Making the news today....

[Steven P]

2 hours ago, Squaredy said:

That is exactly the point.  The BBC could never prove that Trump was the most corrupt US president. Especially as only one US President has resigned due to corruption (Nixon).  It was unsafe and unprovable so it was removed.  Seems fair to me.

 

Yes, I think you are both saying the same thing here, if the BBC (or others) report something then they have to be able to stand by their reports as accurate. A correction should have been made, and it was.

 

but....

10 hours ago, sime42 said:

The upshot is that our national broadcaster is being bullied into self-censorship by a foreign leader.

shouldn't ever happen. Control of the press has been the tactic of tin pot dictators through history - any countries leader that is honourable and able to defend their actions would never control the press like Trump is trying to do... the BBC will be wary of any critical pieces from now on, which is a bad thing.

 

Noting that the UK - according to the World Press Freedom Index (Wikipedia it) - ranks about 20th in 180 countries, the US is about 60th - British journalists are afforded a lot more freedom to report than their US based peers. Perhaps Trump doesn't like that much either (that last sentence was of course, an opinion).

 

But that goes back to what you are both saying, our national press needs to be trusted. It also needs the freedom to report - accurately - as it sees fit.

 

One last problem is that while the press organisations have standards, more and more people are getting their news reports from social media - linkedin, facebook, bebo and so on - who are not obliged to uphold any standards and what is posted there should be seen as opinion pieces only. Very easy for them to push an agenda by what articles they promote and there is little control of that (see the last elections with Cambridge analytics (?) doing that). At least the BBC is kind of unbiased with their reporting (some reports are biased one way, some the other but as a whole, generally neutral).

 

 

 

Back to yesterday though, (opinion here) Trump is milking this presidency for all he can get, far more than any others did before.