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State Media Rushing Into Coverage Void Left By Dying Newspapers
derekmead writes "As newspaper budgets shrink, state-sponsored media outlets like RT, China Daily, and Al Jazeera have grown, hired more writers and offered more (free) coverage. Mark Mackinnon, writing for The Globe and Mail, explains the issue well: 'Throughout the recent crisis in Syria, and before that in Libya and Egypt, Xinhua and RT News have thrown unprecedented money and resources at reporting from the scene, even as Western media scale back on their own efforts. It's not too far-fetched to imagine a near future where it's Xinhua or RT, rather than the Associated Press or BBC, that have the only correspondents on the scene of an international crisis, meaning the world will only get Beijing or Moscow's version of what's happening.' But quality coverage still requires money, which means finding funding from somewhere. You see the effects of this every day: If your revenue is based mostly off of pay-per-click banner ads, a lowest-common denominator post, like a cheap roundup of cat pictures, is quite possibly going to pull in way more views for less money than a nuanced, deeply reported, and expensive dispatch from Syria. And, yeah, ads can be a bummer, especially when they're executed poorly, and paywalls aren't great. But when the alternatives are either fluffy, thin reporting; or worse, blatantly biased coverage sponsored by governments, we have to find a palatable way to fund good reporting."
Because it isn't. The BBC is funded via the TV license, not taxation. It is not government controlled, it is an independent entity.
No, BBC isn't state sponosred media, it's tax payers sponsored media (rather directly). While goverment has some oversight of BBC, comparing that RT or Xinhua is laughable at best. Both ar propaganda mouths of their respective goverments, and don't hide in shame about that.
Sorry, but I will take BBC over any of these any day. Call me Western capitalist whore if you like.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, so technically it's "state-owned". However, throughout most of the Middle East, its primary role is as a media outlet not controlled by either the national government or western business interests. And if you actually watch some of its reporting, you'll see that on issues outside of Qatar, its slant is different but certainly no more pronounced than your average western news outlet.
I am officially gone from
Think the Government and the British state don't have a large measure of control? Think again
Officially they don't. There have been numerous governments that have criticised the reporting of the BBC but been unable to prevent it - the BBC dutifully reported NATO airstrike civilian victims during the Balkans wars, leading to government criticism that BBC in fact stood for "Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation":
"During the Nato bombing campaign the British government was sharply critical of BBC coverage. At one stage some government officials referred to us as the Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation."- The Guardian
Now, contrast this situation with an actual state controlled media - do you think such a media would even be allowed to report on civilians killed by the state military (a fact that goes against the military line that these are "no-collateral-damage precision airstrikes"?) And to continue to report on such victims of your military, even when it angers and displeases the government? And it was not just the Kosovo War, during the Falklands War government ministers accused the BBC of unpatriotic and neutral reporting - one minister angrily naming it the "Stateless Person's Broadcasting Corporation", another the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation".
The notion that the TV license isn't a tax and the BBC isn't state-controlled is a delusion.
Compare the BBC and its successive spats with various governments to an actual state-controlled media and you will see a big difference. Do you think that real state-controlled media broadcasts any criticisms of the government? Would a real state-controlled media be allowed to report repeatedly on allegations that the government mis-represented the evidence for going to war? If so, why do we not see this kind of criticism coming out of, say, the Chinese state media?
Call me Western capitalist whore if you like.
Western capitalist whore!
It's nice to hear that RT even had a debate criticising Putin. The fact that he's been systematically undermining Russian democracy since he came to power probably doesn't doesn't feature too heavily on their coverage though, does it? But good on them for criticising him.
The BBC gets people on there every single day criticising David Cameron (he's the UK Prime Minister in case you weren't sure). They gave coverage to republicans during the Queen's jubilee celebrations, and she is hardly a Putin-like figure, but she is Head of State.
I find it a bit funny you've never watched Question Time or any other similar show. Maybe it passed you by in the decades its been running, and you think only RT has debate shows?
But I am sure that RT news is not 100% fiction or it would never work.
It seems like you have a perspective problem. If you're used to only having self-funded or advertising-funded media, then all "state-funded" media must be the same. But they're not.
The BBC collects its license fee itself. If you don't feel like funding the BBC, don't buy a TV. RT is funded centrally from tax money. Russian income tax pays for it whether you have a TV or not.
The Russian government owns RT. The British government does not own the BBC. At best, they own the decision about which private corporation has the right to be the national broadcaster and could take that away from the BBC.
The Russian government decides at all levels who runs RT, as it owns it. The UK government only gets to decide the BBC's director general and its charter; much like shareholders in a private company, the UK government is an outsider with a stake in the BBC, rather than the operator.
The Russian government likely tells RT what to say. The BBC frequently says things the the UK government doesn't want broadcast and has to take the BBC to court because it has no control over what the BBC says beyond "we might recommend to the independent review body that they cut your funding in 2016".
If the BBC was located in Russia and acted the way it does in Britain, the Russian government would have closed it down and murdered its chief executive by now.
The BBC's equivalent to RT is a small part of the BBC called the World Service - this is not the same as BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC. The World Service has always been funded directly by the state, from taxes, but from 2014 onwards the BBC has to pay for it by itself.
Does my bum look big in this?