[newjersey]

There was a comment here a few months ago which mentioned a term. I have forgotten the term since but it effectively described a situation where an expert in subject matter foo reads an article about foo in a well-regarded news source (like say the Economist) which is either pretty incorrect or pretty biased and then the subject matter expert goes "wow they know nothing about foo" and then turns the page and reads about another topic let's say bar (or maybe let's say Middle East politics) which our subject matter expert knows little or nothing about and then our subject matter expert says "wow, this news source is very insightful".

If we read about articles on key escrow or actually anything about cryptography and surveillance in general, we will find it hard to see BBC is accurate (neutral is not the same as accurate because to be neutral about anything -- and here comes Godwin's law -- involves saying that there was a legitimate excuse governments to act in a way that is not beneficial to millions of its citizens. Anti-terrorism rhetoric is way overboard and news outlets like BBC are fully on the bandwagon (although thankfully much less so compared to CNN, Fox News, and other low lives). Honestly, I think our fear of terrorists has caused more damage to the world economy than all the "acts of terror" combined. Ordinary people should not be afraid or even mindful of "acts of terror" in their daily life any more than they need to be afraid or mindful of a meteor shower hitting them in the head. Everyone goes over the top with "security precautions" because they don't want to be seen as doing nothing. The point here is BBC does not preserve this neutrality at all. I bet even CNN and Fox could do better if they were organizations that has their funding guaranteed, as opposed to being under the mercy of its advertisers. Sorry but what BBC does is nothing exemplary for someone in its shoes.

[jameshart]

It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, a name coined by Michael Crichton: http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/the-gell-mann-amne...

[vidarh]

> Sorry but what BBC does is nothing exemplary for someone in its shoes.

I didn't suggest they were exemplary at all. On the contrary, I criticised them for not doing a proper job because they're worried about coming across as biased.

They've chosen to deal with criticism of bias by essentially trying their utmost to never say or do anything controversial, but the nature of the real world is that a lot of the most important journalism necessarily steps hard on someones toes.