Just a passing thought about the BBC News website's busy Echo Chambers blog.
It's strapline is "Blogging global opinion, clearly" and its "About this Blog" mission statement reads:
Echo Chambers unscrambles the noise of the global debate, from social media to scholarly journals, Kansas City to Kathmandu.
Well, let's just put it this way: You won't read much from Kathmandu at Echo Chambers. It's Kansas City all the way, being almost entirely a blog about the U.S.A.
It's strapline should, therefore, be changed to "Blogging U.S. opinion, clearly" and its "About this Blog" mission statement amended to read:
Echo Chambers unscrambles the noise of the U.S. debate, from social media to scholarly journals, Kansas City to Key West.
Its latest article, if you're wondering, is 'Neo-Nazi' questions engulf Republican.
I couldn't believe how Americo-centric that was! - first time I've come across it. What a waste of time and money. If you're interested in all that stuff, you could just visit an American network.
ReplyDeleteIt should be Echo Chamber, singular.
It's blogging Left-wing opinion on US issues. No different from the main BBC journalism, really. But posting links to other sources is a faux appeal to authority, making it appear that the editor's opinion is correct because all these luminaries (Ezra Klein, Slate, etc.) agree with him. Or is it an appeal to faux authority?
ReplyDeleteIn any case, we all predicted this is how it would turn out. By the way, the Scalise scandal turns out not to be one after all. The BBC won't clear it up, though. As usual, they rushed to report before waiting for the smoke to clear when it's a story on the wrong side of their ideological spectrum. Other times, they just don't bother looking for the real facts because the wrong sort of people are reporting them.
On Radio 4 World Tonight (not a programme I normally listen to) they had a latest installment of a series on immigration issues. The bias was incredible. Firstly, we only heard from "experts" like Oxford Migration Observatory - not Migration Watch. Our immigration rules were described as "restrictive" - despite some 500,000 coming to this country to settle each year! The Observatory used incredibly sloppy "categories" like "countries which have traditionally been immigration destinations" to claim our rules were somehow draconian.
ReplyDeleteAnother item on the programme drew parallels with political parties in Scandinavia defined as "anti-immigrant" - suggesting UKIP was also "anti-immigrant". However no evidence was given to back this assertion. There is of course a world of difference between being anti-immigration and anti-immigrant. And UKIP in any case are not anti-immigration - they are pro-restricted, work-based immigration.
Dan Read
Then all pretence of objectivity was thrown out for some emoting over the particular problems of an Anglo-Chinese union.
If you are going to define your immigration policy by such random one-off cases, why not focus on British spouses taken for a ride by the people they marry, or on bogus marriages, of which there are tens of thousands every year in the UK.
And there was the usual harping on about immigration policy as though it were being dictated by UKIP, whereas the proper way of looking down the telescope is to see UKIP's rise as a symptom of a complete failure to put in place a strong policy on migration.
It seems nearly all of the major media companies promote their own political agenda. They are their own political parties writing biased articles in order to control public opinion and society.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC Blog doesn't even have a comment section. The public cannot even voice their opinions. Maybe you should not have even linked to their article. As suggested here -
http://antifeministsite.blogspot.com/2014/12/bloggers-should-not-link-to-major-media.html
the ideal solution is to state the title and date of the article rather than the link.