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This is a bit meta, but is it surprising that the BBC news website is the go-to source for a broad range of news stories that end up on HN? What and where are
by wood_spirit 2y ago
This is a bit meta, but is it surprising that the BBC news website is the go-to source for a broad range of news stories that end up on HN? What and where are the competition?
- seydor 2y agoIt's politically neutral and generally less opinionated. Competition is reuters, AP, other public media such as canadian tv, france24 etc.
- jibe 2y agoThere are plenty of reasonable US sources, NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, but they are all paywalled.
- imabotbeep2937 2y agoWaPo, "reasonable". Ha. Or cut to WSJ and NYT on Theranos, SBF, and the other huxters they've shilled for with zero journalism lately. All US news is completely biased garbage in various ways. I caught NPR recently cutting and pasting a white house press release with zero journalism or commentary. Or their health blog which now routinely has stories like "measurements of height have historically been uses to marginalize short people, should doctors even measure it anymore?" I literally only get my news from what I randomly hear off forums like this. And I guarantee I'll beat anyone on a quiz of actual facts about world news. (e.g. after SBF was convicted, not before.)
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago> And I guarantee I'll beat anyone on a quiz of actual facts about world news. (e.g. after SBF was convicted, not before.) Put your money where your mouth is - prediction markets or some other fair debate. I personally would take the other side of that bet if contrarianism is your default.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoAFP as well
- closewith 2y agoThe BBC is not politically neutral. It's the legal propaganda arm of the British State.
- imabotbeep2937 2y agoTo take a stance much more suited to this forum. It's a massive travesty that without some work Americans are now redirected to BBC.com, which curates news to be American-facing, and thus IMHO bows to advertiser pressure. We can't see BBC.co.UK, so we can't know what the other side of the news even looks like. All news services do this. And it already fragments and destroys and hope of really talking about the news in a healthy manner IMHO.
- knowaveragejoe 2y agoCool it with the histrionics.
- closewith 2y agoIt's not histrionics. It's the State-funded broadcaster whose Director-General is a political appointee. It might not be obvious to those within the UK or maybe further afield if reading articles on relatively neutral topics like science or climate, but the BBC is a bulwark of UK Government political influence and Oxbridge sensibilities.
- airstrike 2y agoBloomberg and WSJ (but not the opinion pieces) are my default sources
- dskrvk 2y agoIt’s also surprising that BBC, a government-funded media outlet, is showing ads. Either the government funding isn’t enough or they are trying to recoup some of those costs by showing ads to people who’ve already paid for the content with their taxes (even the international part is paid for - see below). > Its work is funded principally by an annual television licence fee which is charged to all British households, companies, and organisations using any type of equipment to receive or record live television broadcasts or to use the BBC's streaming service, iPlayer. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and is used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK. Since 1 April 2014, it has also funded the BBC World Service (launched in 1932 as the BBC Empire Service), which broadcasts in 28 languages and provides comprehensive TV, radio, and online services in Arabic and Persian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC
- zerocrates 2y agoBBC doesn't show ads within the UK. Imposing them on the international audience to defray the costs to the license payers seems not unreasonable.