The BBC has standards…they might be double standards but it has them.
It seems that for the BBC using social media or crowd sourcing news is bad practice leading to inaccuracy and potential dangers...Many are now asking: should “crowd-sourced investigations” be stopped?…unless of course it is done by a responsible news outlet….em…like the BBC perhaps who say about their own use of social media…’it helps us gather more, and sometimes better, material; we can find a wider ranges of voices, ideas and eyewitnesses quickly.’
Did enjoy reading this on the BBC website today:
Finding joy in the hypocrisy of others
How, too, are we to survive in this richly unfair world if we are to be robbed of the satisfaction of observing and detecting the hypocrisy of the high and the mighty?
Well it seems that the BBC haven‘t yet been robbed of that satisfaction in observing and detecting the hypocrisy of others…..
Of course they only need look in the mirror to see the greatest example of that……
Justin Webb this morning lays into the US TV and social media (8:56) which ’crowd sourced’ information to be provided the police about the Boston bombs to help with their inquiries.
Webb says that in America the 24 hour TV channels went haywire and broadcast all sorts of things that weren’t true.
Does he mean much in the way that the BBC broadcast claims that the evidence was almost certainly pointing towards a ‘domestic’, that is, white, right wing terrorist?
Webb goes on to say that ‘So much of this is very wrong and potentially very damaging to people.’
Of course this was the same BBC who was happy to report that Israel had killed a young Palestinian boy, Muhammed Al Durra using film taken by a Palestinian camera man.
The same BBC that broadcast false claims that the Israelis had massacred 3000 Palestinians in Jenin:
The BBC News and World Service gave the microphone to and quoted unchallenged the Palestinian Authority spokesman, Saeb Erekat and other Arab sources to talk on an ‘Israeli massacre’, starting with “data” of 3000 and switching later to 500 or 520 Palestinian civilian casualties. The BBC broadcasted very intensively the big story of the Israeli ‘massacre’ of Palestinian civilians, through reports, unchallenged quotations and renewing reminders.
The same BBC that blamed Israel for the death of one of its own Palestinian employee’s son in Gaza recently….
The home of a BBC employee, Jihad Misharawi, was hit Wednesday by “what looks like a shell,” according to Danahar. “It caused a huge fire,” Danahar says. Jihad’s 11-month-old son, Omar, was badly burnt. He was taken to hospital, but died after about an hour.
“I spoke to him myself today,” Danahar says, “and he said there was no fighting going on, there was nobody from (Hamas) there. It was just civilians.”
…a death in fact caused by a Hamas rocket.
UN report suggests Palestinian rocket killed baby in Gaza
The same BBC which used film of Palestinian casualties, again provided by ‘Pallywood’….only for the casualties to suddenly reappear later on fit and healthy.
The same BBC that tweeted the picture of an injured Palestinian girl…only for it to be shown that she was in fact a casualty of the war in Syria.
Not to mention this bit of infamously emotive crowd sourcing by Jeremy Bowen:
‘In the last hours before a ceasefire, in a United Nations school in Gaza City that was packed with families who had fled from Israeli shelling, a girl of about 13 pushed a piece of cardboard torn from a biscuit wrapper into the hand of one my colleagues.
It was a checklist for the future, with one spelling mistake:
I hope to stop a war
I hope to live in a happy life
I hope to be pace [at peace] for ever
Happy dream
But this is Gaza, a place where nightmares can come true. ‘
But hang on…doesn’t the BBC make use of ‘Social media’ itself? In fact isn’t ‘Social Media’ playing a central role in its news gathering now?
Justin Webb had better look out…he may not have a job unless he keeps up with the new digital age:
BBC tells news staff to embrace social media
BBC journalists must keep up with technological change – or leave, the director of BBC Global News Peter Horrocks says
BBC news journalists have been told to use social media as a primary source of information by Peter Horrocks, the new director of BBC Global News who took over last week. He said it was important for editorial staff to make better use of social media and become more collaborative in producing stories.
“This isn’t just a kind of fad from someone who’s an enthusiast of technology. I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things. It’s not discretionary”, he is quoted as saying in the BBC in-house weekly Ariel.
And from the Guardian:
The BBC, as an early presence on the web, also spotted the possibilities of social media quickly and it has become a highly important and fast-moving part of our multimedia newsroom- it helps us gather more, and sometimes better, material; we can find a wider ranges of voices, ideas and eyewitnesses quickly.
The BBC already has a fair track record of inviting the audience to get involved in our journalism – web forums; debates; blogs and comments, and most recently incorporating comment within our website story pages, particularly on the live pages.
We are proud of the standards we have set in processing, sifting and verifying material sent to us and sourced through social newsgathering, giving us a new dimension when telling some of the major stories of recent times – the Japan tsunami; the Arab Spring; the Burma uprisings; the Norway shootings; the riots in England.
Good old BBC…never let the facts get in the way of a good story…especially if it is about Israel…or the ‘Right’ in the USA.
Their complete lack of self awareness is laughable were it not so sad. How can Webb say that with a straight face?
“That small kid made me do it” said the bully.
The social media maven for the BBC College of Journalism wasn’t terribly shy about using the medium to push a baseless accusation after the Tucson killings:
They simply don’t care anymore. Good luck to James Harding fixing this shambles, he’ll need it.
The bBC does it’s utmost to try and block any for of competition to it’s output, especially when it comes to those who dare expose it’s blatant bias and propaganda output.
They did their best to block the creation of Commercial TV in the form of the ITV Companies and did their best to try to drive the fledglings from our screens by trying to swamp their output and deprive them of advertising revenue.
With Radio they bullied the then Government to drive the “Pirate Radio Stations” from the airwaves because the had the audacity to play “popular” music that young people were deprived of by the BBC when it still had the Light Service and the Home Service rather then Radio One /Two and Radio Four and insisted people must be forced to what the bBC chose to give them. The bBC were mortified when they were obliged to create Radio One and actually have to broadcast what the “uneducated plebs” wanted to listen to instead of being able to “educate” them and raise their levels of “culture”.
Then came Commercial Radio. Again the bBC did everything they could to block it’s inception and then attempted to force them from the airwaves by swamping them with the same intent they tried with the ITV Stations, something the bBC are still trying to do with the fledgling Commercial Digital Radio Stations by moving immediately into any new area they start to broadcast in.
Now the bBC are trying to force Social Media Outlets to cease reporting any News, other than that authorised and broadcast by the bBC of course, to ensure we only get the version the bBC had decided is acceptable.
The bBC’s idea of an unbiased News Editor is their own version of Joseph Goebbels and News Programmes run by the producers of 1950s Radio Moscow.
You missed out what I witnessed – several years of lobbying by the BBC to prevent Murdoch starting satellite TV. The BBC had been given legal authority to start satellite broadcasting – using our money. They did not have a clue how to do it, either in engineering terms or what to programme. Some of us warned them time after time – right up to Stuart Young who was BBC Chairman and Alistair Milne who was D-G – that Murdoch was going to go ahead anyway. It was obvious from his whole record of press-busting in the UK that he would not be thwarted from chasing the next ambition, even if it meant betting the farm on it.
We and others told the BBC that if Murdoch could not get satellite slot licences from the UK, he would get them from somewhere else in Europe. He would “go over their heads”. End-result – he paid SES-Astra of Luxembourg to buy multi-channel RCA series 4000 satellites, the most powerful available worldwide so dishes could be small enough for any handyman to fix.
Plus – Murdock and his team knew exactly what sell – sport, films, sport, films….
Whereas the BBC – and all the ITV comp[anies led by Granada – never had any clue what they wanted to sell.
So now, Sky TV is one of the biggest companies in Britain – giving the punters what they are willing to pay for. The BBC and the ITV companies lost £200 million (£1 billion in today’s money?) buying the wrong satellite that had only 3 channels and needed huge antennae. Murdoch chose a Ferrari-quality satellite, the BBC and ITV (plus Virgin and the FT) tried to do satellite TV with a double-decker bus.
Did any of the dozens of senior staff at the BBC lose their jobs over this 3-year fiasco ? Of course not.
At the BBC, OPM rules. Other people’s money. So who gives a monkey’s ?
The BBC is clueless and spiteful , it deliberately copied the Sky news channel in every detail. When Sky news reviews the papers, the BBC does the same, when regular sports reports are aired , the BBC copies the same format, pointless competition wasting license payers money to attempt to duplicate Sky news. The saddest part is the BBC version is childish and insulting and even with its vast financial coffers can not match SkyNews.
The thing with competition is that it gives people a choice. In this case the viewing figures show that more people choose to watch BBC News than Sky News.
Ah, the politics and economics of logic that only a Flanders, Balls & Hall Hall’s fan could conjure.
Some choices are easier than others, especially when certain ‘choices’ come only on top of compulsion.
If forking out £145.50pa no matter what, some may forgo the extra to watch the ‘news’ from SKY having been forced to pay the BBC first.
SKY’s ‘news’ offering currently is actually what is making the decision to cancel that DD with the TVL easier to make here.
Coffers-wise, both are pants as far as I am concerned. One for mainly ratings reasons, the other for tribal ideological ones.
Neither are professional, accurate, or to be trusted.
Thanks for raising the issue in the ‘unique’ way some can.
“The saddest part is the BBC version is childish and insulting and even with its vast financial coffers can not match SkyNews.”
BBC 2012 Annual Report shows an income of £5086m with BSkyB reporting an income of £6791m for the year to 30 June 2012. Whilst not arguing that the BBC has “vast financial coffers” they are not as vast as Sky’s.
And people agree to pay for Sky…it’s a choice.
The same thing cannot be said about the BBC, it is extorted, under threat of imprisonment.
You are changing the argument. You can watch Sky News on freeview so even when no charge is being made viewers still choose to watch BBC News.
Sky also relies on advertising income. Those advertisers include this as part of the retail price of their product or service. By your own argument even if I don’t watch Sky I require to pay the advertising premium attached to these products or services. There is no discount if you don’t watch Sky.
The license fee is set by parliament. The law relating to the license fee is set by parliament. Any extortion and threat of imprisonment is a matter for parliament not the BBC.
‘even if I don’t watch Sky I am required [I’m presuming what was meant] to pay the advertising premium attached to these products or services.’
No discount is necessary.
You can choose to not buy any comparable product that does not advertise on SKY.
If you are going to be pedantic about a missing “d” then I presume (if presumptions are now allowed) you mean that I can choose to buy a comparable product not advertised on Sky as opposed to “not buy” it.
Pedantic? I merely suggested what I thought you may have actually meant. With a missing ‘am’ too.
Was I incorrect? If so, what was it you meant?
As opposed to your colleagues venting their spleens on how they are unable to grasp what has been written.
There is a difference.
Now you have clarified back, unpedantically, but seem reluctant to appreciate how choice works. Still.
It would also appear you have a problem with consumer-based capitalism.
This may cause you greater dilemmas on top of who to support or not based on what proportion of their product cost is assigned to advertising.
Actually Albumen …. If you use a virginmedia box the only freeview `news` channels you can get are BBC 24 and BBC Parliament …… So Sky News isn`t free to view by everyone is it??? Even more frustrating is the fact that even though I pay them far more than the cost of a BBC license and choose not to watch thier output, when I come on here I end up reading whatever inherently biassed, ill informed `opinions` gleaned from twitter, facebook, Stacey Dooley or one of the ten thousand Jew haters they give free access to in the Middle East and describe as reports ( yea right!!) via you and your sock puppet accounts… Why don`t you take your soapbox, sandwich board and your unwanted irreverent offerings and shove them up your ar$e (after you have managed to pull your own head out of it that is ) You are the answer to the question that nobody here ever bothered to ask…..
The BBC will try to gain control of new social media in order to maintain their near monopoly of the news and current affairs agenda in the UK. The Labour party will help them if they are re-elected to ensure that the liberal/left narrative is overwhelmingly the one heard in Britain. Of course this is anti democratic but the BBC gave up any pretence at being even handed and of supporting democracy long ago. The Tories seem not to recognise the threat to their own election prospects, let alone to democracy itself, by the continued unrelenting bias and power of the BBC and refuse to take on the over mighty BBC.
Those people in Britain who believe that democracy is important must stand up and prevent the BBC from stubbing out a challenge to their tax payer funded monopoly.
All the Director of Public Prosecutions has to do is to pick up every prosecution for non-payment of the license fee, and then drop them. The corporation will be starved into submission in no time and can then be privatised, and the license fee abolished.
If the government really needs to offset the frantic BBC propaganda and lies being put out in the run-up to the flotation, then I suggest that it should lean heavily on Channel 4.
Being state-owned, Channel 4 management will be afraid of not having their contracts renewed if they don’t broadcast counter-propaganda and expose the lies. A season of showing up corporate incitement to murder – of British soldiers and Israeli civilians – wouldn’t come amiss, either.
Where there’s a political will there’s a way – which might be a problem with the current administration, but perhaps not a future one.
‘broadcast counter-propaganda and expose the lies’
With respect, any ‘counter’ is just the same only in/from a different direction.
Exposed lies through truth, accuracy and actual reporting over opinion and edit suite filtering of guests, vox pops and story lines is fine, and should suffice.
Propaganda by definition serves truth and accuracy as well as a BBC Editor does now.
I would not want that.
It would help if the Director of Public Prosecutions wasn’t, like so many in the BBC, linked to the Labour Party.
He isn’t – he’s appointed by the Attorney General, who answers to the PM.
The tragedy is that even when what should be an example of better news integrity, Sky, comes along, it is so packed with former BBC staff that it even rivals the mothership for Leftist bias.
If Murdoch were even a quarter the monster he is claimed to be, he would have raised Sky to the ground and started again.
And that is how overpowering is the influence of the BBC in this country., It even corrupts its own competitors.
Biased BBC complains of hypocrisy and a lack of self-awareness.
Too deliciously funny.
A drive-by content-bereft claim (allowed to be) made about a small free blog forum, in face of a raft of facts about a £4Bpa ‘most trusted’ ‘news’ media monopoly that mods, refers, edits and bans in censorship supporting propaganda.
That is about the daftest #2wrongs attempt I’ve seen tried here yet.
Not up to your usual standards. And it’s not like I’ve been greatest fan (lack of returned compliment taken as read) of your work before.
But it’s about on par with the rest, so those standards are at least being brought into line, if still well below a credible bar.
Poor taste and rather sad in drive-by contrarian defensive strategy on behalf of the BBC.
They’ll be livid.
Well done.
No Scott, what is deliciously funny is that you are reduced to such “drive-by content-bereft claim” (as GW so aptly calls it).
Your comments, suggestions and input here are usually very good, like your blog: you write intelligent interesting stuff, so why the toe-dipping into Albaman/Dez territory?
Say, did someone mention deranged conspiracy theories about bombings?
I think we have something about that in the files:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211126/Fury-BBC-documentary-suggests-Government-plotted-7-7-attacks-boost-Iraq-war-support.html
That must have been different – possibly even ‘unique’.
It annoys me intensely on the Today programme (I suppose add it to the list of reasons) when either Justin or Evan tell the listeners what they have read on Twitter that morning – either they have some intern finding them tweets that agree with their narrative or they are reading the tweets whilst broadcasting – and I would prefer them to concentrate on the job in hand – maybe reading tweets whilst working is the reason they cannot hold people like Ed Balls and Margaret Hodge to account – although they can manage sneer and swipe at any Conservative guest.
I hope they didn’t read these.
Hello! I could have sworn I’ve been to this website before but after browsing through some of the articles I realized it’s new to
me. Anyhow, I’m definitely pleased I found it and I’ll be bookmarking it and checking
back often!
my webpage … ipad pris