Read on Twitter
I'm a BBC person, and there was some good reporting over the election period, but I've been very disappointed overall, and found @CNNPolitics much better. The reason can be summed up by 'Balance'.
I've written about this before, but the BBC is confusing impartiality with the need to always 'balance' everything. It should be just telling the truth... and the truth is not the midpoint between a fact and a lie...
It also has an obsession with vox pops. Yesterday Jane O'Brien spoke to "Monica from Maryland" at a pro Trump demo in D.C. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/election-us-2020-54860940 . The exchange went like this:
Q: "Do you accept the result?"
M from M: "I don’t. There’s been a tremendous amount of fraud [untrue, unchallenged], based on what we’ve actually heard [untrue, unchallenged], and what we’ve learned from reputable sources [untrue, unchallenged]....
M from M: "I don’t. There’s been a tremendous amount of fraud [untrue, unchallenged], based on what we’ve actually heard [untrue, unchallenged], and what we’ve learned from reputable sources [untrue, unchallenged]....
"There was no Republican oversight in a lot of the counting [lie, unchallenged], and there was no way possible some of those numbers could have gone up in the time frame that they did [untrue, unchallenged], so I’m very concerned about fraud."
Instead of challenging these lies and untruths, they were all just accepted at face value - treated as a legitimate opinions. They were not and are not - they are demonstrably wrong. Now, the BBC will say that over the course of their whole output it was made clear...
that President Trump had not produced evident to support his claims of fraud and the intro to the vox pop also makes that point. But sadly yet again a platform was given to people who repeat lies without being challenged. It's time to stop getting liars on to 'balance' facts.
