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Remarkable that the bbc website shows 1 article about the current hearings [0]. Meanwhile there are about 20 on Johnny Depp's recent libel case [1]. I'd love

Remarkable that the bbc website shows 1 article about the current hearings [0]. Meanwhile there are about 20 on Johnny Depp's recent libel case [1]. I'd love to see bbc reports on each day of Assange's hearings, in the sort of detail they did for Depp's case. But for some reason they are not reporting it. I wonder why? [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c82wm9yvv05t/julian-assange https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c82wm9yvv05t/julian-assange [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c6jx58xrrnmt/johnny-depp https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c6jx58xrrnmt/johnny-depp

the-dude 6y ago
I don't have the English canonical way at hand, in Dutch naar de bekende weg vragen. Are you asking what you already know? The idea the European public broadcasters are really independent, is false. I am Dutch and it is the same in NL.
- bainsfather 6y ago
  Well, it is something that I didn't know until a few years ago - ok, I would often disagree with bbc articles, or think them a little biased. But this is something much worse. And I am still shocked that the bbc does this. Also, I am interested quite how the process works - who makes the decisions, how many are involved etc, what do the other bbc staff think, etc.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    I can't speak of the BBC, I know too little about the English context. Dutch : follow the money, political alignment and if they for example would air something over-the-line regarding our royals, they will get a call from someone from our deep-state and they will pull it. But for the most part, I think they are very well in-tune in what they should and shouldn't do. They need very litte instructions.
    - jjgreen 6y ago
      You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to. Humbert Wolfe, "Over the Fire", in The Uncelestial City (1930).
  - hnlmorg 6y ago
    The BBC are one of the very few impartial news services out there. If you look at how people complain about the BBC, you get people from all sides of the political spectrum moaning that the BBC is biased to the other side. But what's really happening here is that it's the readers who are biased and feel their view point is unfairly represented.
    - harry8 6y ago
      Forget party politics for a moment. The BBC buried the story they had about their former 'star' and Prince Charles' friend Jimmy Saville being a mass-pedarest. It's a big place with many competing interests, styles of journalist, editor and so on. There is no /one/ bbc. They levy their own taxes(!) so are independent for funding. I am trying to recall the last time the BBC was critical of British foreign policy or their secret service. Be it in Ireland, Iraq or elsewhere. Regardless of which party had a leader who was Prime Minister at the time. I'm not coming up with much. Burying this story is exactly in keeping with my recollection of how the BBC does it. It is a /huge/ story, why is it not being run? The contrast with the amount of coverage of some ridiculous hollywood divorce which is literally of no importance to anyone whatsoever is utterly stunning, is it not? Do we put that down to incompetence? My Occam's razor is struggling with that but I guess it's at least possible "Assange isn't getting enough clicks, drop it." They don't do advertising though, do they?
      - hnlmorg 6y ago
        > Forget party politics for a moment. Why? That's a pretty significant chunk of reporting where bias is introduced. > The BBC buried the story they had about their former 'star' and Prince Charles' friend Jimmy Saville being a mass-pedarest. Everyone did though. Not just the BBC. Is it right that it was buried; no of course it isn't. But this is an exception rather than the trend and it wasn't even something that was unique to the BBC. > It's a big place with many competing interests, styles of journalist, editor and so on. There is no /one/ bbc. There's still guidelines journalists have to follow, editors that review pieces and editors themselves get reviewed. Then you have the effect where people who apply for the Beeb will be tend to be people who also believe in BBC's mission statement of impartiality, much like how Fox News attracts news casters who support the Republicans. > I am trying to recall the last time the BBC was critical of British foreign policy or their secret service. Be it in Ireland, Iraq or elsewhere. Regardless of which party had a leader who was Prime Minister at the time. I'm not coming up with much. Of course they're not going to be directly critical -- if they were then they wouldn't be impartial. Impartiality literally means they can't be critical. But what they can do is run stories about mistakes and discuss them "matter of fact" and have guests on the Radio / TV broadcasts who are critical -- all of which the BBC have done on many occasions. > Burying this story is exactly in keeping with my recollection of how the BBC does it. BBC haven't buried it though. They just haven't run as many articles as the OP would have liked. But they have still reported on it. > The contrast with the amount of coverage of some ridiculous hollywood divorce which is literally of no importance to anyone whatsoever is utterly stunning, is it not? Not really. That's just the modern state of news broadcasters these days. Sure, you wouldn't get that from broadsheets but BBC news isn't intended to be a broadsheet. It's intended to be more accessible to the masses and thus that does mean they do have a lot of entertainment content. You might prefer broadsheet style of reporting over the dumbed down and often entertainment-focused articles published by the BBC (like I do too) but that doesn't mean that the BBC is burring articles nor that it isn't impartial. As an aside, if you are after something more like a broadsheet then I highly recommend the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 (weekday mornings). On that show they do cover many of the topics you claimed the BBC normally do not. > They don't do advertising though, do they? Outside of the UK they do. They're also in the tough position that many license fee payers think the BBC should compete with popular programming (I disagree, I think the point of having a license fee is so that you can have unpopular programming that normal TV and Radio networks wouldn't fund).
- vidarh 6y ago
  The BBC used to be a lot more independent than it is now. It was never actually independent, but over the last ten years they've been fully brought to heel.
- sleavey 6y ago
  I think that would be "are you asking a rhetorical question?".
  - the-dude 6y ago
    I guess you are right, but we have that phrasing too.
johnnyfaehell 6y ago
> I'd love to see bbc reports on each day of Assange's hearings, in the sort of detail they did for Depp's case. But for some reason they are not reporting it. I wonder why? Because no one cares? The BBC is there to provide a service to the public, if the public doesn't care about a court case why would there be lots of articles? There was lots of interest in the Johnny Depp case, not because people cared who was right and who was wrong but it was scandal and scandal is so popular there are lots of trashy news outlets that just handle scandal. While the Assange case is largely boring, we know he did X,Y,Z because he publically boasted about it, legally he is to be treated as he is innocent until found guilty but we know he did it because he said he did it repeatedy. We know these are crimes in the US. Now it's the boring details of can he be sent to the US which doesn't really affect people and rather hard to understand without putting a bit of effort into it. It's not light reading.
- wonderwonder 6y ago
  "We know these are crimes in the US". Except if he is a journalist they are not. He is being politically prosecuted by the current US administration to force him to be silent on Russia's role in the 2016 election. I think Assange is very much not a good person, and feel that he absolutely attempted to influence the election in Trump's favor, something I am very against. With that said, the man is being prosecuted for political, not legal cause. Snowden should be pardoned and charges dropped against Assange. "sent to the US which doesn't really affect people" the exact opposite is true, this case can have a very real effect on US whistle blowers, a group of people who play a vital role in keeping the government and corporations honest.
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    The computer crimes he is charged with don’t depend on whether the suspect is a journalist or not. And really freedom of the speech and press also apply to everybody, not just journalists. Edit: where am I wrong here?
  - johnnyfaehell 6y ago
    > "sent to the US which doesn't really affect people" the exact opposite is true, this case can have a very real effect on US whistle blowers, a group of people who play a vital role in keeping the government and corporations honest. These are not people of the UK who are paying for the BBC. The BBC is providing a service to the people of the UK. While it is useful worldwide, it's utmost service is to the people of the UK who are by in large forced to pay for it. Hence, why a large precentage of the population of the UK don't care. There will be people who care but mostly people don't.
Synaesthesia 6y ago
They are not reporting on anything embarrassing for the west: The Assange Hearings, The attacks on Yemen, Gaza
- qz2 6y ago
  This is a worrying trend recently. And lets not forget the conduct from Laura Kuenssberg over the last few years.
  - bennyelv 6y ago
    Can you explain for those not familiar with this? Specifically the comment about Kuenssberg.
    - qz2 6y ago
      The criticism section on her Wikipedia page probably gives a fair appraisal of the situation. Fairer than I can give anyway.
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  They are constantly reporting on embarrassing stories for the west. They might not report every international story happening but even the BBC only have finite resources. However do a search for Yemen or Gaza and you'll see dozens of stories come up. The ironic thing about the BBC is people moan about it from all sides of the debate: it's too left wing or too right wing. There's too many international stories or too many UK-based stories. It seems to me that if everyone thinks the BBC panders to the opposing audience then maybe the BBC are actually serving their impartiality mission correctly. edit: I'm getting downvoted for this but I do regularly compare articles written from different news outlets, the language they used and topics they cover. While the BBC might not be my preferred outlet (eg their stories are a little too dumbed down for my liking), their impartiality is the one thing that should be commended. It always strikes me as ironic that people complain about the BBC having bias when in fact that bias is usually the product of the reader (yes, us consumers will inflect our own biases onto the articles we read just as much as journalists can add their biases into the articles they write).
cochne 6y ago
I think this is pretty well explained by Chomsky's Propaganda Model, and unfortunately not very surprising. It is not that the governments of the US and UK have conspired to conceal the truth, but that the media has chosen to censor itself. It does this in favor of the government support it receives, in the form of receiving official sources and avoiding flak.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  I think I would probably go with Occam's Razor here. Stories about Johnny Depp's case get orders of magnitude more clicks than stories about Julian Assange.
  - candiodari 6y ago
    ... and orders of magnitude less complaints. I bet Julien Assange has tons of enemies, even loads of people who just feel he has "betrayed" US/UK army/police force/... The big lesson is that it's very much exactly on display what fairness is on offer at courts in the UK: the BBC is very big on criticizing governments worldwide the UK has beefs with, not so big on criticizing the UK government or it's main ally.

the-dude 6y ago

I don't have the English canonical way at hand, in Dutch naar de bekende weg vragen. Are you asking what you already know? The idea the European public broadcasters are really independent, is false. I am Dutch and it is the same in NL.

bainsfather 6y ago
Well, it is something that I didn't know until a few years ago - ok, I would often disagree with bbc articles, or think them a little biased. But this is something much worse. And I am still shocked that the bbc does this. Also, I am interested quite how the process works - who makes the decisions, how many are involved etc, what do the other bbc staff think, etc.
- the-dude 6y ago
  I can't speak of the BBC, I know too little about the English context. Dutch : follow the money, political alignment and if they for example would air something over-the-line regarding our royals, they will get a call from someone from our deep-state and they will pull it. But for the most part, I think they are very well in-tune in what they should and shouldn't do. They need very litte instructions.
  - jjgreen 6y ago
    You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to. Humbert Wolfe, "Over the Fire", in The Uncelestial City (1930).
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  The BBC are one of the very few impartial news services out there. If you look at how people complain about the BBC, you get people from all sides of the political spectrum moaning that the BBC is biased to the other side. But what's really happening here is that it's the readers who are biased and feel their view point is unfairly represented.
  - harry8 6y ago
    Forget party politics for a moment. The BBC buried the story they had about their former 'star' and Prince Charles' friend Jimmy Saville being a mass-pedarest. It's a big place with many competing interests, styles of journalist, editor and so on. There is no /one/ bbc. They levy their own taxes(!) so are independent for funding. I am trying to recall the last time the BBC was critical of British foreign policy or their secret service. Be it in Ireland, Iraq or elsewhere. Regardless of which party had a leader who was Prime Minister at the time. I'm not coming up with much. Burying this story is exactly in keeping with my recollection of how the BBC does it. It is a /huge/ story, why is it not being run? The contrast with the amount of coverage of some ridiculous hollywood divorce which is literally of no importance to anyone whatsoever is utterly stunning, is it not? Do we put that down to incompetence? My Occam's razor is struggling with that but I guess it's at least possible "Assange isn't getting enough clicks, drop it." They don't do advertising though, do they?
    - hnlmorg 6y ago
      > Forget party politics for a moment. Why? That's a pretty significant chunk of reporting where bias is introduced. > The BBC buried the story they had about their former 'star' and Prince Charles' friend Jimmy Saville being a mass-pedarest. Everyone did though. Not just the BBC. Is it right that it was buried; no of course it isn't. But this is an exception rather than the trend and it wasn't even something that was unique to the BBC. > It's a big place with many competing interests, styles of journalist, editor and so on. There is no /one/ bbc. There's still guidelines journalists have to follow, editors that review pieces and editors themselves get reviewed. Then you have the effect where people who apply for the Beeb will be tend to be people who also believe in BBC's mission statement of impartiality, much like how Fox News attracts news casters who support the Republicans. > I am trying to recall the last time the BBC was critical of British foreign policy or their secret service. Be it in Ireland, Iraq or elsewhere. Regardless of which party had a leader who was Prime Minister at the time. I'm not coming up with much. Of course they're not going to be directly critical -- if they were then they wouldn't be impartial. Impartiality literally means they can't be critical. But what they can do is run stories about mistakes and discuss them "matter of fact" and have guests on the Radio / TV broadcasts who are critical -- all of which the BBC have done on many occasions. > Burying this story is exactly in keeping with my recollection of how the BBC does it. BBC haven't buried it though. They just haven't run as many articles as the OP would have liked. But they have still reported on it. > The contrast with the amount of coverage of some ridiculous hollywood divorce which is literally of no importance to anyone whatsoever is utterly stunning, is it not? Not really. That's just the modern state of news broadcasters these days. Sure, you wouldn't get that from broadsheets but BBC news isn't intended to be a broadsheet. It's intended to be more accessible to the masses and thus that does mean they do have a lot of entertainment content. You might prefer broadsheet style of reporting over the dumbed down and often entertainment-focused articles published by the BBC (like I do too) but that doesn't mean that the BBC is burring articles nor that it isn't impartial. As an aside, if you are after something more like a broadsheet then I highly recommend the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 (weekday mornings). On that show they do cover many of the topics you claimed the BBC normally do not. > They don't do advertising though, do they? Outside of the UK they do. They're also in the tough position that many license fee payers think the BBC should compete with popular programming (I disagree, I think the point of having a license fee is so that you can have unpopular programming that normal TV and Radio networks wouldn't fund).
vidarh 6y ago
The BBC used to be a lot more independent than it is now. It was never actually independent, but over the last ten years they've been fully brought to heel.
sleavey 6y ago
I think that would be "are you asking a rhetorical question?".
- the-dude 6y ago
  I guess you are right, but we have that phrasing too.

johnnyfaehell 6y ago

> I'd love to see bbc reports on each day of Assange's hearings, in the sort of detail they did for Depp's case. But for some reason they are not reporting it. I wonder why? Because no one cares? The BBC is there to provide a service to the public, if the public doesn't care about a court case why would there be lots of articles? There was lots of interest in the Johnny Depp case, not because people cared who was right and who was wrong but it was scandal and scandal is so popular there are lots of trashy news outlets that just handle scandal. While the Assange case is largely boring, we know he did X,Y,Z because he publically boasted about it, legally he is to be treated as he is innocent until found guilty but we know he did it because he said he did it repeatedy. We know these are crimes in the US. Now it's the boring details of can he be sent to the US which doesn't really affect people and rather hard to understand without putting a bit of effort into it. It's not light reading.

wonderwonder 6y ago
"We know these are crimes in the US". Except if he is a journalist they are not. He is being politically prosecuted by the current US administration to force him to be silent on Russia's role in the 2016 election. I think Assange is very much not a good person, and feel that he absolutely attempted to influence the election in Trump's favor, something I am very against. With that said, the man is being prosecuted for political, not legal cause. Snowden should be pardoned and charges dropped against Assange. "sent to the US which doesn't really affect people" the exact opposite is true, this case can have a very real effect on US whistle blowers, a group of people who play a vital role in keeping the government and corporations honest.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  The computer crimes he is charged with don’t depend on whether the suspect is a journalist or not. And really freedom of the speech and press also apply to everybody, not just journalists. Edit: where am I wrong here?
- johnnyfaehell 6y ago
  > "sent to the US which doesn't really affect people" the exact opposite is true, this case can have a very real effect on US whistle blowers, a group of people who play a vital role in keeping the government and corporations honest. These are not people of the UK who are paying for the BBC. The BBC is providing a service to the people of the UK. While it is useful worldwide, it's utmost service is to the people of the UK who are by in large forced to pay for it. Hence, why a large precentage of the population of the UK don't care. There will be people who care but mostly people don't.

Synaesthesia 6y ago

They are not reporting on anything embarrassing for the west: The Assange Hearings, The attacks on Yemen, Gaza

qz2 6y ago
This is a worrying trend recently. And lets not forget the conduct from Laura Kuenssberg over the last few years.
- bennyelv 6y ago
  Can you explain for those not familiar with this? Specifically the comment about Kuenssberg.
  - qz2 6y ago
    The criticism section on her Wikipedia page probably gives a fair appraisal of the situation. Fairer than I can give anyway.
hnlmorg 6y ago
They are constantly reporting on embarrassing stories for the west. They might not report every international story happening but even the BBC only have finite resources. However do a search for Yemen or Gaza and you'll see dozens of stories come up. The ironic thing about the BBC is people moan about it from all sides of the debate: it's too left wing or too right wing. There's too many international stories or too many UK-based stories. It seems to me that if everyone thinks the BBC panders to the opposing audience then maybe the BBC are actually serving their impartiality mission correctly. edit: I'm getting downvoted for this but I do regularly compare articles written from different news outlets, the language they used and topics they cover. While the BBC might not be my preferred outlet (eg their stories are a little too dumbed down for my liking), their impartiality is the one thing that should be commended. It always strikes me as ironic that people complain about the BBC having bias when in fact that bias is usually the product of the reader (yes, us consumers will inflect our own biases onto the articles we read just as much as journalists can add their biases into the articles they write).

cochne 6y ago

I think this is pretty well explained by Chomsky's Propaganda Model, and unfortunately not very surprising. It is not that the governments of the US and UK have conspired to conceal the truth, but that the media has chosen to censor itself. It does this in favor of the government support it receives, in the form of receiving official sources and avoiding flak.

jjeaff 6y ago
I think I would probably go with Occam's Razor here. Stories about Johnny Depp's case get orders of magnitude more clicks than stories about Julian Assange.
- candiodari 6y ago
  ... and orders of magnitude less complaints. I bet Julien Assange has tons of enemies, even loads of people who just feel he has "betrayed" US/UK army/police force/... The big lesson is that it's very much exactly on display what fairness is on offer at courts in the UK: the BBC is very big on criticizing governments worldwide the UK has beefs with, not so big on criticizing the UK government or it's main ally.