And, to complete today's Beeb focus, here's Helen Joyce – Why the BBC deserves to be defunded:
Lots of people put in complaints about the [Brighton] samurai killer, and they all got the same stock response last week. The Beeb says that its style guide requires journalists to refer to people as they wish to be described, and that when it comes to criminals, it uses the language that is used in court. This amounts to saying: “We have a shitty internal policy that prioritises a fringe counterfactual belief system over accuracy and impartiality – which are legal requirements in our charter – and if an arm of the state, namely the criminal-justice system, decides to gaslight the nation, we will too.”
This isn’t journalism; it’s propaganda. And we’re being forced to pay for it via the licence fee. To say that I resent this, having worked in the commercial media sector for almost 20 years during which search engines and social media cannibalised nearly the entire revenue base of journalism, driving countless outlets to the wall, is a gross understatement. The BBC is in an incredibly privileged position, and it misuses that privilege so grossly that it deserves to have it taken away.
I’m sure lots of people will complain about the young man who killed two children and severely wounded others being referred to as a woman too, and almost certainly with no greater success.
I'd add their Gaza coverage to the charge sheet – every Hamas press release straight on to front page news – alongside the trans capture.
Leave a Reply