BBC News Values

2

Comments

  • Wet Kipper wrote: »
    I like the World Service. It tells you about all sorts of news you wouldn't normally hear because it's happening "abroad"
    I find it more measured than Radio 4

    I listened to the World Service when I lived in the Czech Republic. It didn't cover the resignation of the Czech prime minister, but it did report on the resignation of half the Czech football team ...
  • MooMoo Kerygmania Host
    Eirenist wrote: »
    Giving people what you believe they want, as opposed to what you think they ought to want, will affect the nature of what is given.
    The problem with giving people what you think they ought to want is that they don't have to take it. They can turn off the radio.

  • 'What you think they ought to want' is not always the same thing as 'important'.
  • Just checked BBC News website. Top three stories:
    1 Iran admits it shot down plane
    2 Power sharing to resume in Stormont
    3 Harry and Meghan

    Admittedly it's Brit heavy, but I don't think that's a bad set of priorities for domestic consumption.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Eirenist wrote: »
    Giving people what you believe they want, as opposed to what you think they ought to want, will affect the nature of what is given.

    This seems to me a key point. The BBC is giving prominence to what seems to be a celebrity story rather than "hard" news.

    And one take is that they are doing this in search of popularity - giving the people what it is thought they want. BBC News has increasingly to compete for our attention, and they're doing this by putting in their shop window a story that they think people will want to read.

    An alternative take is that what's currently going on with the royals is of potential import. That if in 10 years' time Britain becomes a republic, people then will look back on today's events as a turning point in the perceived role of royalty.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    Make of this what you wish: but a headline on the BBC Wales section of the News website is: "Rogue slugs sabotage traffic lights".

    :flushed:

    That rather implies that there are well-behaved, nay, well-trained slugs, who do NOT sabotage traffic lights, or (hopefully) anything else. Rather along the lines of 'Gentlemen raise the seats' (let the rail traveller understand).

    Sorry. Enquiring minds need to know.

    But yes - local news, and the way it's reported, can sometimes be very entertaining!
    Just checked BBC News website. Top three stories:
    1 Iran admits it shot down plane
    2 Power sharing to resume in Stormont
    3 Harry and Meghan

    Admittedly it's Brit heavy, but I don't think that's a bad set of priorities for domestic consumption.

    Agreed. Not too bad at all, at all.

  • Russ wrote:
    An alternative take is that what's currently going on with the royals is of potential import. That if in 10 years' time Britain becomes a republic, people then will look back on today's events as a turning point in the perceived role of royalty.

    I give it one royal baby. Kate and Wills are probably rooting to order right now.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Moo wrote: »
    The problem with giving people what you think they ought to want is that they don't have to take it. They can turn off the radio.
    D you sometimes wish we could do that with the government?

  • A minority opinion here from New England: BBC online news, and overnight their nightly on-air (nightly here, meaning later in the UK) news program is my lifeline, saving me from the hyperbole and political bias of the US mainstream media. I regularly give thanks for BBC. (And, I would listen to anything Emilio SanPedro has to say, whether I like the content or not. Ditto with Fiona MacDonald)
  • Generally the further you get away from London, the better the BBC looks. I've heard it said that the non-English broadcasts are very good, but I don't consume them.

    Of course the vast majority of BBC news spending is on the domestic audience.
  • BabyWombat wrote: »
    A minority opinion here from New England: BBC online news, and overnight their nightly on-air (nightly here, meaning later in the UK) news program is my lifeline, saving me from the hyperbole and political bias of the US mainstream media. I regularly give thanks for BBC. (And, I would listen to anything Emilio SanPedro has to say, whether I like the content or not. Ditto with Fiona MacDonald)

    I can see that it may cover US news better than US news outlets. The problem is that when it covers UK politics, it is very biased.

    In support of the BBC, the occasional non-political news is not bad, and the non-news output is still special.
  • BabyWombat wrote: »
    A minority opinion here from New England: BBC online news, and overnight their nightly on-air (nightly here, meaning later in the UK) news program is my lifeline, saving me from the hyperbole and political bias of the US mainstream media. I regularly give thanks for BBC. (And, I would listen to anything Emilio SanPedro has to say, whether I like the content or not. Ditto with Fiona MacDonald)

    I can see that it may cover US news better than US news outlets. The problem is that when it covers UK politics, it is very biased.

    Two things come to mind when considering the political slant of the BBC..

    A TV documentary I watched on-line, about the history of modern Iran. While some earlier instances of British meddling were mentioned, the 1953 coup was presented as being an American affair, with no discussion of British involvement at all.

    I hope for the writer's sake that he WAS deliberately whitewashing his own country's actions, because you would have to be the most incompetent researcher in the world to miss the British role in that event.

    Also, a documentary, from several years after the fact, about the Falklands War. The attitude of the Argentinian public was described as "hysterical". While I'm sure they were pretty exicted about getting the disputed islands back, that kind of language doesn't really belong in what purports to be objective journalsim.

    (And yes, I realize that almost all news outlets slip into that sort of nationalistic chest-thumping from time to time, but most of them don't get talked up as having the sterling reputation of the beeb.)

    Plus, there's the fact that they're apparently required to stop playing certain songs when the country goes to war(eg. Six Months In A Leaky Boat during the Falklands conflict). Granted, that's probably not the policy that their employees would like to follow, but a media enterprise can only be as good as its owners allow it to be.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    We are the owners of the BBC. Theoretically anyway. Will they do what we want?
  • Given that I've never heard of "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" I don't think I missed it much during the Falklands Conflict.
  • stetson wrote: »
    Plus, there's the fact that they're apparently required to stop playing certain songs when the country goes to war(eg. Six Months In A Leaky Boat during the Falklands conflict). Granted, that's probably not the policy that their employees would like to follow, but a media enterprise can only be as good as its owners allow it to be.

    You can go back as far as the General Strike; during which time Reith and some of his senior staff moved into the Admiralty building along with the government's civil commissioner. Reith also chose to not to broadcast a message from the ABC, preferring a message from the Bishop of Westminster condemning the strike as a sin against God.
  • Given that I've never heard of "Six Months in a Leaky Boat" I don't think I missed it much during the Falklands Conflict.

    Well, the issue is not really whether anyone misses a particular song, but more that the BBC, which has been described to me by one of its more cult-like devotees as a "public service", endeavours to manipulate public opinion during wartime.

    (I will admit I'm kind of surprised that someone could be of radio-listening age in the early 80s and not have heard Six Months In A Leaky Boat. Then again, I never heard What's Up by Four Non-Blondes until about nine years after it had charted, even though I'm taken to understand it was pretty huge in its day.)

  • Hugal wrote: »
    We are the owners of the BBC. Theoretically anyway. Will they do what we want?

    This gets into the whole question of whether "public ownership" means "having to do what the public wants."

    The schools in some Bible Belt craphole might be publically owned, but if the public demanded that the science classes teach that the Earth was created in six calendar days three thousand years ago, I don't think most of us would say "Well, I guess the public has spoken. Six days it is!"

    In fact, we'd probably specifically think they were doing a disservice to the public in that instance.
  • Both right- and left-wing 'activists' complain that the BBC is biassed. No wonder the management think they've got it about right. And, in the real world, is it any wonder that when the country is at war, or at least involved in a conflict, the BBC looks over its shoulder? By the way, I was of listening-to-radio age in the 80s (I still am) and I've never heard of 'Six months in a leaky boat' either. I suppose it depends which radion you are referring to.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    Both right- and left-wing 'activists' complain that the BBC is biassed. No wonder the management think they've got it about right.

    There are both pro and anti climate change positions, therefore the truth is in the middle.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    Eirenist wrote: »
    And, in the real world, is it any wonder that when the country is at war, or at least involved in a conflict, the BBC looks over its shoulder?

    Perhaps it's to be expected, but it doesn't really do alot to enhance the BBC's much vaunted reputation for independence. They're basically just admitting that their job is to massage public opinion on behalf of the war effort.

    As for Six Months In A Leaky Boat, maybe that was just an antipodian thing that made it over to Canada? It's chart numbers for the UK are way lower than for New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

  • In World War II, it was a criminal offence to 'spread alarm and despondency'.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    Both right- and left-wing 'activists' complain that the BBC is biassed.

    Yes, they do, but this bald statement can clearly hide the real problem.

    Say, for the sake of argument, that the Beeb has a system-wide left-wing bias. The left will complain when anything is broadcast that doesn't reinforce that bias. The right will complain at the more egregious pieces of left-wing bias, but generally not complain about the general slant to the left, as it's just the water they swim in.

    That the complaints come from both left and right tell us nothing about whether the Beeb is biased to the left or the right. Only academic study using empirical evidence will reveal that.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    By the way, I was of listening-to-radio age in the 80s (I still am) and I've never heard of 'Six months in a leaky boat' either. I suppose it depends which radion you are referring to.

    Was it on Radio 4?
  • Simon ToadSimon Toad Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    @Robert Armin

    Here for your listening pleasure is Split Enz Six Months in a Leaky Boat. It was released on the album Time and Tide in April 1982. It must surely be a coincidence that the Falklands War started in the same month. It is also quintessentially Kiwi.

    Here is a song that is really about the Falklands War, Billy Bragg's Tender Comrade. I'll leave that there cos it is brilliant, but it is the wrong song.

    The one I was thinking of was The Island of No Return.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    In World War II, it was a criminal offence to 'spread alarm and despondency'.

    Yeah, I'm aware of that kind of stuff. And I'm pretty ambivalent about wartime censorship.

    I mean, I get the idea that World War II was an existential crisis for the UK, and that low morale and slackery, in the worst case scenario, could mean the end of the nation as previously known.

    But still, if liberty means anything, surely it means the right of people to disagree with, and stay aloof from, any given state endeavour. I guess if someone is actively inciting illegal behaviour(eg. a pacifist telling his followers to avoid paying taxes), or even just expressing defeatist opinions while in the pay of an enemy country, that can be prosecuted.

    But if it's just some guy standing in Hyde Park telling people that the war is unwinnable, well, shouldn't the obvious righteousness of the British cause drown out any siren songs he may have to put forth?

  • Eirenist wrote: »
    By the way, I was of listening-to-radio age in the 80s (I still am) and I've never heard of 'Six months in a leaky boat' either. I suppose it depends which radion you are referring to.

    Was it on Radio 4?

    I don't know what type of programming predominates on Radio 4. For what it's worth, in the early 80s I mostly listened to Top 40 AM rock stations, so I'm assuming that's where I would have heard it. Not sure how much airplay it got anywhere else.
  • Sorry, Radio 4 is almost entirely talk, rather than music. It's the other end of the spectrum from Radio 1 which is pop, and might have been played your song.
  • I still rate the BBC for things like 'From your Foreign Correspondent' or 'Crossing Continents' (which always sounds like 'Cross Incontinence' to me!). From those programmes I first heard about things like FGM, persecution of minority religions (including Christianity) in certain parts of the world, the role of the church in places like Iran and Iraq, and many other varied subjects that never made the main news; long, long before they became facebook crusades. Indeed a few decades before facebook. The beauty of these reports was that the reporters were often either locals themselves, or had lived in the country a long time; and they would comment usually on how ordinary people were experiencing life, which is a real window into other parts of the world.
  • Anselmina wrote: »
    I still rate the BBC for things like 'From your Foreign Correspondent' or 'Crossing Continents' (which always sounds like 'Cross Incontinence' to me!).

    I think in many ways you are picking the best of the crop -- but equally people vary in their ability to pick up on the selective and abbreviated nature of the viewpoints, situations and perspectives represented in such programmes.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    [tangent]
    @Simon Toad, thank you for the Split Enz link - I don't remember Six Months in a Leaky Boat, but it prompted me to look up their other songs, and listen to I Got You, which transported me straight back to my mis-spent youth ... :blush:
    [/tangent]
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    Piglet wrote: »
    I don't remember Six Months in a Leaky Boat

    Wow. I really think I must've spent the early 80s in an alternate universe from everyone else. I wonder if the fact that SMIALB was immediately banished from the BBC accounts for its lack of notability in the UK. The Falklands War only lasted a short while, but maybe it was long enough for the song to lose whatever "window of opportunity" it had.

  • And a helpful hint...

    For anyone who wants to click on Simon's link, the first 90 seconds of the song are IMO a rather unremarkable instrumental piece, but it gets considerably better after that. The opening wasn't actually played on the radio stations where I lived.

    I'm saying this because, were I to start listening to the song and assume that it's all like the opening, I probably wouldn't continue.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Having played that clip, I can confidently say that I've no recollection of having ever heard Six Months In A Leaky Boat before. Mind, it's not very memorable.

    I'd also be very surprised if that was banned at the time of the Falklands War because it was regarded as controversial . There's nothing controversial about it. It's not got the sort of ingredients that get a song banned. It's more that it just isn't very good. @stetson unless you've got evidence for this, I think that's an urban legend.


    A big question at the moment is that although for two generations the right has accused the BBC of having a left wing bias, there's a widespread and legitimate suspicion that it's scared stiff of offending the current government because it's afraid they'll take its licence away or remove the basis of its funding. There's also no doubt that some of the senior figures do interpret part of its role is to churn out bland stuff that keeps peoples' spirits up. You've only got to listen to anything presented by Mark Mardell to see what I mean.

    Every now and again one of them admits it.


  • Hugal wrote: »
    We are the owners of the BBC. Theoretically anyway. Will they do what we want?

    We own it collectively. But the control of it is with the politicians. Ownership and control are not the same thing.
  • Enoch wrote: »
    Having played that clip, I can confidently say that I've no recollection of having ever heard Six Months In A Leaky Boat before. Mind, it's not very memorable.

    I'd also be very surprised if that was banned at the time of the Falklands War because it was regarded as controversial . There's nothing controversial about it. It's not got the sort of ingredients that get a song banned. It's more that it just isn't very good. @stetson unless you've got evidence for this, I think that's an urban legend.


    A big question at the moment is that although for two generations the right has accused the BBC of having a left wing bias, there's a widespread and legitimate suspicion that it's scared stiff of offending the current government because it's afraid they'll take its licence away or remove the basis of its funding. There's also no doubt that some of the senior figures do interpret part of its role is to churn out bland stuff that keeps peoples' spirits up. You've only got to listen to anything presented by Mark Mardell to see what I mean.

    Every now and again one of them admits it.


    It literally says so on the bbc's own website.

    Have you ever heard of google? Why not use it before accusing other people of spreading myths?
  • I assume this might be the web page referenced above by blahblah.
  • I'm also surprised it got banned, but do have a vague recollection of it. The six months thing no doubt refers to how long it took to get from Britain to NZ by boat. To me, there is no connection at all to the Falklands War.
  • stetson wrote: »
    I assume this might be the web page referenced above by blahblah.

    Not accessible from the UK, alas.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited January 2020
    Wikipedia refers to the song being 'discouraged from airplay'...though I don't seem to be able to get the linky quite right.

    Just Google 'Six Months In A Leaky Boat', and the entry should be fairly near the top of the list!
  • One of the other current issues with the BBC (and the media more generally) is the way in which the Guido Fawkes1 blog serves as a source (both of stories and people to provide comment)

    1 This being the blog that eventually banned the word 'Jew' in their comments because of persistently anti-Semitic nature of the threads on there (whereupon their readers adjusted by adopting alternate spelling).
  • Wikipedia refers to the song being 'discouraged from airplay'...though I don't seem to be able to get the linky quite right.

    Just Google 'Six Months In A Leaky Boat', and the entry should be fairly near the top of the list!

    The link on the song's wiki page is to an analog-world book, not available on the internet.

    This Guardian article mentions in passing that the song was "banned by the BBC", but "discouraged from airplay" strikes me as the more likely description, if only because it's more detailed.

  • BlahblahBlahblah Suspended
    edited January 2020
    stetson wrote: »
    I assume this might be the web page referenced above by blahblah.

    Not accessible from the UK, alas.

    It starts like this:
    Over its near 100-year history, the BBC has taken its role as gatekeeper of the nation's moral standards seriously. And never has that been more obvious than in the songs that have been deemed unsuitable for its audience’s ears.

    The range of reasons why songs have been censored reveals how controversies surrounding youth culture have changed markedly over the decades. So here for your pleasure is a list of songs deemed ‘too dangerous’ by the BBC and completely cleared from its airwaves.

    Then it has a section on the song in question.

    It is therefore fair to conclude that saying the song was "cleared from its airways" fulfills the BBC's own standards of accuracy when reporting something about itself.
  • Simon Toad wrote: »
    I'm also surprised it got banned, but do have a vague recollection of it. The six months thing no doubt refers to how long it took to get from Britain to NZ by boat. To me, there is no connection at all to the Falklands War.

    Well, were sailors in the Royal Navy able to listen to the BBC? If so, I guess I can see how references to "a leaky boat" and being "lucky just to keep afloat" would be contraindicated, as far as maintaining morale goes.

    Apart from that, if you look at some of the other items on that bbc.com list, some of them seem pretty random: Deep In The Heart Of Texas was blacklisted during World War II lest it provoke workers in factories to start dancing, and Monster Mash was apparently considered too "morbid" for airplay.
  • Blahblah wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    I assume this might be the web page referenced above by blahblah.

    Not accessible from the UK, alas.

    It starts like this:
    Over its near 100-year history, the BBC has taken its role as gatekeeper of the nation's moral standards seriously. And never has that been more obvious than in the songs that have been deemed unsuitable for its audience’s ears.

    The range of reasons why songs have been censored reveals how controversies surrounding youth culture have changed markedly over the decades. So here for your pleasure is a list of songs deemed ‘too dangerous’ by the BBC and completely cleared from its airwaves.

    Then it has a section on the song in question.

    It is therefore fair to conclude that saying the song was "cleared from its airways" fulfills the BBC's own standards of accuracy when reporting something about itself.

    Thank you.

    So 'banned' (and, if so, by whom? Thatcher?) is perhaps not quite the correct word to use. Semantics, I guess, but it does look more like a bit of self-purging (albeit possibly under pressure from She Who Was To Be Obeyed).

    Either way, this sort of faffing about is usually counter-productive, as peeps clamour to find out what is so Awful about a given song, or book, or film, or whatever.


  • Either way, this sort of faffing about is usually counter-productive, as peeps clamour to find out what is so Awful about a given song, or book, or film, or whatever.

    Question...

    Did the BBC have a monopoly over British radio at the time? IOW, when they were following the government's "discouraged from airplay" listing, were their other outlets on which someone could hear the song?



  • stetson wrote: »

    Either way, this sort of faffing about is usually counter-productive, as peeps clamour to find out what is so Awful about a given song, or book, or film, or whatever.

    Question...

    Did the BBC have a monopoly over British radio at the time? IOW, when they were following the government's "discouraged from airplay" listing, were their other outlets on which someone could hear the song?



    No, but commercial music stations had not been legal for very long in 1982.
  • Blahblah wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »

    Either way, this sort of faffing about is usually counter-productive, as peeps clamour to find out what is so Awful about a given song, or book, or film, or whatever.

    Question...

    Did the BBC have a monopoly over British radio at the time? IOW, when they were following the government's "discouraged from airplay" listing, were their other outlets on which someone could hear the song?



    No, but commercial music stations had not been legal for very long in 1982.

    So IOW, you mean they hadn't really developed a listener-culture where people who wanted to hear a particular song would just automatically think to call up a station and ask them to play it?



  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Independent (i.e. non BBC) local radio had been licensed since 1973. Non BBC national radio was first licensed in 1992.
  • I suppose the benefits (?) of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. weren't available back in those prehistoric times, but the general grapevine probably worked OK.
  • stetson wrote: »
    Blahblah wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »

    Either way, this sort of faffing about is usually counter-productive, as peeps clamour to find out what is so Awful about a given song, or book, or film, or whatever.

    Question...

    Did the BBC have a monopoly over British radio at the time? IOW, when they were following the government's "discouraged from airplay" listing, were their other outlets on which someone could hear the song?



    No, but commercial music stations had not been legal for very long in 1982.

    So IOW, you mean they hadn't really developed a listener-culture where people who wanted to hear a particular song would just automatically think to call up a station and ask them to play it?



    I don't think that has ever really been a common part of British music radio culture.

    I am not entirely clear what the non-BBC music radio coverage was like in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As far as I remember, there were not many music stations and they were very localised.
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