[repolfx]

The Swiss voted to keep it but a huge minority voted to scrap it - a much larger chunk of the vote than the Swiss establishment had expected. I think they only won the vote in the end by promising some reforms.

The UK funds the BBC in a similar way. I used to think it led to better results, but frankly I don't see much difference in quality of output between BBC, ITN and Sky News - they all suck in exactly the same ways. It's not surprising given that journalists all a pretty homogenous lot. If the BBC license fee came up for vote I'd be tempted to scrap it.

BBC News Online in particular feels like it's degraded significantly over time. It used to be hard news, all the time. Now half the stories are lightweight human interest stories, and it's absolutely flooded with feminist / identity politics virtue signalling crap. I feel like the last 10 times I went there, probably 8 of them had multiple "why women are wonderful" / "about an inspiring woman" stories on the front page. Maybe they're being driven by click volumes or something, I don't know, but if they are they may as well just be a fully commercial entity.

[r_c_a_d]

The BBC was forced to scale back its website(s) because of complaints by the private sector that it was unfair competition. For example,

https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2013/news/bbc-is-unfair-c...

They argued that the BBC was using its guaranteed income from the licence fee (originally for just TV and Radio) to crowd out the competition in the UK, by being too good...

[repolfx]

Their website still has just as much content on it as before, it's just differently focused. I don't really believe anyone in the newsrooms there said "hmm we have a lower budget this year, all we can afford is feminism!".

[KineticLensman]

> BBC News Online in particular feels like it's degraded significantly over time. It used to be hard news, all the time.

Last year the BBC had a story about how their own news website has changed over time [0]. It concentrates on the format rather than the content but the screenshots do seem to show a higher density of 'hard' news info per page.

My gut reaction is to agree with your comment about lack of hard news. However, I decided to check for myself, looking at the first screenful of today's front page [1 - unfortunately not a permanent link]. It has 13 distinct topics (on my large monitor), and the main topic (N Korea and Trump) has two pictures, one short sentence, and three sub-story bullets. I was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the headlines are in fact informative statements (e.g. "1,600 skilled workers denied UK visas") although one ("Celebrating mixed-race identity") needs you to click through and isn't news as such. Whether these stories do in fact represent today's real issues, or have been picked to conform to the BBC's own agenda (whatever that may be), though, remains an open question

(Hmmm. I'm accessing the BBC website from the UK (the clue is in the '.co.uk'). What does the rest-of-world facing site (bbb.com) look like? I used Google Translate to check the non-uk version [2] and this seems also to have 'hard' headline statements although there is a different mix of stories.)

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41890165

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=fr&u=h...

[repolfx]

That first link is pretty damning. You're right, the older images are almost all of hard news.

Here are some of the stories I see on BBC News currently:

- N Korea threatens to cancel Trump summit

- Italy's populists plan to defy EU rules

- Body clock linked to mood disorders

- Controversial Russia-Crimea bridge opens

- Row over World Cup flirting manual

- New Girl bids bittersweet farewell

- Bank chief sorry for menopausal gaffe

- Anne Frank's dirty jokes uncovered

- Meghan's dad may miss wedding over surgery

- Celebrating mixed race identity

- Why is Spanish ham so expensive?

- Ghana shoe seller takes on ex-dictator

I'd say that the vast majority of these are lightweight human interest stories, several of them are just ID politics masquerading as news and some are both. Why is stuff about TV show New Girl on the BBC News front page?

The story about the "menopausal" gaffe turns out to be that a Bank of England governor described some economies as "menopausal, past their peak, and no longer so potent". This apparently is a gaffe worthy of being in the business news section. It's not clear to me why it's even a gaffe to begin with. Do feminists now argue the menopause isn't a biological event at all? Apparently they do, according to some random economics professor at some random university (the BBC loves quoting academics) - "It conveys a rather derogatory view of women. I've never thought of the menopause as not productive".

It's really pretty trashy. Very different to how it once was.