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Nothing to do with stuff like this: Michael Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield, has said that the BBC has launched a “coup attempt” against Boris Joh

Nothing to do with stuff like this: Michael Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield, has said that the BBC has launched a “coup attempt” against Boris Johnson after hearing a news bulletin which criticised the PM over lockdown parties held at No. 10. Speaking yesterday, Mr Fabricant said: “BBC Radio 4 Bulletin leads this morning with a manufactured story of what some MPs have said to the BBC. This is not news reporting an event. This relentless news creation is a coup attempt against the prime minister”. It would be like CNN quoting a democrat senator saying that the democrat president is terrible. Yes, that's news.

sbuk 5y ago
Is there any irony is his surname?
- spongeb00b 5y ago
  I legitimately thought I was looking at a parody when I first saw a still from a TV interview of him
- _moof 5y ago
  Wait'll you see his hair.
makomk 5y ago
That's obviously pissing off the government right now, but honestly it's the least of the problems with their Covid-19 news coverage. They kept on pushing both false and misleading claims about the UK doing worse at stuff than other countries, in at least one case that I know of for a month in an article linked from the BBC news front page after they became aware it was false. (The government made a big deal about reaching 100,000 Covid tests in a day and the BBC wrongly claimed Germany had done this a month earlier. In reality they'd mistaken Germany's stat for their lab capacity to process Covid tests - which was basically irrelevant because everything else, from the ability to swap people to the availiabily of consumables to even just returning test results, was more of a bottleneck there - for actual Covid testing done, and Germany wouldn't hit this until like a month later. Then when people complained they took it down for a day, supposedly discussed the complaints with senior staff, and then decided to reinstate it and kept it for a month whilst using Covid as an excuse to not respond to complaints. They then quietly memory-holed it from the article and used that as an excuse for not publishing a correction. A previous version of the article also did a similar thing by wrongly comparing the UK's daily stat to France's weekly one - that did get a correction, which was quietly memory-holed too after a few days. Obviously this played right into all the usual narratives about our lying Brexit-supporting leaders.) There's also obviously a lot of decisions during the pandemic where all options had downsides, and the BBC News coverage was very biased towards the downsides of whatever the government did - this became particularly clear when the government changed their mind and suddenly they flipped to going after the thing they were cheerleading before. One that HN is likely familiar with is the NHS contact tracing app using Bluetooth on mobile phones. Initially that didn't use Google and Apple's framework and the BBC coverage pushed the downsides of that heavily, making it sound like there was no good reason to do it and the claim that Google and Apple's framework made results less accurate was just something the government was pushing. Literally the day the new app using that framework launched, they started downplaying the downsides of the old app and found a experts to claim the new app was less accurate and excluded a bunch of people on earlier Android versions - again, these were inherent downsides of choosing that option. Everything was like this, from lockdowns to vaccinations. Even when the government picked some kind of middle ground option, the Beeb ran articles with some groups attacking the government for not doing less, then with others attacking them for not doing more, and both were always set against the government rather than against each others' demands. Often they'd even rewrite an article on their website and flip it from pushing heavily for one to pushing hard for the other after it'd been published, which is just weird. There was also the incident where one of their high-up reporters retweeted a particularly partisan tweet pushing the idea Boris was literally a criminal murderer who should go to jail over the UK's handling of Covid, which rather hinted at why their coverage was like this.
- zahllos 5y ago
  Agree. While I can't help but feel the timing of this announcement is deeply cynical given the appalling behaviour of number 10 staff and Boris, I also feel the BBC's editorialising has gone too far. A good place to see this is actually on the Radio, particularly things like the Today programme and Radio 5 live. Brexit was a stark example of the same kind of coverage. Regardless of what you think of Brexit, they gave only lip service to the idea of any kind of reasoned debate (to be clear, I am not commenting either way, although I have lived in Europe for the better part of a decade and speak multiple EU languages fluently). 5 Live's 'debates' often descended into acrimony. Boris actually banned ministers from appearing on the Today programme of the BBC at one stage, which to use a current favourite term amongst reporters is 'unprecedented'. Don't get me wrong, the government needs to be held to account and I'm fine with the BBC roasting the government over partygate, but the BBC is a public service broadcaster that is supposed to be impartial as much as is possible. If the journalists prefer to follow an editorial line, they can move to a newspaper outlet aligning with their views. The BBC don't need to stick to the government lines either, but they should present the facts and host civil debates and BBC journalists should hold themselves to strict impartiality rules. I think they've long annoyed conservative ministers. I'm not sure I think partygate is going too far (unlike say the relentless negativity you mention during the pandemic) but clearly Ministers have now decided to act and I can't say the BBC made a great case for themselves.
- notahacker 5y ago
  I think this post says more about your own biases than the BBC. For example the government made a big deal about "reaching" 100,000 tests in a day by counting kits mailed out to people as completed tests (it would be just easy to criticise the BBC news coverage for parroting the government's claim that they'd hit it in the headlines). The government had set that as a target with a specific date, and when it was clear they were unlikely to hit it, ministers started talking about capacity. A number of media outlets correctly pointed out this wasn't the original target, Germany had that "capacity" for a month and was now actually processing that many tests. But it's not the fault of the BBC or any other media organization that the UK didn't actually carry out 100k tests and so government ministers flipped to talking about capacity and other indicators to fudge the issue in the public's mind. Similarly there is a school of thought that state broadcasters should only cover the upsides of government decisions (even when the downsides are so clear the government changes tack) and shouldn't give any of the government's critics any publicity, but it's a school of thought mostly associated with authoritarian states. Being criticised from all sides - regardless of what the policy is - is an occupational hazard of being a government where public debate isn't censored or controlled by them.

sbuk 5y ago

Is there any irony is his surname?

spongeb00b 5y ago
I legitimately thought I was looking at a parody when I first saw a still from a TV interview of him
_moof 5y ago
Wait'll you see his hair.

makomk 5y ago

That's obviously pissing off the government right now, but honestly it's the least of the problems with their Covid-19 news coverage. They kept on pushing both false and misleading claims about the UK doing worse at stuff than other countries, in at least one case that I know of for a month in an article linked from the BBC news front page after they became aware it was false. (The government made a big deal about reaching 100,000 Covid tests in a day and the BBC wrongly claimed Germany had done this a month earlier. In reality they'd mistaken Germany's stat for their lab capacity to process Covid tests - which was basically irrelevant because everything else, from the ability to swap people to the availiabily of consumables to even just returning test results, was more of a bottleneck there - for actual Covid testing done, and Germany wouldn't hit this until like a month later. Then when people complained they took it down for a day, supposedly discussed the complaints with senior staff, and then decided to reinstate it and kept it for a month whilst using Covid as an excuse to not respond to complaints. They then quietly memory-holed it from the article and used that as an excuse for not publishing a correction. A previous version of the article also did a similar thing by wrongly comparing the UK's daily stat to France's weekly one - that did get a correction, which was quietly memory-holed too after a few days. Obviously this played right into all the usual narratives about our lying Brexit-supporting leaders.) There's also obviously a lot of decisions during the pandemic where all options had downsides, and the BBC News coverage was very biased towards the downsides of whatever the government did - this became particularly clear when the government changed their mind and suddenly they flipped to going after the thing they were cheerleading before. One that HN is likely familiar with is the NHS contact tracing app using Bluetooth on mobile phones. Initially that didn't use Google and Apple's framework and the BBC coverage pushed the downsides of that heavily, making it sound like there was no good reason to do it and the claim that Google and Apple's framework made results less accurate was just something the government was pushing. Literally the day the new app using that framework launched, they started downplaying the downsides of the old app and found a experts to claim the new app was less accurate and excluded a bunch of people on earlier Android versions - again, these were inherent downsides of choosing that option. Everything was like this, from lockdowns to vaccinations. Even when the government picked some kind of middle ground option, the Beeb ran articles with some groups attacking the government for not doing less, then with others attacking them for not doing more, and both were always set against the government rather than against each others' demands. Often they'd even rewrite an article on their website and flip it from pushing heavily for one to pushing hard for the other after it'd been published, which is just weird. There was also the incident where one of their high-up reporters retweeted a particularly partisan tweet pushing the idea Boris was literally a criminal murderer who should go to jail over the UK's handling of Covid, which rather hinted at why their coverage was like this.

zahllos 5y ago
Agree. While I can't help but feel the timing of this announcement is deeply cynical given the appalling behaviour of number 10 staff and Boris, I also feel the BBC's editorialising has gone too far. A good place to see this is actually on the Radio, particularly things like the Today programme and Radio 5 live. Brexit was a stark example of the same kind of coverage. Regardless of what you think of Brexit, they gave only lip service to the idea of any kind of reasoned debate (to be clear, I am not commenting either way, although I have lived in Europe for the better part of a decade and speak multiple EU languages fluently). 5 Live's 'debates' often descended into acrimony. Boris actually banned ministers from appearing on the Today programme of the BBC at one stage, which to use a current favourite term amongst reporters is 'unprecedented'. Don't get me wrong, the government needs to be held to account and I'm fine with the BBC roasting the government over partygate, but the BBC is a public service broadcaster that is supposed to be impartial as much as is possible. If the journalists prefer to follow an editorial line, they can move to a newspaper outlet aligning with their views. The BBC don't need to stick to the government lines either, but they should present the facts and host civil debates and BBC journalists should hold themselves to strict impartiality rules. I think they've long annoyed conservative ministers. I'm not sure I think partygate is going too far (unlike say the relentless negativity you mention during the pandemic) but clearly Ministers have now decided to act and I can't say the BBC made a great case for themselves.
notahacker 5y ago
I think this post says more about your own biases than the BBC. For example the government made a big deal about "reaching" 100,000 tests in a day by counting kits mailed out to people as completed tests (it would be just easy to criticise the BBC news coverage for parroting the government's claim that they'd hit it in the headlines). The government had set that as a target with a specific date, and when it was clear they were unlikely to hit it, ministers started talking about capacity. A number of media outlets correctly pointed out this wasn't the original target, Germany had that "capacity" for a month and was now actually processing that many tests. But it's not the fault of the BBC or any other media organization that the UK didn't actually carry out 100k tests and so government ministers flipped to talking about capacity and other indicators to fudge the issue in the public's mind. Similarly there is a school of thought that state broadcasters should only cover the upsides of government decisions (even when the downsides are so clear the government changes tack) and shouldn't give any of the government's critics any publicity, but it's a school of thought mostly associated with authoritarian states. Being criticised from all sides - regardless of what the policy is - is an occupational hazard of being a government where public debate isn't censored or controlled by them.