Emma Barnett is name-checked in this video but her attitude is endemic and institutional throughout the BBC in regard towards ‘Fake news’. The BBC has a huge vested interest in generating the impression that ‘fake news’ is a massive problem…..the BBC is trying to consolidate and reinforce its position as the dominant news provider suggesting only it can be trusted as the disseminator of accurate, trusted and impartial news. [Amused to hear George Osborne have a sly dig at the BBC yesterday on Nick Robinson’s show as he suggested the BBC was of course impartial….‘in its charter’...not in real life then?] To do this it has to convince politicians and the public that fake news is out there, a massive conspiracy by people out to make money, by sinister right-wing groups and by State enemies of ‘democracy’…such as Russia who seek to undermine our national interests.
The BBC of course has already had one crack at smashing its political and commercial rivals with its unchecked support for Leveson…it now seeks to promote further clamp downs on websites and the likes of Facebook and Google who are becoming evermore the preferred means of absorbing news and culture.
As said in the video it is often those who complain about fake news the most who are the biggest disseminators of it….that’ll be the BBC and the Guardian then.
The BBC’s biggest fake news story of late is what it doesn’t tell you about Corbyn.
Imagine if he’d said ‘I am happy to commemorate the young Muslim who died fighting for an ethical British foreign policy.’
Not hard to imagine….because that is what he did say in effect as he stood before us just days after 22 young people were slaughtered at a pop concert because they were not Muslim, saying how he would change British foreign policy to reflect the vews of Muslims like our bomber ‘friend’.
Cunt.
Don`t fear. We now know that “fake news” is simply that not pre-packed, ordered and patrolled by the BBC and its licensed and accredited ciphers like the Guardian and 38 Degrees/Common Purpose.
Trump fatally holed them-only wish the damn ship would list faster, so we could get some truth once in a while.
While it is true that the BBC are taking a pop at a lot of media outlets, even newspapers, the BBC are in a real bind.
Young people are not buying TV Licences. In the Internet age, not only do they have plenty of alternatives to watching live broadcast TV, they have plenty of FREE, ZERO COST alternatives to watching live broadcast TV. Not only that, they are watching their viewing content on devices that are impossible to police unlike in the days of TV Detector vans.
It gets worse. The BBC and the other main TV companies are not really putting up content that I imagine will be really attractive to young people and young adults. Cooking? No. Baking? No. Dancing? No. Talent contests? No. I grew out of three of those four in my early teens (one I didn’t go for at all even as pre-teen) and only got interested in cooking again as a middle-aged adult needing to cook more for family. Attractive content viewing from the BBC for the 16-35 age range? Not as far as I can see. That’s without considering the vast numbers of repeated programmes. Recent surveys, I understand, bear this out with average-age TV viewing up near the 60 years of age mark.
The BBC would probably be happy to see Internet usage controlled and perhaps licensed, in return for a fee. It would make their requirement for a substantial tax appear less exorbitant.
However, if they get blamed rightly for bringing it about, that is not going to make them very popular with the ‘millennials’, either.
In the medium to long-term future for the BBC it is probably a case of ‘Heads: they lose. Tails: they lose.’
Yes ‘Detector vans’, they were a funny one weren’t they, all that great technology yet they still liked a good nosey through peoples windows. Surely they could have just submitted the ‘evidence’ speeding camera syle? heaven forbid they were just cold calling from a list of addresses showing no licence held. Another BBC deception.