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What influence has the BBC had on history?

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Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#41

Post by gmac »

gadders wrote: post #35
gmac wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they were clearly pro-Remain I would say they were a lot less pro-Remain than the facts were, such that they were effectively heavily biased towards Leave. Typically they'd interview someone to factually explain how Brexit would be bad, and then 'balance' it up by giving equal airtime to some liar/fantastist telling us how it would be wonderful.

[flagged]

Haha.

But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2].

Edit: here's a longer-form version of this argument: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-h...

[1] https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-eco...

[2] Waking up to the Today programme for years (yes, a better source here would be nice)

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#42

Post by suddenlybananas »

gambiting wrote: post #40
suddenlybananas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They want a democratic society in Russia They don't give a damn about democracy. There's a reason they stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America. Hell, they even helped steal the 1996 Russian election.

Perhaps a more correct way of saying it is - "they"(and that's not just US who wants this) want a stable trading partner, because Russia has goods and resources we want to buy, and we have goods and services we want to sell to them. >>There's a reason they stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America And that is for the exact reason I mentioned above. With a democracy it's just much easier to make sure t…

Yes of course, they want things in their own interest, democracy is entirely orthogonal to that.

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#43

Post by gadders »

th0ma5 wrote: post #38
gadders wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes, for-profit services often cost more and deliver less than non-profit or at-loss public services which make more sense for commodity services especially those needed to survive like healthcare or infrastructure.

I'm talking about providing less services in the first place, regardless of who does it.

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#44

Post by matthewmacleod »

gadders wrote: post #26
benrutter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Prescott memo is just the latest observation of how the BBC has been used as a tool to propagate elite opinions and accomplish intelligence objectives. Of course you like it, it's for you. I think this kind of criticism is in bad faith. Because there's an implication that you're comparing the BBC to some kind of ideal unbiased news outlet. In reality, the alternatives to the BBC are much more obviously nefariou…

>>how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN? "I'm not forced to pay for those via a tax" would be the key difference.

You are free to not use those services and hence opt out of payment. Of course you know that already - it’s just so that others recognise the bits you conveniently leave out!

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#45

Post by gadders »

gmac wrote: post #41
gadders wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Haha. But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2]. Edit: here's a longer-form version of this argument: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-h... [1] https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-eco... [2] Waking up to the Today programme for years (yes, a better sourc…

All that shows is that 90% of economists were wrong.

I mean I don't think it was massively good (government fumbles saw to that) but the UK isn't doing significantly worse than the rest of Europe, or worse than it was pre-Brexit.

Economics isn't a proper science, but even so it's not a democracy - more people saying x rather than y doesn't guarantee they're correct.

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#46

Post by gadders »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #44
gadders wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>how would you describe Fox News, the Daily Mail, The Times (UK), or even CNN? "I'm not forced to pay for those via a tax" would be the key difference.

You are free to not use those services and hence opt out of payment. Of course you know that already - it’s just so that others recognise the bits you conveniently leave out!

People won't come round my house and verify I'm not secretly watching CNN without paying.

edit/reading/watching/

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#47

Post by pjc50 »

moltar wrote: post #12

When the Soviet Union fell apart BBC opened a number of journalism schools in Russia. The schools were sponsored by George Soros. My dad attended one of those and then was called into FSB office (former KGB) to be questioned. My suspicion to this day is that these schools were both a spy front and long-game propaganda, where they were teaching how to make news more western-aligned. Why would BBC want to teach their m…

Two things are both true: the Soros Open Society foundation and BBC activities were pro-Western propaganda, and that does not make them bad or wrong or false. If they had succeeded in turning Russia into a pluralist liberal democracy, that would have been better for millions of Russians and everyone else. Instead Russia turned into a petro-state oligarchy, sponsored a number of wars, and finally threw hundreds of thousands of young Russians into a meatgrinder war in Ukraine.

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#48

Post by pjc50 »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #28
notepad0x90 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal there is similar to why the US state department sponsored the Tor project. They want a democratic society in Russia, and they want the Russian people to have friendly views of the west. The objective wasn't so much to teach them their ways, but to establish rapport with the journalism community in Russia. Journalists decide if for example Putin's power grabbing and dictatorship is covered as a negative or a…

>They want a democratic society in Russia They don't give a damn about democracy. There's a reason they stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America. Hell, they even helped steal the 1996 Russian election.

> stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America. Hell, they even helped steal the 1996 Russian election.

[citation needed]; I'm aware of all the Latin America badness, School of the Americas, Nicaragua, Allende, etc, but I don't know what you're referring to here and you do actually need to support claims of ballot rigging with evidence.

But yes, this fundamental tension in American "state building" was being unable to handle cases when the foreign public wanted a democracy that wasn't run by and for the benefit of US corporations or right-wing Christians. You can see it propagating backwards now America has its own Pinochet.

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#49

Post by gmac »

gadders wrote: post #45
gmac wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. But no, not only that. 90% of economists thought Brexit would be net bad [1]. But at least 50% of economists the BBC put on air thought it would be net good [2]. Edit: here's a longer-form version of this argument: https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/04/brexit-and-corbyn-h... [1] https://ifs.org.uk/articles/paul-johnson-leavers-may-not-eco... [2] Waking up to the Today programme for years (yes, a better sourc…

All that shows is that 90% of economists were wrong. I mean I don't think it was massively good (government fumbles saw to that) but the UK isn't doing significantly worse than the rest of Europe, or worse than it was pre-Brexit. Economics isn't a proper science, but even so it's not a democracy - more people saying x rather than y doesn't guarantee they're correct.

Nope. https://www.brexitcost.org/

Re: What influence has the BBC had on history?

#50

Post by pjc50 »

doe88 wrote: post #9
pessimizer wrote: post #2

https://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staf... > At the last count, in 1984, the BBC had a staff of almost 30,000. We have discovered that all current affairs appointees, together with many of those involved in the actual making of programmes - including directors and film editors - are vetted. > We have also established who runs the system. It operates, unknown to almost all BBC staff, from Room 105…

When you're attacked from all sides, it's either you're doing it all wrong or all good. Obviously I want to think it's the latter.

Someone very smart told me that incompetence is a form of bias all of its own, because it privileges people who are able to ask for corrections in their favor.

(They had a nice worked example involving exam results - some years have much higher variance than others, due to incompetence in question-setting or marking, and in those years the mis-marking is randomly distributed but only the more middle class parents manage to work the system to get re-marked)

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