted to merge the sections and the out of context quote in the anti-American section, which I have removed . Pit-yacker 22:16, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok, my changes to the BBC News article have been reverted, so BBC News has a critcism section again Pit-yacker 13:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Zimbabwe

The article currently linked for Zimbabwe doesn't mention that the BBC is proscribed as a terrorist organisation - just that BBC News is no longer available in Zimbabwe due to an insistence by the government that it be censored. They may have proscribed it as a terrorist organisation, but we need a better citation for that given the severity of the statement. JohnGray 17:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

  • A Google for "BBC+banned+Zimbabwe" produces this interesting and very well balanced article from the BBC themselves. First result, too. I'll change the reference (and perhaps the line leading up to it) accordingly. ➨ ЯEDVERS 20:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Deleted Paragraph

I have deleted the below paragraph the fabled impartiality summit is already mentioned. The source given here appears to be a mis-report of the initial report in the Daily Mail:

According to articles in Yediot Aharonot in October 2006, "an internal memo, recently discovered by the British media, revealed what the BBC has been trying to hide.

Thats why the BBC streamed the meeting on the web.

Senior figures admitted in a recent 'impartiality' summit that the BBC was guilty of promoting Left-wing views and anti-Christian sentiment.

Not even the Mail twisted it that far. Andrew Marr said the BBC was a socially liberal organisation (that dont have a problem with gay employees, etc, etc) , this is entirely different from being politically liberal (or Liberal) and a country mile from being left wing. The implication that liberal/Liberal political views where then reported as part of an institutional bias is quite frankly on another planet. The "anti-Christian sentiment" was a misreport of the Mail which itself was mis-reporting a exercise in a hypothetcial where executives discussed what they would do if Sacha Baron Cohen, a controversial Jewish comedian tried to put the Koran in to Room 101.

... One senior BBC executive admitted to the ‘Daily Express’,

AFAICT the Daliy Mail.

"There was a widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness. Unfortunately, much of it is so deeply embedded in the BBC's culture, that it is very hard to change it."[1]

So what has political correctness got to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict? Whatever "Politcal Correctness" is, being the most abused term in the English language. In my experience it is usually used by the tabloid press to describe anything they disagree with.

<ref>[http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3319064,00.html BBC seeks to suppress bias report. Network asks High Court to overturn decision that it publishes report into bias in coverage of Middle East conflict] by Hagit Klaiman (YNetNews, October 24, 2006)</ref>

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AFAICT Second report refers to the Balen Report, not this meeting. The Balen Report is believed to criticse the BBC's reporting over the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Pit-yacker 14:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Medialens

I am wondering why the link to the media watchdog Media Lens has been deleted (www.medialens.org) Since provides a quite accurate analysis of the BBC? I thought the idea of Wikipedia was to allow critical thought. Not just be another encyclopedia where its guardians decide what is or not appropriate according to their biases.

It is a blog. In Wikipedia's external links section, forums and blogs arent usually considered for inclusion (unless the persons involved are uniquely placed to speak on authoritaviley on the specific issue). Anyone can write a blog/post to a forum and say just about anything they like. Just because they have posted doesnt make what they say anymore valid than anyone else. Your additions only to articles concerning outlets traditionally considered as being close to the centre ground or left of centre (and the fact the blog only seems to concern such outlets) also bares the hallmarks of the continued well organised campaign eminating from the right in the US to attempt to use Wikipedia posting any old rubbish (i.e. blogs that take "choice" quotes way out of their original context to "prove" a point, exagerate already exagerated stories from the Mail et al) to discredit outlets that even more biased right-wing outlets see as "biased" Pit-yacker 13:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It is not a blog, it is a website where well articulated and thoughtful articles are written and presented. You obviously have not looked at it, since you do not have a clue about it. It focuses on the 'liberal' media since the corporate biases of the 'conservative' UK media are pretty blatant and obvious. It eminates from the 'left' not the 'right' and has nothing to do with the US "right-wing outlets" which I agree are appalling. The reason it considers the 'liberal' media is because their pro-establishment stance is more subtle than the 'conservative' media. Why would I link it to for example The Telegraph or The Times when it does not focus on them? We are all biased – and it is important that we are aware and upfront about our biases. As soon as you begin to select, you select according to what you think is important. Therefore it is already not objective. It's already biased in the direction of whatever you, as the selector of this information, think people should know. So it's really not possible. Of course, some people claim to be objective. The worst thing is to claim to be objective. Of course you can't be. Journalists lecturers, teachers etc. should say what their values are, what they care about, what their background is, and let you know what is important to them so that people and everybody is warned in advance that they should never count on any one source, but should go to many sources. MediaLens comes from the angle of concern for democracy, freedom, social justice and equality.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.235.18.145 (talk • contribs) 2007-04-04

you might add that state media is biased towards the state. This seems obvious. Whether or not the interest of the state reflects that of the general population is the pertinent issue.
Oh, also you might add that you're a damn communist. --70.16.23.37 05:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
IMHO it looks like a blog, acts like a blog so it is a blog. The authors can call it what they like. It still comes back to the same thing that anyone could create a similar site. Your point about selecting what is important is an important one. IMHO it is central to the reasons that MediaLens doesnt get a link on this page. It sets a precedent meaning that anyone else with an axe-grinding website has precedent to add their site. Before we know where we are the number of links has snowballed and thats all there is on the page. What's more the links will on the whole be to sites that are in no position to lecture the likes of the BBC, Independent and Guardian on being unbiased, and the websites in question often arent immediately forthcoming about their own agendas.
Unfortunately, as discussed previously, there are very well organised campaigns at work on Wikipedia (which this website may or may not be affiliated to) which attempt to use this site to pursue their own agendas. The very existence of this article is a testement to that - all the wild unfounded "criticisms" formed from partial quotes, etc were very disruptive and took over the main article - they had to be moved to a separate article. Its a shame because the real criticisms of the BBC are drowned in a sea of nonsense. At that point on pages such as this, IMHO it is necessary to take an unusually tough line on what pages qualify as external links and credible sources, where on other pages it may be ok to occasionally turn a blind eye.
At that point I maintain the position that this site is not note-worthy and should not be included.
Pit-yacker 20:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

This decision makes it a joke that Wikipedia is a free independent site where people can find multiple points of view. Surely there are not that many websites that are critical of the BBC and just listing there URL's would not take up much space. If you believe in freedom of speech you should you should accept that everyone be allowed an opinion. By deciding which information is valuable for readers and which not, you are acting like a commissar. What is an 'authoritative' source, a government organisation? A corporate organisation? A NGO? Value should be decided on the power of the arguments not the source of the arguments. Even the BBC accept that MediaLens may have some valid points... (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/03/bbcs_iraq_coverage_biased_or_balanced.html) MediaLens use UK university studies to support their work...Glasgow University Media Group (http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup/badnews.htm)and Cardiff University (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/newsevents/5309.html). People doing research on Wikipedia can find little useful critical analysis of the BBC due to your blocking this information. One must question your agenda and why you believe the BBC, Independent and the Guardian are beyond criticism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Glewis1000 (talk • contribs) 2007-04-26

Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links - See WP:NOT. Nor is it a place for presenting any kind of individual opinion - it is a place for presenting FACTS backed up by authorative sources (See WP:RS, and WP:CITE). We could fill up pages of links about supposed BBC bias/issues. Many/Most of them are highly politicisied (What is becoming really dismaying is the trend of "front orgasnisation" websites that appear to being set up purely as references for Wikipedia) and hide very strong hidden agendas If you want to find some of those sites go and use Google - its far better at it - its algorithms will also give greater promience to those that are "considered" more authorative - something Wikipedia cant do.
What really is a joke is that this criticism page is filled up by conspiracy theories, selective quoting, mis-reports of mis-reports, "Points of View" mail-bag trawling and hardly unbiased opinion pieces from sources in no position to lecture others on unbiased reporting. Some of the criticisms we get in this article are so ludicrous, IMHO they actually put the BBC in a better light.
Meanwhile Where is the real criticism? Where is the criticism of the BBC flogging the family silver? Facilities and equipment licence payers have paid for over decades being flogged off to the private sector at knock down prices to appease populist elements on cost cutting. The real cases of wasting money as opposed to the silly ones with big figures imagined by the tabloids? - Generally again stemming from attempts to appease populist sentiment on "cost cutting" which leads to short-termist decisions being made. Whether the BBC is serving all of the audience well - especially young people? What about questions of the BBC's role? I have said before that an authoritvie argument over how well the BBC serves minorities may to the dismay of the political correctness gone mad brigade find the BBC fails to serve many sections of society adequately.
This comes back to the point I made months ago - "Criticisms of..." sections are actually the hardest sections to write in a good NPOV style as opposed to the easiest as some people around here seem to think. Its not just a case of adding oodles of questionable reports from questionable sources. The nature of these sections and the accusations demand much more reliable and authorative sources. IMHO a NPOV article should follow a discussion pattern. For example, there are very real concerns about what the BBC should be doing - however, there are counter arguments to why the BBC should be doing some of the things it does. Unfortunately, just as finding unreliable sources is much easier than finding reliable ones, finding negative sources about anything is much easier than finding positive ones. Pit-yacker 16:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "unbiased" opinion - you are biased in what you believe - I am biased - we are all biased depending on various influences, experiences, education etc. Corporate media are bised to their interests, state media is biased towards the most power constituents in the state, so also corporations with a little bit of public interest since we have partial democracies. Legitimate independent media looks after the public interest, but since they are small organisations would be dubious sources by your criteria. So your bias whether concious or not is towards corporations. I have a bias which is towards social justice, democracy and equality, which is why I take issue with the BBC rather than FOX since BBC bias towards corporations is more subtle. University studies have shown that the BBC took a pro-war stance on the Iraq war and that they present a pro-Israeli perspective on the Palestine issue. Does that not address your question of "whether the BBC is serving all of the audience well?". Your philosophy would enable you to get a job at the BBC since you believe it is possible to be neutral. I agree with you that corporate front groups do confuse issues by pretending to be citizens groups. But you can usually trace their funding and check whether they are independent of corporate finance. Anyway I don't think be people are as dumb as you seem to be implying and are usually smart enough to distinguish the quality analysis from the bullshit. I agree with much of your commentary on criticism of the BBC but find it also supeficial. Noam Chomsky is considered by many as one of the greatest intellectuals alive. May be we can agree that he is an authorative source? Since you seem to rely on these rather than assessing strengths of individual arguments. He says that "regular critical analysis of the media, filling in crucial gaps and correcting the distortions of ideological prisms, has never been more important. Media Lens has performed a major public service by carrying out this task with energy, insight and care." I am also distrustful of peoples motives when they use phrases like "conspiracy theories" to try to shut people up. A "conspiracy theory" is a totally meaningless phrase which are used by people who know that they can't answer the argument and they can't deal with the evidence.

pit-yacker is typical of a paranoid left , seeing righ-wing conspiracies everywhere. yeah right - and i'm having a beer with Dick Cheney this evening. Blogs critical of the BBC *should* definitely be linked to - for it is on the blogs that most of the analysis of bbc bias is currently being conducted.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.163.147.156 (talk • contribs) 2007-08-16

Please see WP:NPA and WP:RS. Pit-yacker 13:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Blogs such as Biased BBC cannot be used as references, however there's no reason why they can't go in the external links section. Additionally the Telegraph blog is written by professional journalists and as such can be used as a WP:RS. Iceage77 13:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
BBC has responded to the hypocrisy accusations by updating its article [1], still no mention of the vandalism though. Iceage77 14:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Question for the Brits.

In English English, do the quotes go inside or outside the quotes? We have an article on this, but given that the article seems to switch between the two at random, I figured I'd ask if the American style has become more common. I personally don't care either way how the article is written (I prefer punctuation be precise more than pretty, but anyway) but it should be standardized within the article --Lucid 14:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

(I think you mean punctuation inside/outside quotes?). The article you link to is, I think, slightly misleading. When I was at primary school in Scotland, we were taught what is called here the American convention. So UK practice is by no means uniform. Personally, I think the "British" practice is more logical, and I tend to use it myself, but like you I don't really care very much.
--NSH001 15:05, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, sorry, and I already wanted to say that this article seems to switch between them at random. I figured what you say is the case, that it's not very strictly controlled either. Does anyone have an opinion either way on what format we should standardize this article to? If there aren't any opinions either way about one way being more correct for this article than the other, we could just take a poll for it --Lucid 15:29, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
As a Brit, I was under the impression that punctuation should always go inside the quotation marks, unless you had a reference at the end of the sentence, in which case you have quotation marks, the reference, then the punctuation. I'm not sure if the same applies when the reference is supserscript though. Plus, I have a lot of dealings with the US, so I'm not sure if my view is the British or the American. Perhaps we should use British here as I imagine most readers of this page will be from the UK? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Enlightened (talk • contribs) 23:59:54, August 18, 2007 (UTC).
Which is kinda what I'm saying-- y'all don't seem to be able to decide what the normal convention is. --Lucid 00:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If you look at WP:MOS, the standard Wikipedia convention (at least the last time I looked there) is that a comma etc. shouldn't go inside quotes unless it logically belongs inside (which could be considered a British convention), but that the outermost pair of quotes should be double (which could be considered an American convention). AnonMoos 00:14, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'll have to look at that (I'll admit, MOS is the one thing I never really bother reading unless it actually comes up. It's just so damn boring.), but MOS also says that we should use the localized (ised!) conventions, so I thought I would bring this up. --Lucid 00:18, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, localization applies a lot more to spelling and vocabulary choice than to punctuation... AnonMoos 00:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.