The BBC love to divide the population into “digital immigrants” and “digital natives”, always with the subtext that the “natives” are superior. But their so-called journalists can’t even understand that the “digital immigrants” that they sneer at actually built everything and the “natives” are mere consumers
I like the original programming content the BBC produces. I don't like the BBC, and BBC news in particular, at all.
They propagate bias in insidious ways like 'creative' titling of articles, pushing articles off to side channels, and cutting HoC footage, all the while claiming impartiality. Their quality of their writing on the site has truly tanked in recent years, too.
And that's not to mention the harrassment of people who don't pay their license fee. Complain about Netflix's content all you want, at least they aren't lying about having signal detecting vans and sending threatening letters calling you a criminal. (To the non-Brits, the license fee is optional if you don't watch TV. But even if you tell them you don't have a TV, they'll send you letters every single month threatening you with court[1])
BBC's tech stuff is possible poor, from editorial to accuracy and their reporters (for example Rory Cellan-Jones) have no background experience in the fields they are covering.
It's not recent - their tech journalism has always been pretty poor. The BBC is a branch of the civil service culturally; anyone who understands science or tech but can't conjugate latin verbs stands no chance.
The BBC has a big problem with cargo cultery right now, copying large social media companies for the hell of it despite having completely different aims. For instance, if I tap the livestream on the homepage it will lie that I need to sign in to watch it, though the popup can just be dismissed. It's shocking that they've adopted useless metrics like conversion to justify user-hostile behaviour.
The BBC is funny like that, they latch onto companies that they worship (e.g. Apple, Google, ARM, Flickr) and ignore all the others in the same sector. I suspect they see no further than the products their own staff use, or more cynically, individuals there are positioning themselves for lucrative job offers they hope will come rolling in...
Well, the BBC is unlike any other news organization, culturally - it is more like a branch of the Civil Service. If you showed up for an interview there as a tech journalist and you actually knew the difference between say Java and C++ because you'd used them both, then you're "just not our sort old chap". But show up wearing the right old school tie, conjugate a few Latin verbs, and spend the interview reminiscing about the good old days punting at Oxford and you're in. So the whole place is stuffed with people who fundamentally can't evaluate whatever they're told by any outsider - not even which outsiders are really experts or not.
Argh... it really bugs me that the BBC have a Geek Technology reporter who has a self confessed Non-geek background, and uses his Son to help him formulate his opinions.
The BBC is staffed by humans. Humans who want their programming to be popular and watched widely. If people stopped watching BBC news, you better believe they'd make changes to reverse that, whatever it takes. Their incentives are just different.
The BBC turns out a lot of sh*te. Even its ostensibly high-brow documentaries are overemotional and condescending compared to what they used to be, and the corporation's impartiality is very very tenuous. License fee needs to go and be replaced by a subscription, because they're decades beyond their remit.
The BBC is one of the few news and content outlets that survived the Great Cataclysm that destroyed British journalism and turned The Telegraph and The Times in tabloids that publish articles about Theresa May being sexy or BP conspiring to bring immigrants to the UK (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/24/bp-sparked-f...). Many BBC shows are still watched and sold everywhere in the world.
> the people of Islington
For the non-British reader, the person of Islington is a negative stereotypical character often used by right wing media. It is supposedly a rich hypocritical leftist that is out of touch with the hard-working person of Britain, another stereotype. Its use became more frequent when Jeremy Corbyn, who lives in Islington, became the leader of the Labour party.
Some recent examples:
Here the journalist is getting upset because, allegedly, a person of Islington thinks violating the European Convention on Human Rights is wrong:
> And now we’ve got a country that is desperate to get to grips with illegal immigration but a few people from Islington think this is a terrible idea, we don’t do it.
Here the journalist is upset because, allegedly, the person of Islington would not fight to defend the UK if it is invaded by Russia:
> I think we’d end up relying of the fair people of Carlisle and Leeds, while the Islington snobberati packed up their herbal tea and legged it to their second homes in Provence.
BBC unfortunately still has plenty of elitist or colonial shade. Articles showing most news from other countries in poor light or fault finding is its forte. Other day I was rummaging through news of 1999 about Google/Larry/Sergei. Bbc has mentioned it's a breakthrough tech but much of article was dedicated in mentioning that google only indexes only 10% of web. And the tone was on negative side. Peter thiel's rightly says that most of Western Europe only reacts to its progress.
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