Quote Originally Posted by jackal2 View Post
It's the way we're going anyway. I think the concept of a national broadcaster funded by the public purse has had its day in the eyes of a growing number of said public.

Regardless of whether we think it's the right direction or the wrong direction, public demand is taking the television news media more in the direction of the printed news media in the sense that channels (like newspapers such as the Sun and the Mirror) are being far more overt and up front about their political bias and marketing themselves to like-minded audiences. It's a continuation of the social media 'echo chambers', where an increasing number of people (especially young people) seek confirmation more than information.

I don't think we'll stop this happening, in fact I think we will see far more television news channels acknowledging their bias that to be honest has always been there in the background. There was never any such thing as an impartial news broadcaster, because they're run by human beings not robots, which begs the question 'What's Worse? - a news channel that falsely claims to be totally impartial/balanced, or a news channel that is honest if not brazen about where it comes from.




I'm all for 'Morning Star' News TV! I'd happily watch that for an hour and then turn over and watch GB News for an hour. I used to watch Russia Today after all!

Unlike a lot of the younger generation, I like to read/watch stuff that challenges my view of the world as well as stuff that agrees with me, otherwise life just gets boring. It's not very stimulating sitting in a room full of people all saying "yes, you're right". We need to be very cautious about the notion that division and disagreement is a bad thing - it's actually a great thing which leads to some of the most creative and best developed ideas and creations. It also engages people in political debate rather than being apathetic. Here's to a more divisive society!



There's two sides to that. The billionaire backers of GB News aim to gradually reduce their funding in favour of mainstream advertising, but there's an organisation called "Stop Funding Hate" who are doing everything they can to scare and initimdate mainstream companies away from buying advertising on GB News. They want to to kill the channel off and prevent its viewers watching what they choose to watch. If we're going to say GB News isn't representative of it's name, then look also into the people behind 'Stop Funding Hate', because their name isn't accurate either.
Lots more interesting points and food for thought, thank you.

I disagree about the national broadcaster. In spite of a sustained, decades-long campaign against the BBC and its staff by the billionaire press, I sense that support is still pretty strong. Even those who have worries about bias would prefer that bias to be addressed, than the BBC abolished or cut down to size. Even among those who think it is biased (whether left or right) it still enjoys very high ratings on trust and accuracy of factual reporting.

I agree that it's very hard - probably impossible - to have infallibly neutral and balanced reporting, and there are a lot of dilemmas to face. Like... how to deal with liars, knowing when to give space to voices to provide balance, and when to follow the overwhelming scientific consensus. But the correct response is just to try harder... acknowledge the difficulty, try to correct the mistakes, point out errors, argue about it. Because it matters.

The thing about "GB" "News" is that it doesn't acknowledge its biases, and even on here, people have been defending it as not being hard right wing, even though... well, just look at the presenters. Balance isn't spending half an hour watching right wing propaganda and then half an hour watching left wing propaganda. That way madness lies, especially if we end in like the US where alarming proportions of the population believe that an election was stolen.

And that's what worries me... we can disagree away, constructively, and arrive at better conclusions than we started with, but only if we start with at least some agreed facts. And it's when we don't start to have agreed facts because fringe media outlets are pushing conspiracy theory nonsense again that we really end up in trouble. We don't have to agree about all facts, but there needs to be a shared bedrock of understanding, and that's what's provided by having a media in common.

"Stop Funding Hate" is an interesting one and I've had to think about this a bit, which is either a good or bad sign. I expect that those who think the Express and Mail headlines and stories about immigrants aren't hateful will perhaps think the name unfair, but there's plenty of people who do and have, and think that both crossed the line regularly between legitimate comment on immigration policy and dehumanising language reminiscent of 1930s Germany.

They've had successes too... they're no longer campaigning against the Express any more since a change of editor means they've cleaned up their act. They got an apology from the Sun about an article that clearly crossed the line into hate speech. Their issue with "GB" "News" seems to be "demonising Trans people at every opportunity" (as one of their former contributors described it), and the Board of Deputies of British Jews has criticised "GB" "News" for "platforming organisations that promote antisemitic conspiracy theories". And of course, there's the serial Ofcom censures for misleading statements about COVID vaccines.

As for "scare and intimidate mainstream companies"... I'm not sure I see evidence for that. Their methods seem to be to encourage people to write to advertisers and ask them not to support hate speech. Lobbying and consumer boycotts seems pretty standard stuff, and I'm not sure why that counts as intimidation. They're very open about what they do, and others who either like hate speech or don't see it as hate speech are free to write letters the other way, buy more of the products of advertisers and so on. Not sure why there's an issue.

And.... I'd say that having discussions with the Express makes them sound like a very reasonable organisation. If an organisation can clean up its act, they call off the action. They're more reasonable than me... my disdain for the Express hasn't changed one bit!