Split Thread BBC news reporting

[Jack by the hedge]

Comparison with a war where few of the soldiers shoot people is dumb. Protesters do not turn up for a fight, whatever you imagine.

Protesting 101: Protestors do not think they are the bad guys. Protesters think they are the good guys. Left or right, doesn't matter. They are standing up in support of their, or someone else's, rights and they do it because they feel it's just. They do not go to a protest to start trouble. If police respond heavy-handedly to some provocation (whether instigated by provocateurs among the protesters or indeed among the police) but what the crowd actually see is that heavy police reaction, they are outraged because it looks like the agents of the state are trampling on their right to protest, and they feel aggrieved and justified in resisting that oppression. That's how opportunists use poorly trained police to turn a protest into a riot.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Comparison with a war where few of the soldiers shoot people is dumb.

Insisting that a protest where there's a material amount of violence as "mostly peaceful" because the violence is coming from a minority of actors is also dumb.

Protesters do not turn up for a fight, whatever you imagine.

Some do though. Not all of them by any means, but some certainly do show up with the intention of instigating violence.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It isn't "a" protest. It's protests all over the country, as Flo explained. And the great majority of them, excepting a few big cities, are peaceful.

 

[smartcooky]

Comparison with a war where few of the soldiers shoot people is dumb. Protesters do not turn up for a fight, whatever you imagine.

This is not always true.

Take for example the student riots in the 1970s (not just Kent State, but the Hard Hat riots as well) or the protests over the Springbok tour of NZ in 1981. Many of the protesters in those examples turned up intending to be disruptive, and to commit violence and commit property damage. In the Hard Hat Riots of 1970, office and construction workers turned up from the outset with the intent to attack Vietnam War protesters, and they did so.

 

[Ziggurat]

Comparison with a war where few of the soldiers shoot people is dumb. Protesters do not turn up for a fight, whatever you imagine.

Again, so what? Intent doesn't make something violent or not violent.

Protesting 101: Protestors do not think they are the bad guys.

Violent people don't generally think they are the bad guys either.

 

[Ziggurat]

It isn't "a" protest. It's protests all over the country, as Flo explained. And the great majority of them, excepting a few big cities, are peaceful.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

 

[smartcooky]

Insisting that a protest where there's a material amount of violence as "mostly peaceful" because the violence is coming from a minority of actors is also dumb.

Especially when the visual mainstream media such as ITV, BBC and Sky News are showing cars burning, street fighting, shops being looted and police lobbing tear gas grenades into crowds, while the accompanying narration characterizes what they are showing as "peaceful" protests.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Again, so what?

The long-forgotten point being argued over here is whether it was fair reporting or scurrilous lies for the BBC to say the protests on some particular day were mostly peaceful. The arguments against them seem to run along the lines of saying if some of the protests were not peaceful, they should not say most were peaceful. Well, I don't agree.

 

[arthwollipot]

Especially when the visual mainstream media such as ITV, BBC and Sky News are showing cars burning, street fighting, shops being looted and police lobbing tear gas grenades into crowds, while the accompanying narration characterizes what they are showing as "peaceful" protests.

FFS the narration can talk about the current state while showing footage of what it was like before the current state.

Also, again, you're assuming that this is the consistent message that these news outlets are presenting, which I have demonstrated is not true.

 

[angrysoba]

Trump ordered to sit for a deposition in his BS lawsuit against the BBC.

The corrupt POS will probably end up being unable to make his own case when grilled by lawyers.

Oct 22 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday ordered Donald Trump to sit for a deposition by December 11 in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, which has accused the US president of stalling to ‌avoid answering questions under oath.
Trump is suing Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster for at least $10 billion over a misleadingly edited clip of a speech. The case is one of several Trump has privately filed against the news media as part of a wider pressure campaign against coverage he dislikes.

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-ordered-sit-deposition-his-10-billion-bbc-lawsuit-ap-reports-2026-10-22/

 

[angrysoba]

Especially when the visual mainstream media such as ITV, BBC and Sky News are showing cars burning, street fighting, shops being looted and police lobbing tear gas grenades into crowds, while the accompanying narration characterizes what they are showing as "peaceful" protests.

What is your theory here?

That they show violent images and say “this is peaceful” and then the sheep watching the images say “yes, this is peaceful”?

That’s quite a demented idea.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It isn't "a" protest. It's protests all over the country, as Flo explained. And the great majority of them, excepting a few big cities, are peaceful.

I'll accept "the majority of the protests are peaceful".

 

[Emily's Cat]

That they show violent images and say “this is peaceful” and then the sheep watching the images say “yes, this is peaceful”?

There does appear to be a cohort of people who believe whatever their preferred media tells them.

 

[smartcooky]

FFS the narration can talk about the current state while showing footage of what it was like before the current state.

Ummm, what. Do you think the violence came first the it went all peaceful like?

Also, again, you're assuming that this is the consistent message that these news outlets are presenting, which I have demonstrated is not true.

It has been a consistent message

 

[smartcooky]

There does appear to be a cohort of people who believe whatever their preferred media tells them.

Yup, our resident BBC fanboys included.

 

[a_unique_person]

There's a difference in implication here. Just because most protestors at an event are peaceful doesn't mean the event is mostly peaceful. If the damage done by a few is immense and prevalent, it's misleading to report the event itself as being mostly peaceful.

If 100 people show up to protest, and 2 people start setting things on fire while the other 98 stand by and watch... I think most people would say the protest turned violent.

If your logic held, then we could conclude that the war with Iran is "mostly peaceful" because only a very small number of military personnel are engaged in violent action. I think we'd all agree that would be misleading and wrong.

When you fight a war everyone agrees that they are part of an effort to use whatever violence of necessary to defeat the enemy. Not everyone in a protest joins formally for whatever happens next.

The people who burnt down that historic building were not acting on behalf of all the protestors. They have been caught and intended to go out and cause maximum damage. They are their own organisation that exists for that purpose.

 

[angrysoba]

There does appear to be a cohort of people who believe whatever their preferred media tells them.

Then wouldn't they show images of peaceful protesters instead of violent rioting?

 

[angrysoba]

Yup, our resident BBC fanboys included.

The only person around here who is on record as believing things they see on the news uncritically as if it were the Gospel Truth is... YOU!

As usual....

Those "great men" (and women) he talks about? They set the gold standard for broadcast journalism - people like Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters. In the UK there was Sir Trevor McDonald, Richard Baker, Kenneth Kendall, Sir Alastair Burnet, Angela Ripon, and Kate Adie.
They brought us the news, raw, unfiltered, unsullied by tribal or identity politics or special interest groups -
they reported the news, warts-and-all, and allowed the public to draw their own conclusions.. They never told us what to think, who to beleive, how to feel or what opinion we should have or not have the way that news organizatrons do now.

This is one of the most laughably naive things I have ever read.

No wonder you will also watch Tim Pool and Bill Maher and believe what they say.

 

[arthwollipot]

Ummm, what. Do you think the violence came first the it went all peaceful like?

First it was peaceful, then it got violent, now it's mostly peaceful again. Look:

Paris extends curfew as Marseille and Lyon ban protests after riots

Protests will only be allowed in some towns and cities if organised by unions, and top museums will be closed on Saturday.

www.bbc.com

France is still reeling from major disorder at the weekend, when large protests against the high cost of living and school conditions were overshadowed by riots and looting that saw business and historic buildings destroyed.

Hot tip. It's not the weekend any more.

France's justice minister said on Thursday that 217 people had been jailed over last weekend's disorder after being convicted in fast-track trials, with that number expected to rise.

Last weekend, not ongoing.

The city saw some of the worst violence last weekend and damage to more than 500 businesses.

Past tense.

Public transport Marseille will be suspended on Saturday to try to prevent a repeat of the riots in the city.

But it's clear that they're preparing for more riots this weekend. Future tense.

Notice also that this is another article that isn't trying to peacewash the riots. And again, this isn't "carefully curated". This is literally the first article I found on the site about the riots.

 

[smartcooky]

First it was peaceful, then it got violent, now it's mostly peaceful again. Look:

Paris extends curfew as Marseille and Lyon ban protests after riots

Protests will only be allowed in some towns and cities if organised by unions, and top museums will be closed on Saturday.

www.bbc.com

Hot tip. It's not the weekend any more.

No ◊◊◊◊ Sherlock! Now here's a hot tip for you...
Go have look when I first posted about this issue... It was Wednesday at 8:41 am my time... Tuesday evening 7:41 pm in the UK. That is less than two full days after the weekend.
Now have a look when the YT uploader posted his video... It was the Monday evening in the UK, and it was about a report from the BBC THAT DAY, about the riots the day before... Guess what that was? It was a Sunday. Last time I looked, Sundays were on the weekend. The violence Was STILL ONGOING when the BBC was reporting it as peaceful!!.