[The Daily Mail’s] faults and virtues (there are some of the latter) owe nothing to marketing constructs, the proprietor’s business interests, party loyalties or anything other than the editor’s judgement as to what people will read.
Who would you trust to produce the most honest and accurate news, the public service broadcasters like the BBC or the commercial media at the beck and call of corporate interests? Naturally you’d say the likes of the BBC, free of vested interests, beholden to no-one, released from the need to raise funds and thus free of having to sell-out to those who provide the money. But doesn’t that just make the BBC unaccountable? It demands to be independent of political scrutiny, it has no commercial pressures to hold it in check and its own complaints procedure is infamously labyrinthine, partisan and ineffective…it does in effect also hold itself free from the viewing Publics’ scrutiny. Will Ofcom change that? No, by all accounts the new head of Ofcom is more concerned with the BBC filling its ethnic quotas than producing accurate, fact based programming whilst so many other staff are ex-BBC themselves. What hope for anyone who complains about the BBC to that lot?
In contrast aren’t commercial media subject to far more powerful checks on their behaviour….cashflow? On the BBC, ironically, they were discussing Google and how it will react to advertisers withdrawing their adverts, and their money, from the platform….the conclusion was that it is in Google’s commerical interest to sort itself out and prevent extremist material being broadcast on YouTube….money talks.
Similarly with the BBC’s favourite hate object, the Daily Mail. The Mail is portrayed as right-wing but in fact it is ruthlessly impartial in who it attacks…its sole concern is to get a story, one that will attract readers of its hard copy and clicks on its website….one of the most successful news sites in the world. It will tear into Tories, Labour, the Royal Family and the military if it smells a story and money…it favours no-one, printing only that which is, in ‘the editor’s judgement, what people will read’. So is the Mail in fact a more honest and indeed better news provider than the BBC? Yes.
Laaura Kuenssberg, allowed off the leash to spread more BBC propaganda about fake news [odd how she is allowed to talk about such a controversial subject but Jenni Murray cannot discuss transgender issues in a private capacity] says…
On the role of the BBC: “We want people to watch and consume what we do but we are not trying to sell anything. So that does give us a freedom in a way.”
That’s the problem….the BBC has the freedom to thumb its nose at all and sundry…completely unaccountable…and when anyone demands satisfaction and redress…the cry goes up ‘independence’…and oh, yes…it is selling ‘something’ all day, everyday…a very extremist liberal world view…pro-EU, pro-Islam, pro-immigration, anti-Tory, pro-Labour, pro-climate change propaganda, anti-Trump, anti-Israel…and maybe anti-Semitic..certainly feeding that hate industry.
The reality is that until BBC bias is governed by genuinely independent scrutiny, the Corporation will remain locked in that skewed journalistic bubble – massively and crassly out of touch with the British people.
An irony that it is the capitalist, money grabbing likes of the Mail produce real, aggressive journalism whilst the safe, well resourced, guaranteed funding of the BBC allows it to produce partisan, biased, fake news.
Linked to this is an ex-BBCers hatchet job on the Mail…no surprise there….
A hatchet job on the Daily Mail: Peter Wilby reviews Mail Men
Many among what Dacre calls “the liberal elite” will find that Addison has written the exposé of the Mail that they always wanted to read. The inside story, with its unexpurgated f***s and c***s, is as bad as you thought it was. But remember: the paper sells about 1.5 million copies a day, second only to the Sun. Its faults and virtues (there are some of the latter) owe nothing to marketing constructs, the proprietor’s business interests, party loyalties or anything other than the editor’s judgement as to what people will read. Denounce it by all means, but remember that millions of Britons love it.
If the Daily Mail carries an article about cooking or travel or new cars I expect they will be just about that. If the BBC does the same one can be sure that they will be carrying an ‘agenda’ payload.
If the Daily Mail carries a news story it is pretty clear what is story and what is opinion and whose opinion it is. If the BBC does the same ‘our’ correspondent/editor will be immediately on hand to place the story in context with the ‘agenda’, backed up with plenty of ‘evidence’ from ‘some say’.
Getting rid of these correspondent/editors would go a long way to introducing, (I was going to say restoring but I can’t remember such a time), impartiality.
Yes SJW BBC staff have massive agenda so this line
“we do but we are not trying to sell anything.
So that does give us a freedom in a way.”
is completely ridiculous.
They do sell, cos they are SJW missionaries.
They don’t have freedom cos they are obliged to Virtue Signal and be PC, hence they don’t give us full truth.
The BBC is a kind of doomsday cult
certain in a belief that the aliens are going to take us away unless we follow the SJW gospel.
They march down the street wearing their sandwich boards : Global Warming doom, Brexit doom, Trump doom.
but also preach their “Green Energy” Homeopathy
“This new power generation that doesn’t work MOST of the time,
will generate more energy than old power generation that worked ALL the time”
The UK legal framework around broadcast media is different to that around print media . This is anachronistic in the Internet age. UK TV channels have a duty of impartiality so we couldn’t have a home-grown Fox News here . The problem with this is twofold . Firstly , the obligation on TV broadcasters is not enforced properly . Most obviously, the BBC system of a Board of Governors, then a Trust and now Ofcom have or will fail. The Regulators have had a left wing bias and Ofcom is no better. It cannot be any different when our ruling elite have a left- liberal bias. This leads to the second problem with current regulation- it enables the BBC to claim it is impartial when it clearly isn’t .
In the Internet age , news broadcasting in the UK must be freed up. Simultaneously one cannot have a more openly competitve news broadcasting market, with a variety of political views, when we have one broadcaster taxpayer funded when others except for C4 are not . And of course C4 News drives an even bigger coach and horses through the regulatory system with its left wing bias than the BBC does.
The print media are regulated entirely differently, with no state subsidy to one or two players. As pointed out, papers aim for a market segment that may tend to have a certain political slant , but often use journalistic freedom and don’t necessarily have a monolithic support of one wing of politics only.The Guardian does but significantly it is failing in a financial and market sense. So- the market is better at reflecting public wants. A nanny state and regulation is not effective at reflecting public demand.
The BBC may hate the Mail but it is the way that the BBC is funded and regulated that needs to change.
Jim, couldn’t agree more.
Alan said this in his introduction:
“Laura Kuenssberg, allowed off the leash to spread more BBC propaganda about fake news [odd how she is allowed to talk about such a controversial subject but Jenni Murray cannot discuss transgender issues in a private capacity] ”
I too found it odd that Laura K has been allowed to opine on this subject, but for different reasons.
1. We were told (when Osbo became Editor of the Standard) that editorship was a full time role and that there is little time for other activities. I would have imagined that editorship of the BBCs political news commentary is similarly time consuming. How can she do both without one activity diminishing the other?
2. Why has this activity been delegated/ taken to her, rather than to one of the other editors who is closer to media stuff? That Hyams bloke for instance, if he’s still around?
The BBC has seen a bandwagon, and is elbowing to driving seat.
Today has cleared its schedule.
The Graun is now upset No. 10 is not upset and refuses to dance to their demands. Newsnight primed.
Meanwhile… for ‘balance’… of sorts…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34213557
Journalists like to claim they are fearless and speak truth to power.
Except when they work for the BBBC. There, they attack anyone who is unable or is too civilised to fight back. An example of a group they will attack remorselessly is white men, particularly if they are “pale male and stale”. This behaviour comes from the top – Greg Dyke used the phrase “hideously white” when he was DG. They do this safe in the knowledge that their targets are so cowed by the perpetual witch hunts from SJWs that there will be no comeback.
However, the spineless BBBC journalists will not attack Islam or feminism because they fear the backlash.
In that respect the Daily Mail is a proper journalistic operation, from which the BBBC has much to learn.
And anyway, if the Guardian hates the Mail and despises its readers, then it must be doing something right.
Well, journalist claims these days are like politician denials.
And both do depend on those with whom they are competing for share of voice being civilised, for them to dominate.
Last night was our annual town council meeting. I decided to lob up as I have been known to chip in, and felt it only fair to hear from the horse’s mouths.
Given around 20,000 around and about, I doubt there were forty there, and most were councillors, the local rag bench, a few hapless officials and a lot of groupies for the Limps, who despite not being the elected majority occupied half the room.
And boy did they try and throw that weight around. With the Tory bloc looking shocked and sheepish.
Soon a few of we punters had enough and asked what on earth their pet national and Brexit politics had to do with local issues like travellers, street junkies and boy racers. These guys were gobsmacked. No one had ever come back at them, so they immediately fell back on throwing toys out the pram.
I may actually buy a copy of tomorrow’s paper.
Standby !
Tomorrow we will be claiming Freedom!
Expect Al Beeb to do its damnedest in the next two years to scupper our escape.
I am afraid Al Beeb is not patriotic, its interests are with Europe.
Yep 40 minutes to the day of joy
…Funny the BBC doesn’t see it that way.
She does say some logical things, but clearly lives in the Metro-bubbleword
eg About Twitter
\\But in a lot of ways it can be quite an ugly place, right.
Because people can have a go at you.//
Yes Laura your broadcasts are an ugly place,
as you viciously TROLL the nation
Having a go, unleashing all your HATE.
The BBC have nothing to sell? As I recall Adele did OK out of them last time she released an album.