The BBC

in fact using Trump for zillions of clicks is probably about the most cowardly and pathetic thing a political hack could do tbh. She's another one who makes me feel genuinely queasy that I'm paying her fucking wages!

Acosta may well have been pushy, greedy, but I thought his persistent point about Trump's slack use of the word 'invasion' was a rare instance of a journalist publicly holding this careless, ceaseless liar to some kind of account and by doing so, insisting that words matter - which is surely at the heart of journalism.

Sorry but wtf? How is she in the right about this at all? He didn’t “mistouch” the intern at all - that’s the Infowars edit that’s shamefully been circulated by the White House and which no journalist should be given the oxygen of attention. Like oh no Acosta asked too many questions and that’s just terrible, but this whole flimsy thing is resting on the false edit and that’s acceptable and not terrifying?

Also, fuck the BBC and their commitment to platforming fascists.

what I got from her awful piece was the sense that she is so used to working for the bbc that she has forgot to even affect an air of journalistic ethics, its all a game to her and attacking some hack for not being respectful and cowed enough in the White House is utter shit - and her conduct is problematic enough in the uk, but it seems even more ghastly in the context of a KKK friendly US prez.

iow, how that boot taste

It's almost as if professional ethics is frequently a (self-internalised) justification for power worship

just saying again that whilst the United Nations rapporteur is currently investigating why there is such extreme poverty in the UK, here are some of the News items the bbc considered more newsworthy :

How Tom Hardy saved bedtime

'Staunch to the end' PM notes to WW1 fallen

UK economy grows at fastest rate since 2016 (tldr version - lots of functional alcoholics buying shitloads of cans and bigscreen tv's from Brighthouse during world cup)

Nowt to say. Nowt you can say.

that's the "editorial" decision they made on the BMJ paper on PIP deaths as well. Some stuff is actually news you know?

There is this, but curiously it's classified as a Tyne and Wear story:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-46130355

Compare with this Guardian writeup with video, map, timeline of Alston's visits to different cities in the UK etc:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/08/life-on-the-poverty-frontline-un-turns-its-gaze-on-uk

Oh, I know, cal. It's absolutely infuriating. Crossed wires.

no worries jed

I didn't find that one on a bbc search of "UN Rappatorteurs UK", just some World Service programs about conditions in other parts of the world, but they've buried it in regional news. Congrats BBC!

I more clearly meant "there is nothing I can say that can suitably express my anger and powerlessness about that".

Thanks for those links, Tracer...

Mr Alston, whose work focuses on extreme poverty and human rights, said foodbanks play "a really crucial role... that real safety net so that people don't quite starve ".

got to cling on to that first world status, much more important than a triple a rating - just keep 'em in that sweet spot where they don't quite starve!

But seriously I have had a few conversations recently about multiple people who have died in the last 5 years, a mixture of vulnerable people and people with other underlying drug/alcohol or mental health problems. Now all the maisonette flats around the corner mostly contain cramped families rather than the "disappeared". One person I used to know had got help with his alcohol/mental health problems and was found dead in his flat, and this goes back to depression caused by his brother's recent suicide. I'd love to talk to this rapporteur guy myself.

One of saddest things I saw in recent years was a very autism-spectrum type guy I used to regularly speak to, telling me he couldn't keep his dog anymore because they had stopped his dole, never seen him since:(

since when has the BBC been outright tory propaganda. felt different ten, fifteen years ago

The question isn't whether or not it's Tory propaganda and more how it relates to the government at the time. The BBC got a lot of shit for being too pro-Blair but it held New Labour to account a lot more successfully than it did either the coalition or the post-2015 governments.

One reason for this is, I suspect, the fact that the BBC is under existential threat from the Tories and is well aware of that and unwilling to antagonise them too much.

(Question Time etc are produced by external providers who are expected to abide by BBC impartiality rules but do so largely unsuccessfully - it's more fringe right groups that benefit than the Tories per se.)

The BBC *as a whole* feels like it's improved in the last couple of years even as its news and current affairs output had got markedly worse.

Unfortunately news and current affairs are the largest part of the argument for its continued existence

when I was young and stupid (as opposed to old) I used to think Brian Walden really hated the tories with his contemptuous "I put it to you" line of aggressive questioning. But amazingly he is still alive and a recent wiki check showed he had run as Labour candidate in the 60's and Thatcher had some notion that the BBC hated them, apparently. But most startlingly there was something floating about on google about how it was Walden who persuaded Cameron + Osborne to do the ConDem rather than attempt a minority gov.

He was a Labour MP from 1964 to 1977.

i mainly associate him with Weekend World which was on ITV tbf

I've killed so many brain cells since then, it feels like a century ago.

but I used to watch him through Sunday hangovers, back then. For reason I thought he was beeb.

i had to double check

now i've just got "Nantucket Sleighride" stuck in my head

"Nantucket Sleighride" amiritedudes? *high fives and misses*

LOL frazzled minds think alike.

Andrew Marr doesn't rock this hard

The BBC *as a whole* feels like it's improved in the last couple of years

No Clarkson (who ten years ago was hosting the corp's most popular entertainment show and using that to take potshots at the then PM while being best pals with his successor) helps

the BBC is like a tree that is rotten from the roots, rotten from the top and .. um rotten in the middle. A tree with Brian Cox at the top, smugly pissing on you.

Worst Christmas ever. Again.

lol!

scuse me, I read that as worst Christmas Tree ever.

just stick R3 on for some medieval x-mas hymns and avoid the Dr Who spesh at all costs imo.

No Clarkson (who ten years ago was hosting the corp's most popular entertainment show and using that to take potshots at the then PM while being best pals with his successor) helps

and no Moyles

for every Moyles, Evans, Clarkson that has gone there are still scores of terrible people who you are compelled by law to pay for. And none of them were tried for their crimes, although Moyles seems to have disappeared without a trace, thank fuck!

Chris Moyles can be heard seguing Oasis into the Courteeners on Radio X if you're really interested.

that cursed netherworld where he was one of the highest paid at the beeb was some kind of bad dream, you might be tempted to think. But no.

Shaun Keaveney's still on the books, the Chris Moyles for Shed 7 fans

Stella Creasy will be a regular listener then!

In 2012 Chris Moyles was involved in a tax avoidance scheme[81] and requested a court order to prevent the press from reporting it, because he claimed it would infringe his human rights

can u have human rights if ur not human

makes u think

just stick R3 on for some medieval x-mas hymns and avoid the Dr Who spesh at all costs imo.

― calzino, Tuesday, December 4, 2018 1:22 AM (three hours ago)

the wily Chibnall has outwitted you again by having a New Years special this year instead

As a tribute to his punch-ably annoying smug face and terrible writing I'll watch summat I got from the movie torrents instead.

gregg wallace and his unearned gurning

(in fact i still love masterchef despite this)

My Youtube history has some shameful stuff: DJ Smile, The Young Turks, H Lewis JP GQ interview, Eddie Shit videos, The Queen's Corgi trailer and even J Oliver associated Food Tube stuff. But I have never delved into that Masterchef space.

https://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/fake-news-and-fake-vicars/

A bit of groaning and moaning about the BBC. In the end the stuff on post-truth and too big to change etc. undercuts what are a bunch of reasonable points.

and the new Eastenders set is going to be extremely delayed and several millions pounds over budget, which seems like an absolute disaster?

Not if it keeps Eastenders off our TV screens.

we're due to play united there mid feb so i really hope its in ok shape by then