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posted by azrael on Sunday July 06 2014, @10:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the flat-earth dept.

The Telegraph reports:

BBC journalists are being sent on courses to stop them inviting so many cranks onto programmes to air 'marginal views'.

The BBC Trust on Thursday published a progress report into the corporation's science coverage which was criticised in 2012 for giving too much air-time to critics who oppose non-contentious issues.

The report found that there was still an 'over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality' which sought to give the 'other side' of the argument, even if that viewpoint was widely dismissed.

 
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by jb on Sunday July 06 2014, @01:07PM

    by jb (338) on Sunday July 06 2014, @01:07PM (#64837)

    The whole point of editorial guidelines on impartiality is that nobody can be trusted to determine unilaterally what is or isn't contentious, so the safest course is to allow each school of thought to speak for themselves and let the viewers make up their own minds.

    It wouldn't be so bad if it were a commercial network, but the BBC is a state broadcaster. When the Government gets to decide what the people are or aren't allowed to be told is contentious, we'll have a far greater problem than the one described in the report.

    Also, when someone credibly criticises "non-contentious" science, that's actual news and makes for good viewing, particularly is the criticiser is prepared to debate another expert in the field live on air, whereas someone merely reiterating the conventional wisdom is hardly compelling viewing...

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday July 06 2014, @01:56PM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday July 06 2014, @01:56PM (#64850) Homepage

    so the safest course is to allow each school of thought to speak for themselves and let the viewers make up their own minds.

    That may be the "safest" course of action - whatever you mean by "safe" - but it would quickly get pretty tiresome if, for every point Brian Cox makes in a documentary, the program then has to spend five times as long airing all of the opposing views.

    You wouldn't be able to get further than "the dinosaurs lived hundreds of millions of years ago" in a single hour.

    but the BBC is a state broadcaster. When the Government gets to decide what the people are or aren't allowed to be told is contentious

    The BBC isn't run by the government any more than any of the commercial broadcasters are.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 0) by Jiro on Sunday July 06 2014, @06:27PM

      by Jiro (3176) on Sunday July 06 2014, @06:27PM (#64908)

      The BBC is run by the government. It's paid by a tax on TVs. Private companies don't get to do that--imagine that you were not permitted to buy a burger at McDonalds unless you also paid some money to Burger King.

      The government may not be directly deciding what it says at this exact moment, but they can change that any time they want.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday July 06 2014, @06:59PM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 06 2014, @06:59PM (#64917) Journal

        Rubbish - the BBC is run by the BBC Trust [wikipedia.org] which is are responsible for ensuring that the tax-payer - NOT the Government - get value for money. The BBC frequently has documentaries, news reports and other items which are NOT in the Governments interest.

        I suspect that, from time to time, the Government wishes it had more control over the BBC!

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by theluggage on Sunday July 06 2014, @02:31PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Sunday July 06 2014, @02:31PM (#64861)

    The whole point of editorial guidelines on impartiality

    This isn't about impartiality. This is about avoiding "bias by balance" where an over-rigid insistence on always presenting an opposing view means that, if you interview someone who says that two plus two is four, you have to scour the world to find someone who disagrees. Go read TFA: this is about the BBC inviting celebrity pundits and bloggers to argue with qualified scientists because they couldn't find any qualified scientists with opposing views.

    It wouldn't be so bad if it were a commercial network, but the BBC is a state broadcaster.

    So you'd rather let that nice Mr Murdoch decide what you are or aren't allowed to be told?

    Personally, I'm more worried about media-run states [bbc.co.uk] than state-run-media.

    Here we are debating a publicly available report on BBC policy. If the BBC wasn't a state broadcaster, subject to public scrutiny, a directive from the Big Cheese on who to interview would have been 'commercially sensitive information' and we'd be none the wiser.

    The BBC has many, many flaws, but at least we get to know what they are. With commercial media, we have to wait until one of them gets sent to jail [bbc.co.uk].

    • (Score: 1) by Jiro on Sunday July 06 2014, @06:39PM

      by Jiro (3176) on Sunday July 06 2014, @06:39PM (#64912)

      You do realize you just gave links to two BBC stories to support the idea that the BBC is better than other broadcasters? What next, will you quote the head of the NSA to explain why the NSA is really doing good work?

      Obviously it's going to be in the BBC's best interest to publish stories which make private broadcasters out to look bad, especially if the BBC can forcibly collect money from people who have no choice but to pay the BBC if they want to watch the private broadcasters.

      (And don't reply by saying "that really happened". The question is one of emphasis and bias. I'm sure the head of the NSA could name some good things that the NSA did that really happened--it's just that while true, dwelling on those would give a misleading overall picture of the NSA.)

      • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Sunday July 06 2014, @10:24PM

        by theluggage (1797) on Sunday July 06 2014, @10:24PM (#64982)

        You do realize you just gave links to two BBC stories to support the idea that the BBC is better than other broadcasters?

        So... did you expect me to link to one of the commercial sites I'd just slagged off? Although, now that you mention it, I did Google and surprisingly it didn't throw up any links to The Sun, The Sunday Times or Sky News (merely a glitch on Google, I'm sure). Just for completeness here's [independent.co.uk] a link from a news source other than the BBC.

        What next, will you quote the head of the NSA to explain why the NSA is really doing good work?

        Perhaps you could point out which bit of either of those stories involved the BBC promoting itself?

        Meanwhile here [bbc.co.uk] is the BBC dutifully reporting on one of its own fuckups. If this sort of thing had happened in a multinational media corporation, do you think they'd run stories on it (or is the private sector just infallible) ?

        • (Score: 1) by Jiro on Wednesday July 09 2014, @02:36AM

          by Jiro (3176) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @02:36AM (#66320)

          Although, now that you mention it, I did Google and surprisingly it didn't throw up any links to The Sun, The Sunday Times or Sky News (merely a glitch on Google, I'm sure).

          That's not a glitch on Google, that's because those sources don't have the incentive to over-emphasize such stories that the BBC does.

          Perhaps you could point out which bit of either of those stories involved the BBC promoting itself?

          It's a story about a private broadcaster doing bad things. You even used it yourself to show that private broadcasters do bad things. You seriously can't see how publicizing such a story benefits a state-owned broadcaster?

          Meanwhile here is the BBC dutifully reporting on one of its own fuckups. If this sort of thing had happened in a multinational media corporation, do you think they'd run stories on it (or is the private sector just infallible) ?

          Read carefully one of the related story titles. "BBC boss sacked over failed project". In other words, this is typical internal politics: now that they have a new boss, they publish things that make the old boss look bad. I would be very unsurrpised at a private company that, after firing its CEO or in the middle of an internal struggle whether to fire its CEO, publishes something saying how bad it is to be run by that CEO.

  • (Score: 2) by khakipuce on Monday July 07 2014, @12:06PM

    by khakipuce (233) on Monday July 07 2014, @12:06PM (#65184)

    Several years ago the BBC commissioned a report by prof. Steve Jones on this subject and he gave a nice example of the issue. Suppose mathematicians discover that 2+2=4, the journos would get on someone from the number 5 preservation society to argue that 2+2=5 and at the end of the debate the journo would conclude that the answer is somewhere between 4 and 5.

    Some things are facts, the BBC (or the government if you are that paranoid) is not going to stop reporting things that are contentious but it is going to separate facts from debatable analysis. It is also going to dig deeper in to what motivates people to argue for a particular case, which may well be nothing to do with science. In fact we sometimes see scientists debating with government representatives.