This lot seemed to be more into techno.

Btw, how was your week?

We’ve had thoroughly enjoyable time in South Holland. There are great walks along the canals and loads of lovely small restaurants to choose from. The Dutch are friendly, courteous and helpful people.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the Latvian holiday park neighbours whose music taste is bad, to put it mildly, and their ghetto blaster far too loud for their own good.

I would not be surprised if this turned out to be fatal for the company. Causing harm to pets is not a good business plan.

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.

Very good. Have a nice weekend.

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.

Thank you.

Should have added /s. I thought it was obvious, but clearly not. Apologies for the omission.

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.

It would appear we have different definitions for academic studies.

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.

I think the shift in reporting is a reflection of the society more than anything else.

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.

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.

it has its problems and deserves criticism on some fronts

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.

prone to legitimising harmful attitudes by false equivalence

I don’t see that in their journalism. I see them reporting countering perspectives on topics.

it’s very TERFy/transphobic

I would attribute the fault to the current political climate, not the BBC.

Academic studies have shown they have a clear bias in their political reporting.

Interesting. Would you be able to point me to any?

The BBC’s coverage on certain issues (asylum seekers, trans, disability, etc) has been inexcusably bad and has been for a while.

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 think it’s perfectly fair to hold the public broadcaster to a high standard.

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.

… quality of their journalism has plummeted since, the whole thing needs serious reform …

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.

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.

I can see that I should have added /s to that and couple of other points in my post.

Remember when email was useful? I remember when it was magical!

Time for a story from the ancient times. I had this idea and asked my professor for advice. He said he knew a person on the other side of the world who would know all about it. “This is his ‘email’ address.”

I had never heard about ‘email’ so I needed to learn what it was and how to send one. I wrote my message and off it went. The very next morning I had a reply. One of the best experts on a topic I was keen about had shared their thoughts from the other side of the world, just like that.

In that time, a long time ago as you’ll appreciate, that interaction was magical.

In an instant I understood the power of the Usenet. A while later and with a couple of additional protocols they started calling that the Internet.

I’m old enough to have gone through a number of these technology bubbles, so much so that I haven’t paid much attention to them for a fair while. This AI bs feels a bit different, though. It seems to me that lots more people have completely lost their minds this time.

Like all bubbles, this too will end up in the same rubbish heap.