Things you don't know if you watch the BBC

[delicatemoth]

Thank you Chris. Responses like that give me the energy to keep posting and keep pushing away.

[ChrisJ]

Thank you Chris. Responses like that give me the energy to keep posting and keep pushing away.

blimey, least I can do. I sometimes wonder whether I should post more on threads like this or your TL&T or or the white supremacy thread, but I mostly find them terrifically useful as learning resources and signposts to further information and discussion.

i’ve learnt a huge amount from the “curated” threads. Please keep posting and know that your stuff isn’t falling into a void!

[pebblethefish]

Have also complained. Which is probably a first for me, given how much I struggled with the complaint form.

And seconded ChrisJ's remarks on the importance of the TL&T thread - I never comment because I know nowt about it, but I have learnt a lot.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Very striking difference in tone and content between Bbc and C4 John Hume obituaries. The former went on and on about ‘man of peace’ and getting the IRA to stop bombing but gave no context for the ‘civil rights’ he was campaigning for in the 60s nor did they mention what war the peace brought to an end.
C4 had archive footage of catholic housing problems, rubber bullets and teargas and a line about ‘a sectarian unionist state.’

[Satchmo Distel]

Like an obituary for Mandela that doesn't discuss apartheid.

[Nefertiti2]

Farage Tweets Film of a boat on the Beach and calls it an invasion

tge bbc

https://twitter.com/drsjfine/status/1292010270391439362?s=21

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/a_leesha1/status/1292813968516550662?s=21

[ChrisJ]

Had a reply from the BBC.

Dear Mr. ChrisJ,

Thank you for contacting us about the BBC Action Line.

We’re sending this response to everyone who contacted us to allow us to reply promptly and address the main points which have been raised, so we are sorry not to be able to reply individually about every point made.

Our off-air support for gender identity has not been removed, but was temporarily unavailable while we looked at the information and support we gave across this area. We recognise how important off-air support is for people.

We have now updated the Action Line page which supports the fuller range of LGBT issues and links to a number of organisations so that it also now includes a link to gender identity information which is provided on the NHS website, which includes that relating to children. The NHS site then links from its relevant sections to additional organisations.

We do recognise a number of people might want this provided differently, or to list many other organisations directly, but hope this reassures you that the off-air information about available support has not been discontinued.

Thank you again for contacting us. Your points have been shared with the team involved as well as senior staff.

delicatemoth
I don't know what info was there before or how representative the range of support offered is. This is the current effort which doesn't look particularly encyclopaedic.

(Should I move this to the TL&T thread?)

[E10 Rifle]

Thinking I might get the old green ink out and complain about their migrant dinghy coverage, from the misery-gawp voyeurism of riding their boat up to the poor sods to the item on the 10 o'clock News describing their arrival as "a breach of sovereignty". Hand over the whole fucking news department to Newsround and CBBC.

[Snake Plissken]

The worry for me is that Farage spends a day being chauffeured around filming heavily edited videos and sticking them on YouTube and a week later we’ve got Priti Patel flying RAF planes over the Channel and this bollocks going on.

The frog faced racist is probably the second most powerful man in the country after Cummings.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/frances_coppola/status/1293101948212846592?s=21

if Farage had run for Parliament in 2017 or 2019 we’d gave a Labour Government.

hes delivered the gammon and fash vote and that makes him associate head of bbc news

[ursus arctos]

Is there reliable data on the demographics of the BBC television audience?

Does it now skew significantly older and less educated in the way that Fox News does?

[Nocturnal Submission]

Is there reliable data on the demographics of the BBC television audience?

Does it now skew significantly older and less educated in the way that Fox News does?

I'd guess that it skews older and more educated, but I'm sure there are surveys out there to confirm my suspicion or prove me wrong.

[ursus arctos]

There's a lot of reporting about the audience becoming older on average (now early 60s on average for broadcast television), but I haven't been able to find granular data that even addresses educational levels.

One of the issues is that much of the reporting is coming from the Corporation itself, which has massive incentives to spin the figures (and does so gleefully).

[Diable Rouge]

https://twitter.com/a_leesha1/status/1292813968516550662?s=21

Somewhat OT, but the actual EU stats on the UK migrant "invasion" - don't expect the BBC to contextualise the issue through either the Sahel crisis caused by climate change and Islamic militancy, or indeed the Turkish involvement in Syria any time soon.

[Satchmo Distel]

There's a lot of reporting about the audience becoming older on average (now early 60s on average for broadcast television), but I haven't been able to find granular data that even addresses educational levels.

One of the issues is that much of the reporting is coming from the Corporation itself, which has massive incentives to spin the figures (and does so gleefully).

I think the decisive factor is that the BBC started recruiting journalists from Tory-dominated university graduate pools rather than the relatively centrist pools of the 60s and 70s. The dehumanization of asylum seekers has been going on since the 1990s but I'm not sure how complicit the BBC was back then.

[That Night In Barcelona]

Over the last 10 years the BBC has switched to following the lead of the tabloids when determining the relative importance of different stories, rather than take an editorial line themselves - I think this was more due to staff cuts but it does also suit their own narrative that they are impartial (i.e. blinding following 'the news' while ignoring all context around how a thing becomes 'news'). I think there was an LRB article about managerialism in the World Service last year that covers some of this.

It's here if anyone wants to give it a read: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/...tell-the-truth

[delicatemoth]

I think the decisive factor is that the BBC started recruiting journalists from Tory-dominated university graduate pools rather than the relatively centrist pools of the 60s and 70s. The dehumanization of asylum seekers has been going on since the 1990s but I'm not sure how complicit the BBC was back then.

They were more restrained but passively supported the assumption that asylum seekers are a problem (or 'concern') to be dealt with, as they do with other minorities.

ChrisJ thanks for posting that. They're stinkers, that's not the same thing at all. All they do is pass you to the NHS pages on gender treatments, transition etc. Having links to specific organisations that can be trusted (at least to a point) meant that people didn't have to do internet searches blind and risk coming up with one of the fake-concern anti-trans orgs that proliferate (think 'crisis pregnancy centres') and, coincidentally, lobby the BBC and suchlike.

I also noticed this week, in their piece about the appalling rugby thing (rugby authorities use terrible research to justify excluding trans women) the BBC still refer to anti-trans hate group Woman's Place as a 'women's rights group'.

[ChrisJ]

ChrisJ thanks for posting that. They're stinkers, that's not the same thing at all. All they do is pass you to the NHS pages on gender treatments, transition etc. Having links to specific organisations that can be trusted (at least to a point) meant that people didn't have to do internet searches blind and risk coming up with one of the fake-concern anti-trans orgs that proliferate (think 'crisis pregnancy centres') and, coincidentally, lobby the BBC and suchlike.

I also noticed this week, in their piece about the appalling rugby thing (rugby authorities use terrible research to justify excluding trans women) the BBC still refer to anti-trans hate group Woman's Place as a 'women's rights group'.

Yeah, didn't think it looked particularly good. "Stinkers" is very restrained.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Had a reply from the BBC.

Dear Mr. ChrisJ,

Thank you for contacting us about the BBC Action Line.

We’re sending this response to everyone who contacted us to allow us to reply promptly and address the main points which have been raised, so we are sorry not to be able to reply individually about every point made.

Our off-air support for gender identity has not been removed, but was temporarily unavailable while we looked at the information and support we gave across this area. We recognise how important off-air support is for people.

We have now updated the Action Line page which supports the fuller range of LGBT issues and links to a number of organisations so that it also now includes a link to gender identity information which is provided on the NHS website, which includes that relating to children. The NHS site then links from its relevant sections to additional organisations.

We do recognise a number of people might want this provided differently, or to list many other organisations directly, but hope this reassures you that the off-air information about available support has not been discontinued.

Thank you again for contacting us. Your points have been shared with the team involved as well as senior staff.

delicatemoth
I don't know what info was there before or how representative the range of support offered is. This is the current effort which doesn't look particularly encyclopaedic.

(Should I move this to the TL&T thread?)

i think it's covered over there. Shout if it isn't. The BBC response is highly disingenuous to say the least.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/SolHughesWriter/status/1293829084603125761?s=20

[Nefertiti2]

historical edition

https://twitter.com/davidleighx/status/1296203619734294530?s=20

[Satchmo Distel]

The BBC has always been the "state broadcaster" with all that the phrase implies.

[Nefertiti2]

what that implies these days

https://twitter.com/sharonodea/status/1297467279148568577?s=20

[Satchmo Distel]

I'm guessing that none of the Tories who have ministerial responsibility for the current education shitshow were willing to put themselves on the line so Grimes was brought in to "maintain balance".