A pattern of negative posts about the BBC
There seems to be a clear pattern of negative posts about the BBC. Certain accounts are at it on a daily basis. I find myself wondering why.
Some motives for such behaviour I could think of are:
- The BBC wrote a story that hurt them
- Reporting did not reinforce their world view
- They expected the BBC to be perfect and inevitable failures to meet that standard lead to disappointment
- They found the style of reporting annoying
- Perhaps some reporters were annoying
I’m sure that list is nowhere near exhaustive as my imagination is rather limited.
A cynic might think that something deeper is going on, for example, a systematic campaign to erode trust in the BBC. Perhaps such a campaign is not just limited to feddit.uk communities, as mightily influential as they are, and could be happening across social media.
Such a cynical person might further wonder what groups, organisations, or perhaps even states with well resourced intelligence organisations might want to mount such a campaign.
I’m not a cynic, and as mentioned don’t have much of an imagination, so such thoughts don’t even cross my mind.
I’m simply wondering why some people hate the BBC so much. For me it, with all its failings, is one of the best public broadcasting organisations in the world.
46 replies
The BBC's coverage on certain issues (asylum seekers, trans, disability, etc) has been inexcusably bad and has been for a while. I think it's perfectly fair to hold the public broadcaster to a high standard. The Tories were able to stuff the BBC with their people and the quality of their journalism has plummeted since, the whole thing needs serious reform and Labour don't seem interested in doing it.
You wrote them out, so the thoughts clearly did cross your mind? I don't even know why you're trying to deflect this, it's not unreasonable to think foreign intelligence would try to undermine trust in the BBC, they'd be dumb not to.
But again, those doing the most to undermine trust in the BBC are the people the Tories put in charge of it.
When I compare the BBC and for example The Guardian reporting on such topics to, say, The Telegraph and any of the trash tabloids I see a big difference. The latter quite often push an agenda or try to engineer rage engagement, whereas the former don’t.
I think a much bigger problem and the root cause for how BBC reporting comes across in the kinds of topics you mention is the abysmal quality of political discourse in the UK. Too many bigots have gained too many supporters, which has given them too loud a megaphone.
I don’t think it is the BBC’s or any other journalistic organisation’s job to take that megaphone away. Their job is to report facts and ensure countering perspectives are being aired on all important topics.
I agree. For me the standard I expect is reporting facts and different perspectives so that I gain information and can make up my own mind.
Here I disagree with you, although perhaps only on the seriousness of the situation. Any big organisation will have aspects that need reform, including the BBC. I don’t agree that their journalism would have plummeted substantially. It is the political discourse that has gone to the gutters.
I can see that I should have added /s to that and couple of other points in my post.
How did they get so much support? In no small part it is because they were promoted on the BBC.
It might have something to do with the BBC turning into a propaganda machine for Israel
I'm personally not a fan of them for lying repeatedly about trans people and platforming hate against us regularly. They also are completely pro-genocide, which is utterly unexcusable.
Because the BBC is fucking shit? It's government propaganda disguised as an independent impartial broadcaster.
Yes it makes some good content with some good talent that may make you laugh but institutionally it's anti Scottish, pro Palestinian genocide, downplays climate change to almost denial, and uses false balance to push the Overton window rightward.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_independence
You need read any one of those Wikipedia articles to find a list of reasons for disliking the BBC. I recommend starting at the beginning though and going with History first of all.
I think you have your answer. The bias towards Israel, and the transphobia are writ large in this thread.
These have been well documented, and on their own render opposition to BBC news reporting a perfectly reasonable position to hold.
I'm negative about the BBC because of persistent bias in their reporting caused as a result of the Tories replacing the majority of board and senior positions with their cronies.
Academic studies have shown they have a clear bias in their political reporting. They deflect the criticism by having left leaning comedians which is not exactly a counterweight.
It's structurally rotten and I refuse to pay the TV licence while it is so.
Interesting. Would you be able to point me to any?
Apologies for slow response, here's a sample, I have a bigger list coming up on my search but I've not curated it and it's 11pm and need to crash, the following are peer-reviewed:
Scottish Indy ref bias
Greig, A. (2016) 'Sentiment Analysis of the BBC's Digital Content during the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum Campaign', Scottish Affairs, 25(4), pp. 419–435. DOI: 10.3366/scot.2016.0150
"evidence that suggests that the BBC's coverage, on the whole, was more favourable to the No campaign."
Lewis, J. and Cushion, S. (2019)** 'Think Tanks, Television News and Impartiality: The Ideological Balance of Sources in BBC Programming', Journalism Studies, 20(4), pp. 480–499. DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2017.1389295 Content analysis of think-tank sourcing across BBC output. Right-leaning and free-market think tanks are cited more often and are less often ideologically labelled than left-leaning ones. The single most direct peer-reviewed rebuttal of the "BBC is left-wing" claim
Wahl-Jorgensen, K., Berry, M., Garcia-Blanco, I., Bennett, L. and Cable, J. (2017)** 'Rethinking Balance and Impartiality in Journalism? How the BBC Attempted and Failed to Change the Paradigm', Journalism, 18(7), pp. 781–800. DOI: 10.1177/1464884916648094 Finds the BBC dominated by a narrow range of elite party-political voices, with business and City sources heavily over-represented relative to labour or civil-society voices. "the BBC presents "a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world" "
Walsh, M. (2025)** 'Constructing Impartiality in a Polarised News Environment: An Analysis of BBC Question Time Contributors 2014–2024', Journalism. DOI: 10.1177/14648849251413467 Decade-long panel-composition analysis of the BBC's flagship political debate programme
Berry, M. (2016)** 'No Alternative to Austerity: How BBC Broadcast News Reported the Deficit Debate', Media, Culture & Society, 38(6), pp. 844–863. BBC news coverage reproduced a narrow deficit-reduction consensus and marginalised alternative macroeconomic positions
Cushion, S., Lewis, J. and Groves, C. (2009)** 'Reflecting the Four Nations? An Analysis of Reporting Devolution on UK Network News Media', Journalism Studies, 10(5), pp. 655–671. DOI: 10.1080/14616700902797242 The peer-reviewed version of the devolution-blindness finding: UK network news systematically reported England-only policy as if it were UK-wide.
Thank you.
Here's a few
How the BBC obscures UK complicity in Gaza genocide
BBC Failed to Name Israel As Perpetrator in Half of Civilian Casualty Reports, Data Shows
How the UK Media Became Complicit in the Gaza Genocide
It would appear we have different definitions for academic studies.
It would appear you'd rather disregard sources that detail the BBC's complicity in Genocide rather than engage with the evidence
but here's a couple more for good measure
Habitual media: interrogating Western legacy media’s complicity in the epistemic ‘war’ against Palestinians
Witnessing undone: silence, noise and the enabling of genocide in Gaza
their biased reporting on the Israeli genocide of Palestine is enough to question the accuracy of any news they report. You don't need to report too many lies before you lose all credibility.
I came back to provide you the longer list of academic studies I mentioned in the earlier reply (there's about 3 or 4 dozen without counting them), however having skimmed through this thread I don't think there's any point.
If you actually want to to understand (I'm fairly confident from your comments you actually were seeking validation not understanding) then you need to first read up on what the different biases are
Then look up how those biases evidence themselves - others have referenced things like "Israelis are murdered but Palestinians are killed" (diminishes the impact of the same act) , a missile from Hamas is a "terrorist attack on settlers" but a missile from the IDF is "retaliation for attacks" (one is valid one is not) etc etc.
Or for economic takes person A on a panel will be introduced as "economist A Jones" (unmentioned they are employed think tank funded by billionaires to push their interests) and the other person will be "spokeperson for left wing think tank" (unmentioned that they're an academic, with more academic prizes than they have letters in their name). Credibility deliberately watered down.
Or even just the most egregious blatant one - Reform on every BBC panel known to man despite 5 seats (and none before the 2024 election when he was even more ubiquitous) and the Lib Dems with 65 rarely getting a look in, let alone SNP who have more seats and the Greens who have similar. Yes there was a brief moment where tearing Starmer down meant Polanski got a few appearances (still not proportional to Reform), but have you noticed that's disappeared as the Greens voters are currently warily positive about Burnham so it doesn't undermine Labour to have him on.
Etc etc. It goes on constantly. It's blatant, so blatant I have dozens of academic papers on it and yet you're on here saying you only "engage with comments I deem worth engaging with" - cool but don't bitch when everyone tells you your self perception of being reasonable and attempting to understand is utter self serving bullshit.
TL;DR you don't perceive bias at the BBC because either a) their bias aligns with your world view so it is not noticeable and/or b) you don't understand the subject well enough to know you dont understand (Dunning Kruger).
I see this a lot in engineers who think that their domain expertise makes them an expert on everything
Thank you for taking the time to share thoughtful and informative perspectives. It is rather different from compared to many other commenters.
I’m not sure at what point I was bitching, but OK. Quite why you felt the need to hurl insults my way at the end of your post is a mystery, but not unexpected here.
Given there is literally no ad hominem in my post, some introspection about what you perceive to be an insult may be helpful about why you got the reactions you did.
FWIW my post is not at all different to the rest of the posters, so that difference is in your perception, not mine, and by the upvotes/downvotes, I'm fairly confident my read is in line with the rest of the group
Very good. Have a nice weekend.
Why haven't you directly responded to any of the Zionist or genocide comments?
I tend to engage with comments I deem worth engaging with. Yours probably is not worth engaging with either, but hey, for the lols.
Regrding claims about BBC being Zionist, brushing genocide under the carpet, etc I say this. I have seen several reports on the BBC covering IDF killing Palestinians, using food shortages as a weapon of war, and committing other war crimes. That observation does not align with many such bias claims.
The problem is that even though the BBC do report on things like killings by the IDF, food shortages and other war crimes, they don't seem to be applying editorial standards equally. This means that the bias can be hard to notice unless you're actively comparing how Palestinian deaths are reported to how Israeli deaths are reported.
It's stuff like emotive terms being used far more often for Israeli casualties than for Palestinian casualties. A group of Israelis are "massacred", whereas the same number of Palestinians might be described as being "killed". Similarly, an individual is far more likely to have been "murdered" if they're Israeli. That's just one example, but there's many more (with plenty of data to back it up) in a report by the Centre for Media Monitoring (linked page has a good summary of the report's key points, because the actual report is pretty big)
Criticism of the BBC has come from within too, such as in this open letter published in late 2024, signed by over 100 BBC employees concerned about editorial double standards when it comes to reporting on Israel-Gaza. People's concern isn't just about the human rights of biased reporting, but the fact that such editorial double standards degrade people's trust in the BBC's reporting in general.
We can find other examples for comparison beyond this conflict itself. Especially nearer the beginning of the genocide, there were even more instances of war crimes not being called war crimes than there is now. Defenders of the BBC would argue that this was consistent with the BBC's stance of being an apolitical news source, and that they didn't call things war crimes because there weren't any rulings from international courts to support this term. However, this didn't stop the BBC only 36 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, with the headline "Gruesome evidence points to war crimes on road outside Kyiv".
In an ideal world, I want my news reporting to be consistent with the actual world, but I get that perfect objectivity is impossible in a subjective world. However, it's far beyond any reasonable leeway when each Israeli death gets 33 times the coverage of each Palestinian death, despite there being 34 times the number of Palestinian casualties. That gap in reporting is insane to me. When their own editorial standards mean so little to them, I just don't feel comfortable trusting them.
This level of systematic bias isn't really something that's viewable by any one person — though it's good that you tried to look into the claims of bias that you've heard. Unfortunately, the scale of this conflict (and the subsequent reporting) is too large for that to be able to give an accurate view. I'd encourage you to check out the summary of the Centre for Media Monitoring report that I linked above if you want to get a more "from above" view
Apologies, I somehow missed your reply.
I have a fair amount of skepticism about any think tank regardless of who is backing them. I had a brief look at what Centre for Media Monitoring have to say, and I think they are making valid points. I will read more when I have time, but life does get in the way.
Thank you for taking the time to share your perspective in a constructive manner. I genuinely appreciate people who discuss issues respectfully regardless of whether they agree with the other person or not. That has been somewhat scant in the commentary here.
Well you ignored 3 separate articles detailing how the BBC's complicity in Genocide, saying that you'd only consider academic articles in particular. Then once I provided 2 academic articles on the subject in addition to the others, no response. It comes off like you're more interested in bias confirmation than in investigation
I'm glad we have the BBC and I follow its news, but it has its problems and deserves criticism on some fronts.
Not an exhaustive list by any means but it's very prone to legitimising harmful attitudes by false equivalence, and it's very TERFy/transphobic.
I agree. I don’t have any problem with the BBC being criticised. What I do have a problem with is how intellectually shallow and borderline childish such criticism often is, as is evident in many of the other comments.
I don’t see that in their journalism. I see them reporting countering perspectives on topics.
I would attribute the fault to the current political climate, not the BBC.
maybe someone has grown up and realized that the BBC is just as much a propaganda machine as the rest. who knows what their reasons are.
I dont have trust in the bbc as an impartial reporter of the news. I dont believe any one outlet could ever achieve that accolade or should be treated as a singular gospel source of truth. They are just one provider and a balanced view of the world needs reading across providers, party lines and preconceptions.
I think they deserve criticism and challenge but not to be singled out for such or expected to achieve unrealistic goals.
Only a fool or a cultist will trust a single source. A balanced view does indeed need being open to multiple perspectives, and trying to recognise agendas behind what is being reported.
As a long-time radio nerd and devotee of the various BBC radio networks, I have to draw a thick, thick line between BBC broadcast and BBC news.
The news side of things is hateful. Jiving away in the kitchen to Craig Charles' Funk & Soul show, having a good time, then BOOM! a news headline about what Reform will do when they're in power. There's no reason to parrot those awful racist pricks, and they're are far more important stories, but BBC news thinks this is what we should hear. Literally the only time I ever hear about 'small boats' is when BBC news takes the time to tell me about how many of them there are while I'm trying to enjoy some good radio.
The BBC isn't perfect, I know this. But you only have to compare British and American broadcasting to see that it's pretty much the only thing stopping our TV and radio from becoming the same level of dog shit as they have in the States.
The BBC as a whole is great. The news programming though...
It's admittedly still one of the better ones - and on non-political reporting is probably still fairly trustworthy, but it's been shifting further and further right for the last 15 years, to the point where it's just embarrassing to pretend they're anywhere near balanced these days. It spends an awful lot of time promoting Nigel Farage for something which is pretending to be impartial.
Coincidentally that 15 year window perfectly aligns with the timing of the Cameron govt replacing board and then senior management with Tory cronies.
Coincidence ?
Probably not a coincidence.
I think the shift in reporting is a reflection of the society more than anything else.
Perhaps - though the comedy, drama, radio, documentaries etc are mostly still fairly "centre to centre left" - it's mostly just the news reporting.
It often seems like the "shift in society" has been manufactured, and that that the BBC have been part of this manufacture - and that shift is really just a change in boldness, volume and support - people are loud and proud about hating people over race or gender etc.
I feel a far larger part of the shift was when the Tories threatened the BBC with funding cuts, cancellation and "sharing the licence fee with poor impoverished media tycoons like Rupert Murdoch" unless they removed their "left wing bias" (actually central bias at the time) and starting promoting a "balanced" (actually right to far-right) viewpoint. This was accompanied by sacking and replacing key staff members with their own right-promoting appointees.
That's continued and got worse - they've spent much of the last decade promoting the voices of increasingly extreme right-wing viewpoints, and either silencing, mocking or generating controversy about any minor centre or left-wing viewpoints.
None of those people changed when the government did, so it's stayed in the right and possibly drifted even further. Remember that in terms of many of its social policies, our current Labour government is more right wing than Cameron's Tory government was.
If such thoughts as you have detailed don't even cross your mind then it would not be possible for you to detail them in a Lemmy post. Evidently such thoughts do cross your mind.
Should have added /s. I thought it was obvious, but clearly not. Apologies for the omission.
Look. I like BBC. Many of my friends like BBC. But BBC is not for everyone. Not everyone is as open to it. Thats not a bad thing as long as they allow the rest of us to enjoy BBC.
It would be a great loss if the BBC would cease to exist. Some of its critics seem hell-bent on achieving that. Thankfully many of still criticise with improvement in mind.
Thank you for your comments.
The comments to my post were not what I expected, but also not a huge surprise.
I believe debate should be respectful whether the participants agree or not. Clearly that does not matter to some people here. Fair enough, I can deal with that. I have met my fair share of knobheads over the years.
It has been suggested I’m in need of serious introspection. That may be true. I’ve lived through quite a lot, probably a fair bit more than most here, and have done a good deal of self reflection for a multitude of reasons. May I suggest some of the commenters may benefit from the same medicine. Some might even need to grow up.
Uk seems to hate itself, the idea that you begrudge the tv license but pay for American shot is beyond me.
BBC is opppsing trump in A spectacular British fashion
I am liking the BBC playing the large orange pant shitter at his own game and him hating it.
I hold all news outlets in the same regard, they sensationalise or ignore when it suits them and are there as Ad space more than anything for the most part. Clickbait. Clickbait. Clickbait. Traffic, Ads, REVENUE.
The cycle has kinda put me off most news sites/feeds.
The BBC buys a lot of American shot too, funded by our so- called licence fee, which is in reality a TV tax. We get little choice in it and that is a problem with the BBC.
Genuine question: what's "American shot" and how are we paying for it?
American shit methinks
Oh right that makes more sense, here's me looking it up on Wikipedia and thinking it has to do with American cowboy films or something.