Talk:BBC News/Archive 1

Minor inaccuracy

'The new set was smaller then previous and square in design, initially using a projected image of a fictional newsroom as a background; the newsroom shown did not actually exist.' is untrue. When I did a tour of Telly Centre back in 2002 or so (I worked for the Corporation's Internet Services department in Kingswood Warren for some years; we organised a tour as we realised most of us had never been), we were told that the background image was captured by a camera mounted on a stairwell looking across the newsroom, and that one half of the screen was a mirror-image of the other on a delay. Certainly we got close to the camera's mount point during the tour. -- dickon@fluff.org

The part of the article you have quoted is regarding the set used between 2003 and 2006. The set you are talking about the set previous to that, used from 1999 to 2003. Thanks for your message though. Wikiwoohoo 16:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Second largest broadcaster

Have to query this... Whilst CNN claims '4000 news professionals' I find it hard to believe that they are all contributing to the CNN news product. A lot of those probably work in sales/advertising/marketing/legal, etc. The BBC has seperate depts. for this.

Think it needs to be made clear that whilst "BBC News" as an entity might employ 'x' number of people, the overall product is contributed to by countless other parts of the BBC, such as BBC Radio. For instance, would you include the staff of the BBC World Service in the "BBC News" staff? Technically, no, because they aren't part of BBC News, but they do contribute to news broadcasts very frequently. In terms of the number of BBC journalists that BBC News as a whole uses, I imagine it is probably more than quadruple that of CNN - think of the number of BBC radio stations (well over 50, each with dedicated journalists), BBC online, BBC regional TV in the UK, BBC TV news, BBC current affairs programmes (Panorama, etc.)

This perhaps should be made clear in the article.

News Reader and Journalist categories

I have now created two categories, one for current BBC News readers and journalists and the other for former news readers and journalists. Links to those can be found in the see also section of the BBC News article. I have categorised all current and former news reader and journalist articles into their respective categories now. Since many are stubs, the next step is to build them all up.Wikiwoohoo

Most popular

By whom was it announced that the Six O'Clock News and BBC News 24 were the most popular of their kinds? The assertion is made in the passive voice in the lead without attribution. Was it BBC News themselves or someone else?

Also, is 2005 correct for that? The article said "in the current year", which might have already dated. -- Jonel | Speak 23:31, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

This was my source for that fact - [1]. I will include that in the article straight away. Sorry, should have made that clearer. :( Wikiwoohoo 20:20, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Lists of presenters

I thought before that it was best for there to not be large lists of presenters or television programmes. Does anybody else agree that maybe these could be removed and we could rely on the categories such as Category:BBC Regional News programmes and Category:BBC newsreaders and journalists? Wikiwoohoo 14:11, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Link to Biased BBC Blog

I have removed this. It does not really consitute the views of other media. It is the view of the small number of private individuals who write this blog. FWIW, IMHO you can prove anything by selecting a single blog in isolation (...and if one doesnt exist you can set one up! I could set one up to disprove the theory of gravity). In that context IMHO blogs dont really have any place as evidence in an encyclopedia. This one in particular is particularly bad IMHO, it is a badly organised list of rants where the writers even go as far as selecting sentences within reports in isolation from each other (never mind other reports) to try and justify their viewpoint. pit-yacker 00:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Very odd that you should remove that link, considering the impact of blogs in the mainstream media nowadays. Why not provide a link to it - and let the Wikipedia readers make their own mind up?

--Starchaser 10:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

There may be limited merit in including it as an external link. However, I definitely dont think it consitutes the opinion of another media outlet or as a source to back up statements in the main article for the reasons I stated above. You talk about "mainstream media", but how many people actually read this blog? compare that to the readership of the Daily Mail, or the Sun whose (IMHO) opinions definitely have a place in the article as that of another media outlet.pit-yacker 14:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Many blogs are personal that is true but so are books that are written by one author and those are used on wikipedia. It's not the blog that should come under scrutiny but the notability of the person writing it. For the record the bias section seems very small and doesn't go into detail about its sources. There is alot of bias in both sources, the reader is left thinking that the first used for the Israel-Palestinian bit is less biased than the first. In all honesty of all the things I have watched on BBC news, how any organisation can come to the conclusion that the BBC needs be less biased toward Israel is beyond me. It shouts blatent bias.Supposed 23:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Are there any notable contributors to this blog? AFAICT from their profiles none of them are. Also again it comes back to my later point of how many people actually ever view this blog?

As for extending the article further, while there is some argument for putting more in. A fine line needs to be taken to avoid the article spiralling out of control where we end up on reporting on opposing sides selectively taking particular reports (or even parts of reports) and using it as evidence that the BBC is biased against their cause. As an example, the first thing any extension of the Israel-Palestine conflict should contain is a commentary pointing out that a number of Palestinian groups also claim the BBC is biased towards Isreal. Pit-yacker 00:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I think you have the wrong approach, the important thing is not to report on who thinks the BBC is biased but rather where the BBC have behaved in a biased fashion toward Israel or the Palestinians etc. Plenty of websites report on this, honest reporting is just the Israeli one. The evidence is there for all to see, it should come under rigourous scrutiny and be added to the wikipedia article. These are some important links from honestreporting in regards to this [2] [3][4] We should try to verify theirs and other peoples claims. [[[User:Supposed|Supposed]] 15:06, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

But that raises the question of who you use as your source ;)? What are their motives? I'm sure if we took the approach that you propose, we could put virtually every report the BBC has ever broadcast as being biased towards one side or the other. We would have report 1 on the 6 o' clock news (25/08/06) was biased towards Israel (accoreding to muslim blog), but report 2 (25/08/06) from Lebanon was biased against it (pro-Israel blog), Report 3 (25/08/06) was too pro government, Report 4 (25/08/06) was biased towards the opposition, etc, etc etc. AFAICT this is what most of these sites do. They take single reports (or even parts of reports) out of context to prove an institutional bias that they want to see. You can only really discuss accusations of bias at a high level, not individual (or parts of) reports. Thats where the independent review discussed in the Israel-Palestine Section probably does better than any of the other sources in this section. It actually looks at all of the coverage and not just the parts that suit it. Unfortunately there are very few cases where people actually go to this level of detail, because its very time consuming work, so there is little justification of going to the effort unless you have an axe to grind, in which case, you will want to bend the results to show what you want them too.

Given the lack of detailed investigation, we can only really report what each side believes in notable conflicts at a general level. HonestReporting (incidentally not a blog) perhaps belongs in as an example of what the pro-Israeli side says. However, if we are going to put that in we need to a) Discuss HonestReportings motives. b) Put the opinion of Lebanonese/Palestinian groups (which this article currently doesnt.)

At that point we come back to the issue at stake of giving the opinions of the Biased BBC Blog. AFAICT this it is not a notable media outlet or organisation by an stretch of the term notable. So why is it warranted a discussion in a section discussing notable media outlets? If we are going to put this blog in, then surely any other blog merits inclusion as a media outlet? Pit-yacker 15:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Crystal balls

"Early years": eight sentences. "2006-present" (eh, what year are we in?): seven sentences, mostly about the view from the newsroom. This is ridiculous. There is far more that can and should be said than a leap from first radio broadcast to first "proper" television broadcast.Then we have almost as much again, under the heading "The future". Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. If no-one can find references to this (WP:CITE, WP:VERIFY, WP:RS (reliable sources)), I shall just remove the internally-inconsistent claims of proposed moves and dates. I am removing the "he said she said" stuff about branding the website to match the television appearance until someone explains why it is encyclopaedic anyway. Telsa (talk) 16:15, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

It's been a week. No references. Removed. Telsa (talk) 12:20, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad the history section is being turned into more of...a history! I had a go before but it was reverted and when I did so again it was reverted. The History section has to be about the organisation rather than the BBC News bulletins so I'm glad it is now taking shape like that. I've added some more information, for now it's in the '2000's' section but I'll be adding more across the other subsections soon. Wikiwoohoo _talk 19:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

'Opinions of BBC News' section

This section is ridiculous and should be deleted. Any media organisation could be accused of bias by both sides of any dissagreement. The references and arguments presented are not encyclopedia worthy, it reads like a list of personal rants that people stopping by the article have felt like adding on the end, maybe with a link to some news story somewhere (if even that) used as supposed "proof" to back up the claim. I also fail to see how the BBC - along with all other news organisations - being expelled from countries with oppressive governments is a valid critisim of the BBC.

Notable events such as the Hutton report deserve a mention but having sub-sections detailing accusations of bias by both sides on pretty much every single recent political event is absurd. Canderra 01:51, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I will now be bold and take a fair bit of this content out. I agree with you that it has been getting, frankly, absurd with the size of the section and content compared with the rest of the article. This was also part of the focus in the peer review for changes that should be made. Wikiwoohoo _talk 19:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Revert 2nd November 13:36 GMT

The ground is largelly covered in much more neutral wording in the first section. This report is second hand copy of a story reported in the (right wing) Daily Mail. TBH I really didnt think you could get any more right wing than the Wail but this source makes it look like Pravda. The "anti-Christian" bias refers to hypothetical situation on a non-news satirical comedy programme (Room 101), at this point none of this belongs in BBC News. The "pro-gay" bias refers to the fact that Marr said that the BBC employed a large proportion of gays, not that it was delibrately pro-gay. I have read that university graduates are several times (IIRC something like 10 times) more likely to be openly gay than non-graduates, given that the BBC is likely to employ a large proportion of graduates compared to other companies this is much more likely to be the explanation for the high concentration of gays than a delibrate policy of employing them. As for saying that granting an interview to Osama Bin Laden is evidence of bias, I think this does more to discredit the authors argument than anything the BBC could ever do. As an impartial news reporter a news outlet is duty-bound to report both sides of the story, no matter how distasteful that it is to the right-wing. Pit-yacker 13:50, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

If we really must have these quotes to "prove" BBC "bias", then from a neutral point of view they really should be seen in the context that they were originally said in. Taking a single paragraph and presenting it alone outside of the context of its original article does not IMHO consitute proof, it merely constitutes a twisting of someone's words to achieve a political end (i.e. proving that the bias the author wishes to see exists). IMHO much of this selective misquoting verges on the dishonest. Pit-yacker 01:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The Apparatus of News Gathering?

This article seems a bit short on detail. How are news stories gathered and edited for radio and TV? What about innovations such as the end-to-end digital newsroom production system (project "Jupiter"), a joint venture between BBC Technology and Quantel (link here http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_Nov_11/ai_94115567)? Daen 22:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

I've restored this section, because if you fork it, it leaves this page POV. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 10:45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

1. There is a criticism of BBC News section. However, it is so long it needs its own page. Hence why it says see main article.

2. See discussion on the Criticism of the BBC page. The reason for this was to remove inconsistencies created by duplicating the same information. The nature of these sections is that they are very volatile (as each passer by adds their, different, opinion) , and inconsistencies and contradcitions between sections quickly appear.

3. IMHO, the page without the criticsm of the BBC section is completelty neutral it tells the facts and thats it. With that section it is heavily POV. It consists of a list of axe grindings from various "passers-by". Standard-fare seems to me to be cherry-picked quotes from heavily biased newspaper leaders, partial quotes taken out of context and misquotes or misrepresentations of what a BBC correspondent actually said.

Pit-yacker 11:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

You say they're axe-grinders, but why not simply call them critics? A page about BBC News without criticism is POV, because it's a heavily criticized organization. By all means expand on these points on the other page, but you can't move them off here entirely. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I call it "axe-grindings" because the nature of this section is that there are often contradictory comments within the same sections. Comments appear on every conceivable issue and most of these allegations are very poorly researched and come from organisations with various vested interests in proving bias on a particular subject. For example, the anti-US quote you removed was the later added full context of a partial quote that had previously been added. In its full context the quote was absolutely meaningless however one seemingly innocous sentence in the middle when taken out of context was used to portray the BBC as admitting it was biased against the US.

If the criticsm sections could be done sensibly I would have prefered it to be on the BBC/BBC News page. However, the problem is it isnt, as I said on the Criticsms of the BBC, page I fear that real valid criticsms are lost amongst the noise of various conspiracy theories supported by the flimsiest of evidence, cherry picked and highly biased newspaper leaders (as I said in the other article, how hard would it be to find a leader saying the opp, in which case the opinions section IS POV), or a single sentence in a single report, even before you consider the reporting as a whole.

The problem with the criticism section is that previously it appeared on both BBC News and BBC pages, it now appears on BBC News and Criticsm of the BBC, both pages contain much the same content, the problem is the nature of these sections is that they very quickly become inconsistent and contradictory because various "passers-by" with an axe to grind just add to or edit the one page. If Wikipedia is to be a record of fact rather than a forum listing various rants (with those that disagree with the last poster removed) it is eminently sensible there is just one page containing this.

Pit-yacker 12:51, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I take your point about inconsistency, but even so, the BBC News page can't be devoid of criticism. Should I write a glowing article about the Animal Liberation Front and fork all criticism off to a separate page? The thing to do is to write a very good criticism section here, nailed down by good sources and well-written, and then protect it from deterioration. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:59, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Few things

How can there be regional bureaux (is bureaux the same in sing and plural?) around the UK, then 44 around the world, but only 41 overseas? RHB 18:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Impossible to find a list of them, but a guess would be that St Helier and St Peter Port in the Channel Islands aren't technically overseas. Maybe the other is the Political Unit at Millbank, unless anyone knows otherwise.....

And on another note, has anyone got any info on Visnews (1957-Present) which the BBC used to co-own before selling out to Reuters in 1992 (known as Reuters Television since '93) as it needs ref. in BBC News article Zir 11:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Failed GA

Sorry to make you wait so long just to get failed, but...

• Unfree images needing fair use rationales.
• Unsourced {{Fact}} tags.
• Needs more references. There are too many statistics and facts that need a source to back them. I peppered the article with some, but I'm sure that there are many I missed.

Keep working on it.--SeizureDog 10:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Alexandra Palace

In the peer review for this article, it was asked if BBC News was originally based at Alexandra Palace. Well, it was but until I can find decent references, I am unable to include this. Will do soon though. Wikiwoohoo 20:09, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

30/07/02 extract from Ariel Online (BBC in house newspaper, not publicly available online), BBC joins move to restore studios at historic Alexandra Palace "...After the war the television service resumed but during the 1950s it was largely relocated to other centres, notably Lime Grove. However, Ally Pally was the home of tv news until 1969 and of the Open University production centre from 1970 until 1981..." You could use this as a source Escaper7 12:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't read Ariel very often but it certainly is a decent source for inclusion. A simple Google search the other day uncovered plenty of pages. Reviews of this and similar articles asked for less BBC references but yes, Ariel is a good one. Wikiwoohoo 19:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

1950s, 1960s & Alexandra Palace

I've made a start on expanding "Early Years" into 50s & 60s though it needs further work - but omitted the fact that the last "News on 2" bulletin from AP was marked by the vision mixer being sick over the buttons after celebrating too much! Zir 15:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Point of View

All these 'points of view' are basically of opposing political spectrums who resent the BBC pointing out their short comings. The Hutton enquiry should be mentioned but other than that I think the whole section should be deleted or drastically rewritten. It is not suprising that people who work in political journalism have political opinions however unless there is evidence that these people have directly influenced coverage with their opinions I dont see what relevance it has. This section is entirely founded on some very shakey references such as a KGB defector, a journalist for a pro-israeli newspaper, a journalist for the Times and someone who works for CNN. Thats hardly reliable so it should be deleted or moved to be with the rest of the rubbish on the criticism page. Spacemurkin82 00:29, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Hutton section potential POV bias

This section is pretty good up until the last line; "While doubtless a traumatic experience for the corporation, an ICM poll in April 2003 indicated that it had sustained its position as the best and most trusted provider of news."

How can an ICM poll taken BEFORE the whole incident occurred show that the incident had no affect on BBC News reputation? The initial BBC report that caused the whole affair was broadcast in MAY 2003, a whole month AFTER the ICM poll. I feel this last line needs to be excised. Coder Keitaro 13:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Merge with BBC National News

Whilst searching, I came across the article BBC National News, which deals specifically with the BBC's Television News output, and I was wondering whether they should be merged. Any thoughts? --J. Atkins (talk | contribs) 15:21, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

It could actually be worth merging the article into this; the content on the BBC National News article could be slimmed down somewhat in order for the rest to be added into here where appropriate. Wikiwoohoo 15:56, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yup, I agree. People looking for, for example, the 10 o'clock news are going to start here. The individual news bulletins are more often than not referred to as the "BBC News", so it would make sense for them to be included in this article. Dafyd 15:48, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

History of BBC News

Having gradually expanded, and I hope improved, the History → 1980's, I'm now trying to make some of the dates more definitive. However, in doing so feel that I've made the entry a bit long and was wondering about having a separate article, say History of BBC News linked from a (brief) History or Timeline section within BBC News (now 44 kilobytes long, it keeps reminding me) in a similar manner to Main article: BBC News Online and all the other ones. Thinking now from the point of view of people consulting BBC News to get the info they want.

Whaddya think, folks.... ?

Zir 12:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that it should have a it's own article, espacaly as more and more information will come in about the future move and I think that it could be made EVEN bigger than it already is :) Wait for a few more comments before making the new article, but I think that there is a good chance that others will agree :) Great work!  Tiddly Tom  12:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Gotta think of a better term than "'stripes era'" which 82.15.23.246 has recently added to the end of the 1980s - it was never known as that within the Beeb, the only ref found so far is TV Ark [5] (from where I suspect he/she got it).Zir 17:29, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Have snapped & removed it..... Zir 17:55, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:RT1968.jpg

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BetacommandBot 17:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

 Done I've written a fair use rationale for this and others and removed the tag...Zir 11:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Pro-Israel bias in BBC report, Section 4.7

The summary of the BBC report claims that they found no real bias in the coverage of Israel-Palestine - but that's not the impression you'd get from reading it, particularily Section 4.7 "Among the findings from the quantitative content analysis which the researchers judge to be most important for the Panel are these: ... - that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in the amount of talk time given to non-party political Israelis and Palestinians; ... - that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in the amount of talk time given to Israelis and Palestinians; ... - that there was a broad parity in BBC coverage taken as a whole in terms of the appearance of Israeli and Palestinian party political actors; ... - that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in terms of the appearance of non-party political Israeli and Palestinian actors; ... - that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in terms of the appearance of Israeli and Palestinian actors." PR^talk 14:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

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GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:BBC News/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

This article does not meet the good article criteria and has therefore failed its good article nomination. Issues include:

• Too much unreferenced information, including but not limited to the following:
• Most of the "History" section
• Most of "Opinions" — which, considering its fairly controversial nature, should have more references than usual
• References need to have publishers and access dates at the very least per WP:CITE/ES

Once these issues have been resolved, please feel free to renominate the article. Gary King (talk) 04:09, 3 December 2008 (UTC)