BBC Editors blog about News Sniffer
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 6:54 pmThe BBC Editors blog has mentioned News Sniffer today.
It’s largely just marginalised us, but it’s rather ambiguous. When they suggest that Revisionista will not find examples of bias, I can’t decide if they mean that the BBC is not biased, or that they are just very good at it.
Some of the recommended revisions are interesting, but maybe we need a comments feature so people can explain and discuss their recommendations.
And they also describe their censoring of ‘Have Your Say’ comments as “censoring” in quotation marks. I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean either. Is it not censorship when they remove comments? Or do they not remove comments?
See the top recommended censored comments for some interesting examples of “censorship”.
I have had a look at your website having followed the link from the BBC blog you mention above. I’m honestly not sure what the point is though? Looking at the ‘Have Your Say’ comments that were removed, are you seriously suggesting the BBC is biased against or for the keeping of Pluto as a planet? The comments removed where totally off the subject of Pluto. Are you suggesting the comments removed from the Richard Hammond topic, such as ‘Get well soon’is because of some BBC bias against well wishers to its own presenter? Or is it not infinately more reasonable to assume this was because there were thousands of simliar comments.
Also, why is Revisionista almost exclusively concerned with the BBC and the Guardian? Isnt that a bit, well…biased?
Looking at the examples in Revisionista nor can I see hoe these represent a bias?
Like I say, Im new to the site, feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.
Good work!
I have been complaining to the BBC about censorship on “Have Your Say” for a long time. I took part in what was probably one of the most obviously censored discussions ever.
The title was “Should Google censor its search services in China?”
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=2&threadID=824&edition=2&ttl=20061106142524&#paginator
When people started pointing out that the BBC also censor things, those postings were removed. This prompted people to make postings about this new censorship and a furious battle emerged. In the end the BBC gave up and you can see that the top rated comment is about the BBC censorship. I wrote to the BBC to complain and they said that items about BBC censorship were “Off Topic”. Do you buy that? It’s pure censorship.
Initially I was very excited when the BBC Moved over to the new comment system, but they quickly locked down all the topics into “Full Moderation” mode. I firmly believe that the reason for this is that it enables them to censor things without it being so obvious. For example, the Google China discussion would never have mentioned BBC censorship if it had been in “Full Moderation Mode”. I have often seen discussion topics where certain obvious points have been missed by posters. After the BBCs “off topic” policy was made clear to me, it makes me wonder if those obvious points were in fact deemed to be off topic.
I think that every comment that the BBC censors should go into a censorship dump, so that people can see what is being censored. Things deemed to be off topic could go here and the public could then decide whether censorship was taking place.
Strangely the BBC Message boards are quite open and there are lots of free flowing discussions. However, the message boards seem to be fairly well hidden and not very public facing. They should put a link to them from the Have Your Say section. Why have such a rampant censorship on Have Your Say, but not on the Message Boards?
There were two Reactively Moderated Topics today. One was “What Price To Save The Planet” and the other was “Does Your Boss Use Too Much Jargon”. I made a post on the later and as part of the post (which did address the advertised topic) I thanked the BBC for allowing a free and uncensored topic for a change. The topic has now been locked down into fully censored mode. The other topic is still open though, so I think it is likely that my critical comment sent them into “Stalin mode”.
Agree with the BBC censorship thing – certain london-based individuals seem to have hundreds of comments posted, all with a very PC flavour running through them. Then you get people like me (Northern and proud to be un-PC) who must have 1 in every 10 comment posted unless the discussion is reactively-moderated (rare but on the up at the moment).
Keep up the good work? :-)
What’s the difference between censorship and editing? Just whether you agree with the cut?
“What’s the difference between censorship and editing? Just whether you agree with the cut?”
Editing is fine for a reporters story, but I think if a member of the public has used his 500 (or whatever) characters to make a comment, the BBC have no right to chop bits out of it. Anyway, what tends to happen is the whole thing is chopped or just never makes it on to “Have Your Say” in the first place.
“When they suggest that Revisionista will not find examples of bias”
Hows this for bias?
http://newssniffer.newworldodour.co.uk/articles/11245/diff/0/1
I’m speechless how they could alter the article to make it lean to favour Labour…
Jules
Well done on this site, they have gotten away with too damn much for too long. I can’t believe the British have to subsidize an organization that has completely given up on its mission to inform and educate for one of manipulation and persuasion. (More Amazing is that the USA subsidizes the Beeb with tax payer dollars through Public Radio International, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR)
Thank you again for trying to provide some small level of accountability for an organization that firmly believes that it is above answering to anyone. (Unfortunately they have been correct about that, so far)
Ahhh, thank the stars, I thought I was going insane on this issue, but then I would be because they’d never post up anything about it on the BBC site. Yes the BBC suck, and they suck big time. As an example, I posted a comment about Tescos being offensive because of the way they treated their employees (among other things) which got a ton of recommendations, and was on the first page (for once). Lo and behold it was removed. They haven’t got one vertebrae of backbone left in them after the Dr. David Kelly and Hutton Report affairs. The other day there was a discussion on something fairly controversial, and they printed ONE comment between 12 and 1 pm midday on a weekday (pity I can’t remember what it was now it wound me up at the time). That didn’t include mine, and the one they put up was completely inane mass media verbatim spouting brain wash victim rubbish.
In addition I often find they post up really polarising opinions, like they want to wind people up. For instance during the, I hesitate to call, discussion on muslim veils (like anyone with a brain gives a toss about a bit of cloth) they would put up only those opinions which were either of the ilk of “throw the muslims out they’re taking the mickey in our country terrorist/security threat from the veil etc.” or of the ilk of “just because we’re muslim you treat us like dirt, at least our women don’t dress up like sluts”. It was just nauseating, like reading The Sun.
I wouldn’t care if it was ITV news or something but considering that I pay £140 pounds for the privelege of owning an aeriel to go with my TV it just angers me so much it’s staggering.
Hi All,
Hmmm… yes. I dont know if my submission to “Have your say” are particularly bad but the level of censorship seem completely over the top. Its not just the comments either its also the choice of topics. Its not “Is road charging a good thing” but “Do we need more debate on road-charging?”, to use a current issue; theres a world of a difference in the framing of the topics. I have a feeling that “Is 650000 live worth bringing democracy to Iraq” is not going to turn up somehow.
jono
Today i had my comment pulled from the bbcs have your say comments board after they had published it.
The topic was called “Is the time right to pull troops out of iraq?”
My comment was not very politically correct, but it was certainly very on topic, and unique. Other comments were all over the place politically as is the case when anything about iraq comes up, many viewers actually recommended my comment, then after a day it was quietly deleted.
I said:”The mums and dads of the soldiers in iraq must be so sad that they brought such violence loving children into the world who were not willing or mentally strong enough to disobey their orders. I only have respect for the few conscientious objectors.”
Incidently there is a way you can see (partially anyway)deleted comments.
If you go to the topic page and type in the searchbox a snippet from the comment you might find it comes up on the search results but the full comment will not appear when clicked on…
Give it a try on finding my bbc censored post with this link below, it worked for me, although i’m sure the bbc censors will be hard at work trying to disable this function as we speak…Bottom line…stay away from the bbc their propoganda is very subtle and the most advanced in the world being editorially based, culture based, and using staff profiling. Don’t fund them, and seek more honest (even honestly biased!) news sources. Here’s, the link to my censored post below, the date and time stamp means if you like you can skip through the actual forum and find the “hole” where it was pulled from.
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/search.jspa?objID=f2572&q=%22violence+loving%22&edition=1&language=none&ttl=20070223005231