Sunday 3 February 2019

Behind the scenes (2)


(h/t StewGreen)

Back on the Ralph Northam story, the BBC News website now has a new report about it headlined Virginia Governor Ralph Northam refuses to quit over racism row. This replaced the original report. Once again though, it omits the fact that Governor Northam is a Democrat and is written in such a way that the reader is liable to assume he's a Republican. 


Checking Newssniffer reveals something even stranger. The first version of this new webstory did say he was a Democrat:


This then got edited out.

Curiouser and curiouser.

P.S. The Sky News website shows the BBC how to report it properly:


Update 9.30am (h/t Arthur Trof): And now it's back! Yes, there's been another change to the BBC report:

8 comments:

  1. It has changed again ... Mr Northam, a Democrat, said he recognised that people would find this "hard to believe"...

    instead of ...Mr Northam said he recognised that people would find this "hard to believe"...

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    Replies
    1. This story is following the familiar pattern. The latest version with .. Mr Northam, a Democrat,... will be the archived version which the BBC can be claimed to be unbiased. After the 9.30 am change, the story is removed from the BBC News website Home page and relegated to World and US and Canada pages. Now, by 11.05 am it has been removed from the World page and appears as a tiny story on the US and Canada page - soon to be disappeared altogether, I guess.

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    2. Yes, that's an all-too-familiar pattern.

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    3. Also re archiving, I think the BBC Website must have one of the worst search engines going. You can't find anything on it. It's always better to google on "BBC News + " whatever it is you're looking for.

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    4. Yes, that's the way I find things too. Years back it was a pretty good search engine. Probably too good (for the BBC).

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    5. Agree the BBC Search is appallingly bad. I usually end up wasting a lot of time trying this and that way of wording my request before giving up altogether.

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  2. BBC story evolution is a wonder to unfold.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. #1 Narrative construction to build towards their own preset genda
      #2 the issue of STEALTH edits
      .. One shouldn't keep materially changing the news record, without putting an edit note right at the top.

      Delete

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