If I had an arts degree - which is mostly post-modernist today - I would argue there is no such thing as objective truth. Thankfully I do not, and I do believe that objective truth exists. My point isn’t actually about objective truth at all. It’s about pragmatism, the role of journalism in society, and specifically about the right strategy for the BBC.
“Incorrectly” is a judgement. It is a judgement that the statement is false. To illustrate the issue, let’s use your example: “X incorrectly states that the sky is yellow”. Let’s imagine that the BBC writes, “Trump incorrectly states that the sky is yellow.” Trump and supporters reply, “but the sky is yellow during certain atmospheric events common in the morning and evening. Here is a picture of a yellow sky.” Now the BBC is caught defending a truism which is, in fact, not always true. Supporters of Trump can rightly point out the BBC’s inaccuracy, and would likely consider it a form of bias and partisanship. In order for the BBC to avoid this, they would need to append a long legal disclaimer at the bottom of every headline, every article, every video, and every news report, thoroughly detailing the various ways in which the judgement could be interpreted, how and why the BBC came to that judgement, their peer reviewed citations and statistics, the background of the analyst who made the judgement to ensure that they aren’t biased, etc. This still wouldn’t be enough, because Trump supporters would then ask, “but why didn’t you write an article about all those times Kamala Harris lied about Biden’s mental acuity? You didn’t use the word “lie” even though she clearly lied.” They’d be right. Now the BBC has opened themselves up for criticism of instances in which they didn’t editorialise.
Judgements, no matter how factually correct, are judgements. They lead to a race to the bottom. I don’t see how you could look at American media and argue that that is what the BBC should do.
I don’t place much stock in anonymous complaints. There are many examples of bias in Palestine’s favour, too. The most recent example is the Gaza documentary, funded by the BBC. It was so biased that the BBC had to apologise and remove the documentary. They literally gave money to Hamas. In the translations, all mentions of the word “Jews” were translated to “Israelis” or “Israeli forces,” and all mentions of “Jihad” were translated to “battle” or “resistance.” For example, one woman interviewed stated "Sinwar was engaging in resistance and jihad against the Jews,” but the subtitles read “he was fighting and resisting Israeli forces.”
The nature of very large organisations with international presence is that there are many people with many different political beliefs all under one umbrella. In the last few decades, journalism has tended to attract many more left wing people. It would not surprise me that more BBC employees wanted a left wing bias on reporting, and perceived objective journalism as biased.
Under the Tories the BBC would constantly say “X said the sky is yellow” and leave it at that. It’s totally impartial to say “X incorrectly states that the sky is yellow”.
There is a long history of objective journalism refraining from passing judgement. This is the distinction between news journalism and editorials. There is nothing wrong with partisan journalism, but the BBC is by and large not that. When I look over at the hellscape that is U.S. “journalism,” I don’t see a compelling role model. In fact, I think that is irrefutable evidence that the BBC is correct to remain impartial. Remember: impartiality is subjective. Making judgements - even ones which appear reasonable to you - open the author and publication up to endless accusations of editorialism. If the BBC were to ever switch to U.S.-style journalism, I believe they would be defunded almost immediately.
I would agree as a strictly logical exercise, but please note that I am talking about democratic politics: the system within which the BBC receives funding. What matters in a democracy is how people feel. There appears to be equal proportions of each aisle unimpressed with the BBC, and in a democratic system, this implies a healthy compromise and continued funding. Should the BBC obviously favour one side, it would eventually be shut down or gutted, and I think that is much worse than arguing over the minutiae.
The BBC is under constant accusations of political bias on both sides. The fact they have weathered this partisan storm angering both sides in the current political climate is testament to their ability to remain as close to objective as is possible. The current alternative to the BBC is no BBC, and I think that would be a shame.
That said, highlighting instances of questionable judgement, like this, has value. The BBC isn’t perfect, and the public should keep leaders and management on its toes.
Ironically, I think Fediverse suffers from a high amount of tech expertise and not enough project managers, lol.
I 1,000% agree. FOSS projects are dominated by skilled developers who have to work under the direction of managers in their day jobs and FUCKING HATE IT. They dream about breaking the shackles of idiotic managers who are suppressing their talent and creativity, so they work on FOSS projects. Only to learn that developers without clear direction is like herding angry cats at a Metallica concert. The end result is a patchwork of features each developer would personally like, but normal people hate.
I am probably biased here because I am one of those managers. The reason we don’t work on FOSS projects is because 1) they don’t want us working on them, and 2) we fucking hate our jobs as-is, and don’t want to spend one more minute than necessary herding angry cats.
They are allowed to do so in most European countries. The UK is a notable exception.
This is settled law. 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(3) allows immigration officers to conduct warrantless searches and interrogations “within a reasonable distance” of the border. The term “reasonable distance” has been defined by regulation (8 C.F.R. § 287.1) as within 100 miles of any U.S. international boundary or coastline.
There is one exception in case law: they cannot stop vehicles at random without “reasonable suspicion” outside of fixed checkpoints (based on United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975)).
The judge has not decided the case yet, but she likely understands the above well, and any judgement will be narrow and specifically within the confines of existing statute and precedent. U.S. border security laws have always been incredibly broad and arguably draconian. Successive administrations on the left and the right have kept it that way.
Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.
This is the nature of free work. Any donation of time is sparse and intermittent. People have bills to pay. The best and brightest want to be paid well for their time. This requires a business model of some kind, and monetising that work. This is antithetical to FOSS projects, and is the reason they will almost always be inferior to projects with large budgets with teams of UX designers. /obligatory COME AT ME BRO
IMDB rating: 4.2.
It’s hilarious that literally minutes after your comment someone replied with, “BUT MY NEIGHBOR REALLY IS THE ENEMY!”
Because they’re not going to do that. You can’t call them terrorists and expect logical reasonable action or reaction.
So we shouldn’t call them terrorists and hope they stop killing people? I’m sorry that doesn’t make any sense. Israel isn’t about to stop their war on Hamas, yet it doesn’t stop the world criticising them.
The Palestinian people by and large did not vote Hamas in, over 50% of the people in Gaza were not alive during the last election.
While technically true, almost 70% of Gazans support armed attacks on Israeli civilians.](https://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll 89 English Full Text September 2023.pdf) I know it doesn’t fit the oppressor/oppressed narrative, but the vast majority of people in Gaza support what Hamas is doing. If elections were held today, according to that same poll, they would vote Hamas back in.
What would you do?
I would not beat, rape, and murder innocent people. That seems like a low bar to clear, right? Attacking military targets and personnel might be morally justified, but certainly not what they did over the weekend.
You cannot block an entire instance in Lemmy today. The best you can do is block seeing posts from that instance in your timeline. The users are still free to send you death threats. The Lemmy devs have promised this feature later in the year, but given how it will likely be used against their .ml instance most liberally, and they will have fewer victims to attack, I am dubious it ever gets released.