[mike_hearn]

PBS would say that.

Back here in reality the BBC is trusted by only about 40-44% of the British population, and actively distrusted by around a quarter. The true number who trust it is probably lower, as those polls suffer volunteering bias and other problems that push responses to the left when there's no ground truth to weight to.

There's a profound moral problem with forcing people to pay money for media they actively distrust or despise. There's certainly no link between "health" of a democracy and the funding level of state-funded media, unless you're the sort of person who defines a healthy society as one where everyone believes the government all the time.

[jampekka]

Perhaps a relevant context is that the 44% is highest of any UK media.

As for other public broadcasters, in e.g. Finland Yle is trusted by 82%, by far the highest for any media.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45744-which-media-out...

[jaybrendansmith]

Good lord. So now there's no objective truth, yes? Just which media is trusted by whom? So the government no longer has the remit to report, and to insure reportage of objective truth? My point is that while BBC may only be trusted by 45% of the population, that doesn't matter: They are doing their best to report objectively. So is PBS and NPR. You can make whatever accusations you want about trust, or bias, but can you point to a news article where PBS or NPR was objectively false? I can turn on Fox news and instantly hear lies at any moment, or at best, failure to report facts. Did you know that Fox didn't even report the stock market drop after liberation day? They just pretended it wasn't happening! Welcome to 1984. Orwell was a few decades off.

[mike_hearn]

There is such a thing as objective truth. Note that NPR's former head doesn't believe that [1]. Anyway, most people in Britain disagree that the BBC does its best to report it. Here's a simple reality check: how does the BBC describe right wing politicians? Dame Andrea Jenkyns DBE is a former Tory MP, government minister and campaigner for Brexit. She has a degree in economics, spent 20 years in Parliament and she just won mayorship of Greater Lincolnshire. This is the headline the BBC went with:

"Reform UK's Andrea Jenkyns is the new mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, marking a return to politics for the former Gregg's worker and Miss UK finalist"

She's 50 but the BBC's audience hears about what she did as a teenage girl. It's not an isolated incident. Nobody serious tries to argue the BBC is neutral, fair or objective anymore. Reform is the highest polling party in Britain, it's awful to make all those voters pay money to an organization that openly hates them.

> Did you know that Fox didn't even report the stock market drop after liberation day? They just pretended it wasn't happening!

Yes they did:

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6370983289112 "Stock markets crashing in response to tariff announcement"

[1] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/04/17/npr_ceo_k...

[jaybrendansmith]

You can always find examples. But it's a question of frequency. I can turn on Fox and in 1 second hear a falsehood. The key is the process ... NPR, BBC, PBS always have to show their sources and are required to have verification of sources. That's how news used to work, but now it doesn't in the 24-hour infotainment cycle. The fact that these public sources must have 2 sources means 99% of what they report is accurate. And when they get it wrong, they print retractions. Until we get back to these journalistic ethics, we will have a public that believes black is white. Somebody must like that.

[mike_hearn]

You need to double check all your beliefs about the media before continuing this thread. There's no nice way to say this, but your posts have been a stream of totally made up "facts" that are making this discussion worse.

- You claimed Fox never reported on the stock market crash, something easily disproved with a five second web search.

- You claimed having two sources yields 99% accuracy, a made up number.

- You claimed NPR, BBC and PBS have to show their sources, although they regularly report single-sourced or anonymously sourced stories.

- You claim you can hear a falsehood within one second of turning on Fox.

You're in the habit of routinely inventing numbers whilst criticizing others for perceived failures to be accurate. Given you're talking about the importance of an informed populace that's ironic and embarrassing.

[jaybrendansmith]

So you are stating flatly that Fox has the same journalistic ethics as NPR and BBC? Really? That's your argument? "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears." - Orwell.

[tekknik]

How does showing sources equate to correctness? If you use false or biased sources then the problem still exists yes?

[jaybrendansmith]

Everything comes down to statistics. There are no perfect solutions. But showing multiple sources reduces the obvious errors to an error margin that ensures most people are well-informed. And they have to be real, verified sources, not facebook posts or tweets.

[tekknik]

So if those multiple sources are all biased, like news media tends to be, then really you’re masquerading as having balanced sources that prove your point yet they’re all biased.

Right?

[alecst]

I'm not sure public trust really matters. A lot of times people distrust what they just don't like to hear.

[mjevans]

In the US the 'press' / media is supposed to be a quasi 4th branch of government (society by the people, for the people).

Such organizations are important for the voting public to remain informed and thus elect with an informed choice.

... It would also not surprise me if ~25-35% of the US population 'did not trust PBS / NPR' because they didn't like what they heard and thus preferred to disbelieve the sources.

[Workaccount2]

Unfortunately, the media is put in a position of desperate survival mode with the advent of the attention economy. Which has unsurprisingly lead to the "reality-TV-ification" of TV news, and the lazy "here's-what-is-happening-according-to-twitter-journalism" of print media.

[mjevans]

Cable news networks - which had to fill whole days with news, sort of started that trend.

It wasn't always quite that bad, it used to be the same stuff repeated for people in venues like lounges at airports or restaurants that wanted to cater to business crowds.

Then around 2001 there was that terrorist attack on the US ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks ). Networks did 24/7 'news' coverage; ever more of a spectacle as time dragged on. In recollection their need for attention, to excite and draw in eyeballs, probably helped with the implicit goal of 'terrorism' to instill terror.

Rather than behaving as rational adults, digesting a negative event, reflecting on what could be done differently ( do not negotiate with terrorists, do not remain passive sheep on an airplane, and FFS lock the cockpit doors ); everyone 'blinked' and caved. Freedoms and liberty were traded for news as entertainment, security theater, and excuses to enter wars 'on terrorism' with unclear goals and objectives.

The 'Internet' probably didn't help in offering a cheaper and supposedly 'better targeted' venue for ads. Other than informative ads (X exists, it can do Y), I find the entertainment focus to be intellectual junk food and noise against the signal. It would probably be a public good if that were heavily regulated.

[yladiz]

What profound moral problem are you talking about? If you take your point even further, you could argue there’s a moral problem with forcing people who are distrusting of or despise the government to pay taxes at all, but it’s generally agreed that the health of a country in part does depend on revenues generated by taxes (since you need money to pay for things that benefit many people, like roads, public transit, etc.).

[mike_hearn]

Yeah, the morality of taxation and the role of the state is a deep topic that has been debated for thousands of years.

Nearly everyone accepts that taxation is justified for some cases where you can't really avoid benefiting from the expenditure, the textbook example being public goods like defense (you can't opt-out of benefiting from the defeat of an invading army) or a lighthouse (you can't stop a sailor who didn't pay from seeing it).

And post-communism most people accept that taxation is not justified for many other cases, for example, using tax money to gift the president a private golf club would not be moral (he can buy golfing time with his salary or prior wealth). The benefit only accrues to the user in that case, and they can easily pay for it themselves.

In the past you could argue that state media was more like a lighthouse, because signals were broadcast from towers unencrypted and there was no way to restrict reception to people who paid. So, pass a tax and make everyone pay if they own any kind of receiving device at all.

But technological progress has changed everything. It's now easy to restrict broadcasts to only people who paid for them. TV/radio is no longer like a lighthouse, it's now more like a magazine and therefore it's immoral to tax fund them because they're not public goods anymore. You wouldn't be happy to find the government had forcibly subscribed you to the Wall Street Journal, right? You'd point out that people who want to read it can just buy a copy themselves. Same thing for TV/radio.

[yladiz]

Maybe your argument makes sense in the US, but in many countries (like here in Germany) there do exist TV and radio that are publicly funded, trusted, and good, so yes I’m more than okay that I have to pay monthly, and in your words, “forcibly subscribed” to the ARD and ZDF. I think having trustworthy news that is accessible to everyone is extremely useful and important so even if I didn’t use them myself I’m glad to pay so that others can.

[mike_hearn]

The argument makes sense everywhere. There exist in Germany TV and radio that maybe you trust and think are good, and maybe you enjoy forcing other people pay for them against their will. But there are many people who would profoundly disagree with you on that in Germany: ask any AfD voter.

Again, to see this, just consider how you'd feel if FOX News launched a German version and you were forced to pay for that against your will. Would you find that moral? Don't try and claim subjective quality judgements make a difference; obviously plenty of people think FOX News is high quality, that's why they watch it.

[const_cast]

I really dislike this line of argument that goes like "everything is the same as everything else so why don't you oppose this?".

Okay, but Fox News is obviously fundamentally different because it's a private entertainment program. That's why it's bought out and influenced by the ultra-wealthy. It's a propaganda program for capitalists. You can't just say that's "the same" as a neutrally-funded public program.

You can't "sell", so to speak, public services. That's why republican generally oppose it - they can't give a slice to their cronies so they don't want it. The problem with things like SS, which the right has attacked and attempted to dismantle the second it was written into law, isn't that it's "unfair", it's that it's not private. If you actually look at the proposals for dismantling SS, they all involve privatizing it, aka stealing it and handing out slices to their cronies.

Things like PBS and NPR getting public funds and being allowed to exist is a problem to the right because it means it can't be bought and controlled like Huff Post or Fox can.

[mike_hearn]

FOX isn't a private entertainment programme, it's a channel that's focused exclusively on news and current affairs. State media is the one that includes drama, comedy etc. If your argument is based on that distinction you'll have to rethink it. If it's just left wing good, right wing bad, then you've made my argument for me!

[dotandgtfo]

Your lighthouse parable is still highly relevant for public broadcasters when you consider that modern public broadcasting heavily subsidize expensive original reporting that for-profit newspapers are free to and happy to republish.

A core reason for having a robust public broadcasting system is that it lifts the quality of the entire information ecosystem.

Saying this as a Norwegian. I happily pay around 200/300 dollars a year for it out of my taxes.

[mike_hearn]

Yes, people who enjoy state TV like making other people pay for their enjoyment. That's immoral. Certainly, you cannot argue it's moral because you personally believe it's high quality. Lots of people in any country feel the exact opposite: that state TV damages the entire information ecosystem and is outright malign. Under what consistent moral code should they be forced to pay for it?

[dotandgtfo]

I don't enjoy making others pay for my entertainment. What a petty way to frame the discussion.

You'll find broad/majority support for state broadcasters in Northern Europe. The business model of for-profit digital news production is not economically viable outside of certain niches or clickbait/ragebait. Doubly so in small countries with just a few million citizens.

Free, broadly available, non-commercial journalism is a critical part of our society. Some would say paywalling a baseline of local knowledge constricts civic participation and is immoral. But that's a lame value judgement and should rightfully be dismissed.

[mike_hearn]

I already showed that the UK - definitely a country in Northern Europe - doesn't have a majority that finds its state broadcaster trustworthy. We can assume those people who don't find it trustworthy don't support it, or if they do, do so only out of inertia and wouldn't care if it went away either.

> The business model of for-profit digital news production is not economically viable outside of certain niches or clickbait/ragebait

State media is much more than just news, so are you agreeing at least that all of the non-news production should be defunded?

But, of course it's viable to do for-profit news. There are plenty of successful private news companies out there that aren't niche. You are welcome to define all news you dislike as ragebait but that's clearly not an argument, it's just a "lame value judgement".

> Free, broadly available, non-commercial journalism is a critical part of our society

It's not free and it's not non-commercial. People are paid to produce it via ordinary commercial contracts, and then people are forced to buy it. Nor is it a critical part of society. Society did just fine before state media was a thing. Meanwhile the injustice upon innocent people remains, and the existence of it harms society itself greatly via other paths as well.

[jasondigitized]

Wait until you hear about Fox News which is funded by advertisers who make money from people's pockets.

[quails8mydog]

People aren't forced to pay for the BBC though. Public funding is through a TV licence rather than tax, with the licence being "required" only if you watch live TV or use the BBC streaming service. Given the other streaming services available it's very easy to watch TV without it. I've never paid.

Not really sure why skewing left would improve trust ratings either, unless you're suggesting that people on the right don't trust any media, or only trust media that is right wing coded. The BBC is definitely not a left wing outlet by the standards of the UK.

[mike_hearn]

Yes, the UK is slowly backing away from enforcing the license fee (they also talk of decriminalization), partly because the immorality of it is clear to everyone and because those who don't care for it are now in the majority.

Nonetheless, there's no reason not to go all the way. There should not be a TV license, let alone one enforced by criminal law. Regular subscription and video scrambling systems are enough and have been for years.

The BBC is very strongly left wing and even its own employees recognize that. Look at the positions they take on a wide range of issues and you'll find they're all Labour positions or to the left of Labour.

[quails8mydog]

I wasn't even talking about enforcement, I neither pay nor fall afoul of the terms.

I can't find any evidence of BBC employees calling it "far left", all I find when searching for that is right wing people calling it far left for not agreeing with them enough as well as some more "scientific" analysis that seemed to show it having a right wing bias. Most news bias raters put BBC as centre or centre left (it probably is centre left by US standards).

Looking at the top 3 stories now, two don't have any obvious political slant, Australian elections and arrest of terrorism suspects, whereas the 3rd is about local elections and starts with lots of quotes from Reform UK about how well they're doing. Perfect opportunity for a far left org to insert criticism, downplay, or just not report on them, but seems like pretty straight down the middle reporting.

[mike_hearn]

Look at my other comment for one simple example from a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43881222

But as you just discovered, there are endless examples.

Dismissing criticism of BBC bias as "right wing people calling it far left for not agreeing with them enough" is almost tautological: yes, that's what bias looks like, the people it's biased against will disagree with them a lot. Not because they're just wrong and the BBC is just right, but because the BBC fires right wing journalists and hires/promotes left wing journalists who then tell themselves that left wing beliefs are True and right wing beliefs are False and thus the news should automatically be left wing. It has been like this for years.

A few more simple examples of institutionalized bias:

1. During Brexit Nick Robinson wrote an article saying the Today programme no longer has any obligation to balance its coverage of Remain vs Leave; i.e. stating in public writing that the BBC is biased.

2. Many on the right don't believe climatology is scientific or accurate, but the BBC has a written policy of refusing to interview or platform such views. They just systematically forbid it and have done for decades. They only report the left's view that there is a crisis. That's political bias.

3. The BBC broadcast a documentary about Palestine in which the child narrator turned out to be the son of a Hamas official.

4. BBC on the US election: "On the campaign trail, Donald Trump drove his message of fear all the way to the White House but it was based on a misconception. Rather than an invasion, America has long been dependent on the work of these migrants in agriculture and manufacturing, making them both essential and dispensable…For his opponents these feel like dizzying and dark times."

Of course if they discover they have a journalist who criticizes the left they fire him immediately citing neutrality (see Chris Middleton).

All this makes a mockery of the concept of public service broadcasting. The BBC is gonna die, it's inevitable, and when it does, it will be because its staff relentlessly abused the public for decades by exploiting the tax based nature of its service.

[quails8mydog]

I don't think discussing further is going to be very productive given how entrenched your views are.

Just for the record in case someone stumbles across this in future. Chris Middleton worked freelance for the BBC and was let go for making a parody song criticising the winter fuel payment cuts. The figure criticised is ostensibly left wing, but repeatedly criticised for being too centrist/right wing compared to where Labour usually stand and his previously stated position. That's what happened here, the person fired was criticising him from the left, i.e. their political stance was too left wing for the BBC (or maybe the BBC doesn't allow strong political stances in any direction).