Charles Moore has written a brilliant column in today’s Telegraph in which he responds to Nick Robinson’s peevish complaint that GB News doesn’t have to satisfy the same ‘impartiality’ requirements as the BBC. He deftly demonstrates that when it comes to trans issues, reputable media companies that shout about their ‘impartiality’ from the rooftops are uninhibited about taking the side of trans rights activists.
A small but interesting example has come my way. Over the past decade, fierce disagreements have emerged among feminists and gay activists about aspects of the trans question. While many have been happy to associate trans ideology with lesbian and gay activism, others have not, disagreeing with the idea that, as they put it, you can “get rid of biology”.
In 2019, the LGB Alliance (note the absence of the “T” from the name) was formed because of this split and is now a charity. Some of its leading lights are former trustees of Stonewall, frustrated by what they see as a refusal to discuss the issues involved.
The LGB Alliance naturally tries to advance its work with the media. One important media player is Thomson Reuters, which describes itself as “the world’s largest news and information-based tools to professionals”. Thomson Reuters has a philanthropic arm, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, which works, it says, “to advance media freedom”, identifying disinformation and “the resulting erosion of public trust in news sources” which “undermines accurate and impartial journalism”. It is part of the Trusted News Network.
An offshoot of the Thomson Reuters Foundation is Openly, which describes itself as “a global digital platform delivering fair, accurate and impartial LGBT+ news to a world that isn’t”.
The LGB Alliance has for some time felt frustrated by the lack of coverage it receives from Openly. At the beginning of this year, Kate Harris, co-founder of the LGB Alliance, wrote to Hugo Greenhalgh, the editor of Openly, asking for a meeting to establish a better news relationship. (An earlier attempt at engagement in 2020 had failed.) Mr. Greenhalgh initially agreed to a Zoom call but then fell over a pavement slab and postponed. He then postponed again, explaining that his boss was sending him to Ukraine and that he had a lot of other things to do.
With Mr. Greenhalgh’s latter reply, the LGB Alliance also received a presumably unintended extra. It was an email to Mr. Greenhalgh from Yasir Khan, editor-in-chief of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It said: “AZ almost never interferes with editorial … This is more about risk reduction … Now that we’ve de-escalated and bought ourselves a bit of time, let’s … work out a plan to retain editorial independence AND manage the risk.”
“AZ” is Antonio Zappulla, the CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The Khan/Greenhalgh email would seem to imply that Mr. Zappulla had forbidden any meeting with the LGB Alliance, and to hint at some embarrassment in an organisation that claims to believe in editorial independence. “Risk reduction” would appear to mean how best to keep in with LGBT+ groups hostile to any contact with the LGB Alliance.
The LGB Alliance chair, Eileen Gallagher, a former managing director of London Weekend Television, knows about media. Armed with Mr. Greenhalgh’s accidental leak, she wrote to him (copied to his bosses) to ask what risk there was in a “get to know you” meeting with a charity active in the field covered by Openly. She said Mr Zappulla’s intervention to prevent it was “quite astonishing”. How could it fit with Openly’s declared mission of being “the world’s most trusted destination for impartial LGBT+ news”?
The Thomson Reuters Foundation’s final response was a letter to Ms Gallagher sent on April 25th. In it, Mr. Khan said that the LGB Alliance’s purpose of establishing a “potential news relationship” with Openly was illegitimate, because “we do not explore news relationships or news partnerships with interest groups and will not be pressured into doing so”.
As a former editor myself, I find this strange. All sensible media outlets need relationships with relevant interest groups. These are not to control news, but simply links so that information can be shared on a basis of trust. A news organisation with no such relationships would be very short of contacts and therefore of news.
Besides, Mr. Khan’s words are inconsistent with his own organisation’s behaviour. It is bound to have news relationships with various interest groups. On its website it also mentions numerous “partnerships”, including ones with several commercial companies, to help pay for the Openly platform.
I sought to discuss all this with Mr. Khan but was told he was away. My request to talk to Mr. Greenhalgh met with no response. The Thomson Reuters Foundation gave me a statement that repeated much of what Mr Khan had already said to Ms. Gallagher, adding: “The matter was escalated to the editor-in-chief and the CEO, whose responsibility is to protect the impartiality and integrity of our journalism in keeping with Foundation’s mission. It is on this basis that the CEO advised against such a meeting.”
So the CEO, who supposedly does not interfere in editorial independence, did intervene to prevent the editor seeing a bona fide group in the area on which his title reports. Where was Thomson Reuters’ foundational impartiality?
I fear this story illustrates a real difficulty. Many powerful media organisations today regard LGBT+ and some other issues, such as climate change and aspects of race, as matters about which the normal idea of impartiality is suspended. There can only be one right approach, they believe. This is clearly the attitude of Openly, which may well provide a useful service to people interested in these matters, but is emphatically not impartial, invariably following the line of LGBT+ lobbies.
So long as such organisations think this way – and that is how Nick Robinson’s own BBC thinks – projects like ‘Verify’ will be more like vigilantism against rivals than the disinterested pursuit of truth. What they see as “disinformation” will often be little more than their preferred word for attitudes they dislike or stories they wish to suppress.
Worth reading in full.
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The BBC is the world’s best funded political party.
Its manifesto is to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture, history and heritage.
Rather like a religion, its apostles include Attenborough, Brian Cox, Gary Lineker.
It is wholly unaccountable and must be broken up, licence fee cancelled.
My grandfather, a pioneer of radio, was a founder member in 1921. He’d be appalled.
Your grandfather’s generation never signed up for any of the ant-White, anti-Christian, anti-reality provender provided by the State coddled and funded and quite useless BBC.
I cancelled our license. Never watched it, never will. Toxic crap, akin to reading the Guardian or listening to ‘experts’ on Rona, Plant food, Gender fascism etc.
The BBC went off the rails in the 1960s, the same time the Frankfurt School trashed American TV. It’s not the fault of your grandfather’s generation. The USSR was obly just coming into being then and the business-suited communists hadn’t seized control of the culture back then!
BBC Limited in 1921 – a private company wasn’t it, owned by a consortium of manufacturers of radio sets?
As it failed to make money, the War, cost of TV service, it was handed over to the Government. It could have made money if allowed to follow the US business model using advertising and sponsorship, but this was not allowed, otherwise we wouldn’t have tte parasitic creature we now have, and its content would be designed to please the audience not those running it.
It wasn’t until 1955 amidst a great deal of opposition and hysteria that commercial television was allowed in the UK.
My dad also (I’m obviously older than you). He’d be appalled but, I suspect, not surprised. He was a bit of a rebel in his way, and a lot more of this nonsense was going on in the 1930s than many realise. WW2 cleaned it out for a while.
I was brought up on BBC Radio 4 and I appreciated its impartiality (although the left wing bias was pretty clear from despicable grandstanders like Jonathan Dimbleby). Incredible, then, that they didn’t challenge the pronouncements of a “right wing” government. Almost as if they’re scared of being cancelled, isn’t it?!
We never had a telly anywhere in the house; mum’s quiet anarchy. Now, with family of my own, we still don’t. Scepticism rules the day, independent critical thinking is inculcated and rewarded.
Except now, we don’t even have a radio, certainly not to consume any BBC tripe. I wish the world would follow suit.
“Pandemic”… Good God Almighty!
Mr Nick Robinson, you can take a hike. Sod you and your petty, baseless denunciations. You’re part of the problem. GBNews was immediately, infinitely better than anything to which you’ve ever subjected your tired audience.
I will never again consume any BBC “journalism” as long as I live. And if I see Mr Nick Robinson in person, I shall walk straight past him and not honour him with one single word.
I wouldn’t dare to start. My problem would not be punching him, it would be that I wouldn’t stop punching him.
Same with that odious cretin, Matthew Hancock.
Uppercuts are handy as well
When GB news got underway, I remember all the sound problems and technical issues. As it was all happening, I did not care. All I could care about was that here was a channel to present alternative views other than the Liberal progressive narrative with its Race, Gender, Equality, Diversity and Climate playlist we have on BBC and SKY NEWS. Those who criticise this channel think that having 95% of the media spouting their leftish tosh is not enough. They want the whole 100%.
Commercial businesses should not get involved with political and social policy campaigns. The web of such relationships and their infiltration also of Parliament and the civil service means that a small self designated elite have disproprtionat politiocal and social influence, far beyond their numbers.
There is no reason at all for commercial enterprises to have such influence over policy which is properly the domain of voters and their elected representatives.
The Trans movement is a group of mentally ill people that are being supported by a cowardly society that is sending us all to hell in a handcart. But… the real root of the problem is quietly buried at the beginning of the article – “The LGB Alliance naturally tries to advance its work with the media.“. “Naturally tries to advance its work with the media”. What is ‘natural’ about the promotion – and be in no doubt, that exactly what it is – of not being heterosexual? The media is wholly complicit. Until the media starts promoting family and monogamy then we’re all on a sickening ride in that handcart.
Personally, I am careful about referring to non-heterosexual behaviour as “unnatural”. It is clearly natural (whatever “natural” even means). Instead I refer to it as a diversion. Really, I couldn’t care less about people’s gender or their sexual behaviour. “Nowt so queer as folk,” as we say in Yorkshire.
What really makes me angry is being called a bigot for stating that gender is immutable and for objecting when my children are encouraged to declare their gender and be ‘rewarded’ with mutilating surgery.
Of course it is. And yet….
My take on ‘natural’ is based on what I believe nature intended. For the human species to not become extinct, without technological intervention, it requires males and females to mate with each other. Without that our species dies, hence my definition of ‘natural’. I have no problem whosoever with people that are genuinely not heterosexual – I have a 22 year old daughter that has decided she is a lesbian – but I have a huge problem with the promotion of not being heterosexual and I believe that the promotion is rooted in the very deliberate destruction of the traditional family, in tandem with the attack on masculinity.. I’ll leave it to others to determine when that was started.
I do believe that human sexual behaviour is not a binary thing, e.g. a man can “swing both ways” and therefore have children without being exclusively heterosexual. It’s very rare, but frequent enough that “gayness” is not an “evolutionary dead-end”.
Like you, I have a huge problem with the vociferous promotion of everything other than normal behaviour (and denunciation of anyone ringing alarm bells) in this respect. For, not only is it normal, but (if one is minded to the continue the human race in his own image) it is necessary.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said. That’s cool-headed, unemotional, logic. Rare these days it seems.
It’s a generational dead end. A pure homosexual cannot reproduce. In selfish gene terms, his proclivity is literally perverse. Why is this not proof that inverted sexual preference is unnatural?
Precisely so. I wonder how many of the media gay brigade ask themselves if they would exist if their parents had been of the same inclination?
Perhaps an anomaly. ——-Though I would never discriminate against anomalies. ——I used to wonder though how this anomaly did not die out, since their traits would not be passed on if they were not having offspring with females. Then I discovered that the gene for gay is passed down via the female side.
One might almost think that the media are full of people as bent as nine bob notes and they’re so insecure that they keep banging on about how normal it is to actively reduce the chances of population growth?
Truth is what we say it is.
re: climate change. “Antarctic ice core records show that ice ages begin when CO2 levels are high and they end when CO2 levels are low,” reads the text in the post. “This is the exact opposite of what would occur if CO2 controlled the climate.
Our rating: False
Eh? But that’s exactly what the ice cores show. ( So co2 doesn’t drive and we don’t need to do net zero. )
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/08/16/false-claim-timing-of-ice-ages-proves-climate-scam-fact-check/70434938007/
h/t watts up
‘Farce check’. Now who pays those arse checkers me wonders?
Look at the chart in your reference and read the USA Today article. The chart shows CO2 levels and temperatures are highly correlated. The first part of the claim:
“Antarctic ice core records show that ice ages begin when CO2 levels are high and they end when CO2 levels are low”
Might be true depending how you define the beginning and end of an ice age. If you define the beginning of an ice age as the time when temperatures start to drop, and the end of an ice age as the time when temperatures start to rise, then of course CO2 levels (and temperatures) are high at the beginning of an ice age and CO2 levels (and temperatures) are low at the end of an ice age.
However, the second part of the claim is false:
“This is the exact opposite of what would occur if CO2 controlled the climate.”
Climate scientists have explained for decades that in the past changes in global temperature were initiated by many things but CO2 then acts as a positive feedback (rising temps cause more CO2 cause rising temps) until eventually the process runs out of steam. The ice core record is compatible with this.
Co2 has absolutely flock all to do with anything. It is a trace chemical, carbon, hydro cycles fall out of climate they don’t reinforce a god damn thing.
Do you realise the level of scientific illiteracy you are exhibiting with “until positive feedback runs out of steam”?
Also, the key factor you are missing in your comment is the timing. If CO2 and temperature are linked, than which changes first? Ice core records show that the consequence of temperatures rising is an increase in CO2, not the other way round.
There is a simple scientific explanation for that. As the temperature of the oceans rise they are unable to hold as much gas (inc CO2) in solution, and hence outgassing occurs.
Positive feedbacks may or may not run out of steam – it depends on the gain in the loop. The gain in the CO2/temperature loop is likely less than 1 so it will eventually run out of steam. (The Wikipedia article explains this quite well). I don’t understand why this is scientific illiteracy.
I thought I had explained about the timing in my comment. But as I am supposedly scientifically illiterate I perhaps need to explain it more carefully.
In the past CO2 has typically increased in response to a temperature rise for just the reason you give. The temperature rise is caused by something such as a Milankovitch cycle (some times CO2 has risen in response to other things such as mass volcanic activity but this is not the case when we are talking about ice ages). So it is true the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise.
But then the CO2 causes a further temperature rise which causes a further CO2 rise and so on. At some stage the CO2 rise no longer has an effect and stability is achieved at a higher temperature (an interglacial period).
Then some event causes a cooling which causes the oceans to absorb more CO2 which in turn causes more cooling so we get the reverse process until a different stability is achieved at a lower temperature (an ice age).
To repeat – temperature changes often preceded CO2 changes but this does not mean CO2 does not affect temperature.
For a more detailed and better explanation see here.
CO2 affects temperature, but just not very much, and the warming tails off quickly. So we should not wreck our economy with de-carbonising net zero.
The ups and downs are sort of pleasing, a natural rhythm.
Those “ups and downs” correspond to ice ages and interglacial periods. During the last ice age global sea level was more than 400 feet lower than it is today, and glaciers covered approximately 25% of Earth’s land area. Most climatologists think that CO2 changes accounted for most of this.
Nah. Most climatologists? You I think are a caring person and mean well, but you must know there is no such thing as a “climatologist.”
Net zero hurts the poor and the old, and takes money from successful people to give to, someone else. After taking a cut.
You don’t want to be a useful idiot for the bad guys.
you must know there is no such thing as a “climatologist.”
I don’t understand what you mean by that. A lot of people have the title climatologist and here is a description of what they do.
Well I hate to shoot your fox…
If the gain in the ‘loop’ (I think,you may be talking about so-called climate sensitivity) is ‘likely less than x1’, then that is net negative, not positive.
The supposed ‘gain’ from CO2 alone is plus ~1C for a doubling of concentration, because the attenuation by CO2 molecules of outgoing long wave I/R is logarithmic such that a point is reached when greater concentration of CO2 has no further effect below the doubling.
So, if the ‘gain’ is less than x1, as you suggest, let’s say x0.8, then that CO2 uplift of 1C becomes 0.8C – ergo cooling.
If the gain in the ‘loop’ (I think,you may be talking about so-called climate sensitivity) is ‘likely less than x1’, then that is net negative, not positive.
No. That is not what it means. I suggest you read the Wikipedia article carefully.
Ah, I see where you are coming from
“it’s a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle – an excellent example of what science refers to as a positive climate feedback.”
gawd bless wikipedia!
but as someone pointed out, where is the doom loop? Why does it run out of steam?
3 ferd?
I offer you
https://wvanwijngaarden.info.yorku.ca/files/2021/03/WPotency.pdf?x45936
It runs out of steam because the (slight) warming effect of co2 wanes logarithmically. P 9.
It runs out of steam because the (slight) warming effect of co2 wanes logarithmically.
It is a bit more complicated than that, but essentially that is correct – standard climate science as from the IPCC etc has always accepted that the effect of CO2 wanes logarithmically. They just disagree about the “slight” bit.
Ok moderator. You are tired and so am I. Last point. The IPCC has no clue. The models run hot and do not backcast. All the UN wants is your money and mine in “carbon” taxes, so they can feather their nest and buy influence. Over and out.
Why we are suddenly onto the IPCC?
However, happy to respond on this. How much IPCC stuff have you read? The full reports are a bit much for almost anyone but an expert, but they do various levels of summaries. Note – tey don’t create models – although they use the output of models as a part of the evidence for their conclusions.
The models chart you have picked up on is designed to win an argument not convey the full situation. For example,.it doesn’t show confidence levels and it only uses UAH for temperature data. For an alternative discussion which gives an idea of the complexity of this why not read this?
The Summary for Policy Makers has a history of distorting the science to suit the political agenda (Sustainable Development). ——–Models by the way are not evidence of anything. There are no scientists experts or computer modellers who know what the climate will be doing in 50 or 100 years. Models full of speculation, assumption and guesswork are NOT science.
“standard climate science as from the IPCC etc” ???????. —-But the IPCC is not a scientific body. It is a political one and its conclusions are all political. You are entering into scientific arguments above. But there is great uncertainty around the science. It is also an economic, moral and social issue and is not a black and white one where there either is climate change or there isn’t climate change. It is way more complex than that.
But the IPCC is not a scientific body. It is a political one and its conclusions are all political.
The authors are scientists and the reports refer (massively) to scientific papers. How much of the IPCC stuff have you read? Perhaps you could give references to these political conclusions?
You two should get a room
Ah, Wikipedia! That bastion of honesty and virtue! Then you MUST be correct…
Silly me!
/s
In this case it is simply an explanation of a basic concept about positive feedback loops – nothing political or controversial about that I think.
Most feedbacks in nature are NEGATIVE. You have no evidence of Positive feedbacks running the show.
I don’t know how you count feedbacks! However, any process where rate of growth is proportional to state of growth is a positive feedback and you see that all over the place where life is concerned. Some weather phenomena such as the formation of hurricanes are positive feedback processes. What may be confusing is that positive feedback processes eventually stop – they must or they would take over the universe.
More to the point I am not claiming that the positive feedback temp>CO2>temp>CO2 is proven – I leave that to the scientists. I am just saying it is the standard explanation for why sometimes change in temperature appears to precede change in CO2. At the very least this means it is invalid to argue:
Change in temp precedes change in CO2 therefore CO2 change does not cause temp change.
“Climate scientists have explained for decades that in the past changes in global temperature were initiated by many things but CO2 then acts as a positive feedback…”
No they haven’t ‘explained’ they have claimed and asserted, and then vilified and defamed and silenced anyone who points out the absence of any evidence of this, and the inconsistency with data derived from geological investigation.
The end of an ice age is when there is no ice at either Pole; the start is when an ice cap appears at either Pole.
Since there is still ice at both Poles we are technically in an ice age moving towards a tropical age then back towards another ice age – known as an interglacial period.
if ‘other factors’ (which?) start the warming, then CO2 ‘acts as a positive feed back’ – what stopped it every other time during the last 4.5 billion years, but has mysteriously disappeared and won’t stop it this time?
The graph shows increase and decline by a fairly regular pattern and so implies a normal climate of ups and downs!
Why is it we panic about it just because we happen to be on the earth at the moment? The planet doesn’t give a fig about what life inhabits it, get over it!
BBC Verify & Lie.
The bulk of the Earth’s CO2 (currently circa 96%) is in the oceans. Warmer oceans = outgassing and higher atmospheric CO2. Colder oceans = higher rate of absorption of CO2 and lower atmospheric levels.
Warming precedes/causes higher CO2 concentrations, not vice versa. Fact.
There is always a lag… centuries/millennia before atmospheric CO2 increases with warming, and decreases with cooling. Fact.
So by the time an ice age arrives, most of the CO2 is fixed in the oceans and ice (180ppm); by the time of a tropical age, much has been released (4 000 to 6000ppm) – which of course doesn’t explain how a CO2 driven climate can cool down from such high concentrations, and warm up again from such low concentrations.
An ice age is defined as being when the Earth still has one ice cap. Currently there are two which is rare, with ice mass in Antarctica increasing. We are therefore in an unusually cool climate period (hence the 96% in the oceans, and only ~400ppm atmospheric) comparative to the the 4.5 billion year history of Earth, but not of course if on Planet BBC and Climate Hysteria Central history only started 150 years ago.
This is bizarre. The Charles Moore article is actually quite supportive of Nick Robinson’s case:
I am glad Nick Robinson wants this conversation. I agree with him that Fox News is a depressing phenomenon, offering only what it thinks its audience wants to hear and therefore paltering with the truth. It is true that a world where almost anything can be said online is a world which allows the speedy dissemination of untruth (though the openness of the web is surely a massive net benefit to the global free flow of information). But the desired conversation cannot start without a harder look at what impartiality means to its practitioners.
The rest of the article discusses a small perceived breach of impartiality by Thomson Reuters a Canadian private company. The only connection with the BBC is that Moore claims (without evidence) that the BBC thinks that way. Climate change doesn’t arise at all.
Thing is, Fox News is always picked on as a special case because it’s right of centre and there are fewer right of centre news services. CNN are much worse for bias. So are CNBC. There’s a lot on Fox News worth watching – I really like shows such as Outnumbered – although I haven’t watched their YouTube channel since they put Tucker Carlson in ‘gardening leave prison.’
Well Charles Moore appears to think differently. I never watch it so I can’t comment. Is outnumbered anything to do with the excellent BBC comedy series of the same title?
No. Why do feel the need to be facetious when someone like me nicely agrees with what you said? It’s pretty clear Charles Moore doesn’t look at Fox News. Attacking Fox News is a left wing shorthand (and British snob shorthand) for media whose opinion the left disagrees with. Outnumbered is a programme on Fox with four sharp-as-a-tack female panellists and one male panellist, who discuss current affairs. Douglas Murray pops up on there from time to time.
As for Thomson-Reuters, their chairman is an investor in and board member of Pfizer and a senior member of the WEF, which people tend not to mention when it comes to their ‘fact-checking’!
I am sorry if you found my comment facetious. I think it is just a misunderstanding – possibly arising from confusion between what I asserted and what I quoted from Charles Moore. You wrote about Fox News. I have nothing to say about that because it is a US TV channel and I live in the UK. I don’t know how I would get to watch it if I wanted to. I included it in the Charles Moore quote because it showed how he had some sympathy with the Nick Robinson argument.
I am also not sure what it is that you “nicely” agree with me about! But I am delighted to know we agree about something.
You can watch Fox online (for free) and via YouTube. Like Sky News Australia, it is still owned by Murdoch. I’m no great fan of his but both channels were among the rare MSM outlets where lockdown sceptical views were/are tolerated and expressed, especially Sky. Tucker Carlson was one of the most famous Fox presenters before he was fired, probably for being openly red pilled. Not sure about Sky but Fox in the US has a huge following – I think it’s number 1 actually. In terms of TV, it’s the only really right of centre channel in the US. We don’t have a mainstream right of centre channel in the UK – they are all lefties.
You must expect that if a News Cnannel is not spouting Liberal Progressive bias there must be something wrong with it. Is 90% of the news media presenting leftist tosh not enough for you? Won’t you be happy till you have the whole 100%?
Nick Robinson!
Ho, there just ain’t words!
He’s the very essence of male,pale and stale, SO…so desperate to keep his job he will suck up to anything his handlers ask of him!
What an absolute empty vessel! He’s been nothing but a waste of air and food that a useful human being could have had!
Dirty Knees, done dirt cheap.
The whole concept of being “impartial” in the context of operating as a news media organisation arose from the time when the Beeb was a monopoly, funded by the licensing scheme and other Government grants. It didn’t apply to the press, like the Telegraph, or the Grauniad etc. These days, the idea of being impartial is more appropriate for those bodies that try to manipulate the whole lot, such as Ofcom, or even some large corporations that attempt to act like the old Pravda (via this mode of communication). Thus there is no surprise if GBN is more like a traditional newspaper in it’s editorial behaviour.
Yes, spot on. Thank you for reminding us of this!
We look for a range of opinions, and then make sense of it all for ourselves.
If the bbc does go kaput, as I fervently hope it will, and GBN offers him a job. Will he refuse?
The only problem with the BBC going kaput is that the media industry will be flooded with highly-trained BBC employee/fanatics and every non-explicitly-right-wing media organisation will thus turn into something akin to the BBC. At least while the BBC exists in some form, the poison is kept concentrated in a bottle.
By any stretch of the imagination posing the Charles Moore article as a fantastic take down of Nick Robinson is tenuous. This is more a puff piece for Charles Moore who has hardly written the most incisive criticism of the collapse of our press freedom.
Page fillers at best and that includes Toby’s article alongside the Moore piece.
It resorts to clichés about Fox News by someone who clearly doesn’t watch it. Fox News is pretty actually milquetoast.
As soon as I see the words BBC and Impartial in the same sentence..I know it’s a crock…!
None of them seem to understand that the vast majority don’t believe a word they say anymore..and with good reason….
I suppose the penny will drop at some stage..won’t it?
It’s like Tucker Carlson said on his first Twitter webcast: all the companies broadcast selectively. They give facts, but withhold other facts and withhold context. That way, they can claim to be unbiased and giving accurate information, but they’re not giving all the information, which in my book is lies of omission, which is as big a sin of lies of falsehood.
Good lord isn’t it very simple? I cannot fathom how you would go about creating a news organisation that is “impartial”. I suppose if the leadership/owners were really into that as a thing they could go out of their way to hire people of different views and ensure they were all represented, but it doesn’t seem to happen much in practice. Who cares about “bias”? Surely you take it all with a pinch of salt, and make your own mind up? Why do people feel the need to be told the “truth” – so they don’t have to think for themselves?
The BBC is a special case because it’s funded by the state demanding money with menaces, purports to be impartial and has the stamp of state approval (goodness knows why that should count for anything). The solution isn’t to force other news organisations to be impartial, nor is it to make the BBC impartial (impossible, too late). The only and obvious solution is to privatise the BBC (and we’ll take the windfall money raised and build a wall across the channel) – or ideally dissolve it.
It’s so bizarre when you think about it: you own a TV and a bunch of Capita thugs, akin to protection racketeers, come to your door demanding you give them money to fund their TV station. When you say no, the police and courts take the racketeers’ side!
Nice one tof. 👍
It’s impossible for the BBC to be “impartial” on any subject as their journalists are wedded to “the establishment” view of the world.
https://the-free-press.co.uk/2023/08/17/mapping-the-establishment-elitism-among-the-top-100-uk-journalists/
The BBC does have to be impartial (it’s not) because it is a public corporation funded by taxation. The BBC does not have to attract viewers to make its money, it gets it even if nobody watches it.
GB News is not a tax-funded organisation so can be as partial or impartial as it likes and it is up to its viewers to decide. Since GB News depends on advertising revenue, it has to have a large enough audience to attract advertisers and charge the rates it does.
GB News output will inevitably reflect the opinions, bias, of its audience. If it’s attracting an audience big enough to sustain income from advertising, it’s got its ‘impartiality’ right.
Robinson knows nothing about the economics of the marketplace, since the BBC is an uncontestable monopoly protected by legislation and doesn’t have to worry about competing and attracting viewers to get revenue.
Who is he anyway?
Don’t you know how important he is? He’s a legend in his own lunchtime.
This is all well and good but it is ten years out of date. We know the script and we know how assiduously they follow it. There is nothing to be gained by talking like a naive baby.
Can’t stop laughing. Robinson obviously watches GBNews, like the rest of the nation..
The BBC are supposed to be “Free Fair and Impartial”. To the likes of Nick Robinson and Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Live I say why don’t you remember that before trying to criticise other channels like GB news who as far as I can see let all points of view be heard. It is not the job of the state broadcaster to decide that Trump is bad but Obama is good. Or that Israel is bad but Palestine is good. Or that we all “must fight climate change”. When the BBC indulges in its Cultural Marxism it should remember that we all pay the license fee not just the Liberal Progressives.
Defund the BBC.