There is certainly some serious discussions and decisions around the internet and social media with regards to politics. I’ve skipped that (for now) because it is beyond the current issues with GBNews.
Please provide evidence for this claim.
For sure, the tech billionaires definitely influence searches, streams, social media and all the rest. I trust we all take a very sceptical view of the info we are pushed. I’ve seen stuff you’ve shared that perhaps you might have done a quick simple check on beforehand.
Hence the need to curtail the ability to buy influence and buy elections and buy politicians. Thanks for agreeing with that key point.
I am interested in what you mean by “almost every country”. My own view would be that countries that place strong limits of buying influence might be such countries. Perhaps Canada, Belgium, South Korea are examples.
Yup, done that check. Many countries have billionaire owners of one or two broadcast channels, while the rest remain otherwise owned. No country, aside from the US and Russia and North Korea, has a single ownership of the majority of broadcast operations. I’m amazed that you are not worried about this.
You’re free to turn off your tv or not read any of the newspapers, if people want to believe the BS, that’s their right, just as it’s yours to pretend the left-wing is not as corrupt as the right-wing.
From what we’ve seen in the last 30-40 years, they’re all as corrupt as each other as soon as they get their feet under the table in Westminster.
I need to remind you that in the UK the rules around impartiality are different for newspapers than for TV. The issue is not about being able to switch off the TV or not. The issue is about GBTV signing up to these rules and then completely flaunting them. Once you have understood the issue better then you comment back.
It does not appear that you do understand the issue as your post only referred to switching the TV off and your view that all politicians are corrupt. Neither notion has any bearing on the issue that Offcom is allowing GBNews to act as a broadcast vehicle for the reform party.
I’m dictating nothing, I’m just pointed out that your post and the views you shared were not relevant. That is, you were not providing any sort of answer to the issue of GBNews’ rule breaking…
I’d also note that the suggestion of “you can simply turn the TV off” is the same as “I cannot see any problem here, we should let GBNews do what it wants regardless of rules, and besides I quite like a lot of what they say, but if you don’t like it then reach for the remote controller.”.
I think the point here is: There are too many rules concerning freedom of speech, GB News should be able to support who and what they want as long as it’s not extremism or hatred.
You have yourself accused many news outlets of being biased one way or another, so what’s so wrong about GB News favouring Reform…Call it a party political broadcast. That’s what the BBC do.
The rules governing the impartiality of TV broadcasts are not set randomly or without reason. And certainly not to disadvantage Reform. The worry that is being addressed with these rules is about the possibility of one party (I do not mean political party - I mean person, or company or institute or government) gaining ownership of a TV channel and using that to promote the political views that party supports. It is not impossible to imagine a rich individual, or a trade union, or a foreign company (perhaps directly linked to a foreign power) taking such ownership. There are 480 UK TV channels but in reality there are only about 10 of note in terms of offering news and opinion programming. So it is quite possible for that to happen to Channel 5, or Sky News or even (if sold off like some Tories wanted) Channel 4. The rules are there to prevent 24/7 push of political views from one side only. It is naive to think that this is not a possibility.
And I’m not accusing GBNews of being biased - that is what you see when a news article favours one angle of a story. I agree that BBC and others do this. No, what GBNews does is offer entire programming to one party, hour after hour, with leaders from that party given their own platform …but no such platform for other parties. That is not bias, that is endorsement.
As far as I am aware it is not compulsory to watch GBNews - I think their viewers consist of those who agree with them anyway. As for bias - didn’t the BBC splice two speeches of Trump to make it look like he said something he didn’t (no I am not a fan of his - scares the bejesus out of me!)
So allowing censorship through rules, isn’t that how state media works in China and North Korea. The only difference is in the UK, by censoring everything, they make you think that censorship is doing you a favour and is good for you. I watch the green party telling me how good they are, and if Jesus ever returned to earth he would probably subscribe to the green party, but it doesn’t make me want to vote for them…
I will probably vote for Reform though because they are doing good things in my neck of the woods.
No difference between censorship and rules. If you don’t want the media to cover something, just make some rules against it.
Look what they did with covid and the vaccines, and now with net zero and CO2 nobody was allowed to criticise or even question.
You need to explain how a rule that requires that a balance of views is presented is the same as censorship. To compare the two and call them the same is self-evident rubbish.
That statement is your opinion, to which you are at liberty to share, but to others it will not be rubbish. Everyone’s opinion will differ, so please take this into account.
Err, no its not opinion. We are simply looking at two separate things. One is censorship - that is, the omission of salient facts or opinions. Censorship is “you don’t get to mention that or talk about that”. Whereas a rule about needing to provide a balanced set of views is that you can present whatever political view you want, provided you also give air time to the other views. So it is not censoring anything, The rule is simply obliging the broadcaster to also show the different political perspectives.
If you can demonstrate that this rule is in effect censorship (that is it is preventing certain views from being aired) then let’s chat about that. But as these evidently are two separate things then you are going to have to accept that this is not my opinion. It is simply setting out what these two separate things are.
