That is certainly one way of putting it. Another is that, first, the Trump stuff is much less important than the BBC’s issues in other areas and that it seems modestly significant that Goodall devotes almost no space at all in his lengthy Substack piece to any of those issues. Secondly, at no point does Goodall bother considering whether some or any of the criticisms made by Prescott and Grossman have any validity at all.
That, however, seems a necessary starting point.
News judgement is often a nuanced and complex business. News “values”, on the other hand, should be comparatively straightforward. This is where it is entirely reasonable to convict the BBC’s coverage of the sex & gender wars. For here the corporation largely – though with notable exceptions, especially Hannah Barnes on Newsnight – picked a side and chose the one that required BBC journalists to sacrifice their judgement. Ideology trumped basic news values. They said it was dry when in fact it wasn’t obviously dry at all.
For once again, among the most important of those values is this eternal question: Is This True?
There is blood in the water and the sharks are circling. This story is going to run and run and run 😀
Journalism used to be about reporting facts and any opinions were clearly contained within editorials.
There has been a Great Slide and most ‘news’ is now opinion and entertainment. I don’t think anyone is necessarily blameworthy for this (including us, the public), it’s just the consequence of business seeking profit by selling what people want.
The problem with the BBC is that it still imagines that it is old style journalism… but a long history of scandals, culminating in the most recent ones, has shown that the BBC is now opinion and entertainment too.
The special licensing arrangements are no longer justifiable.
The question is not, ‘Will a person who believes This be motivated to do evil?’ The question is, ‘Is This True?’
The question is not, ‘Will a society filled with people who believe This be able to last?’ The question is, ‘Is This True?’
The question is not, ‘Will I be able to determine whether or not This is True in time to do anything about it?’ The question is, ‘Is This True?’
The question is not, ‘Will most people who believe This live fulfilling, productive lives?’ The question is, ‘Is This True?’
The question is not, ‘Is this as close to True as I can explain to people who haven’t had years of experience in the field?’ The question is, ‘Is This True?’
I admit, it’s a distraction from the thesis of the original post, but it’s a philosophical point that’s been nagging at me. In fact, as far as the original post is concerned, the only reason that last point wouldn’t be a better question for journalists to ask themselves is that they probably don’t have enough experience in the subject to tell the difference themselves.
On further reflection, that’s not the ‘only’ reason. It’d still be an improvement if the hypothetical journalists in question could explicitly tell their audience that the model they outline is only an approximation.
It’s my fault for being in a hurry to post a comment. I realized it taking my dog for the morning walk, and spent the return trip kicking myself. Which makes it even harder to walk a dog.
Discovered Joys, are Schools of Journalism blameworthy? Seems they should be addressing such issues and I suspect they have been. I also suspect that their answer 50 years ago was different than it is now or 20 years ago. And that new answer, something along the lines of “anything is permitted if it moves us closer to the Utopia we all know is possible”, might just be where most of the blame lies.
I have a similar view about the state of education in the US: graduate schools of Education Administration have filled our school district administrations with the worst Marxists ever, people who are Left of Mao! Sorry…drifting off topic.
No more forced funding for the BBC – and no more forced funding for Channel Four and “Ofcom” (the “regulator”) – they all push the same world-view.
There are plenty of other leftist stations, such as “Sky News” (owned by the despicable Disney Corporation) – there is no need for a BBC tax (“license fee”) a “levy” to fund the (vile) Channel Four, or government funding for “Ofcom” organization that dishonestly hounded Mark Steyn to his heart attacks.
Get rid of all the compulsory (forced) funding.
@Discovered Joys
Journalism used to be about reporting facts and any opinions were clearly contained within editorials.
FWIW, I’m not sure that is true. I think it is just that you had only limited options to see alternative opinions. You look at older news papers they most certainly were not the paragons of ethical journalism that this would imply.
I have to say that Britain has always had a vibrant newspaper establishment, from the Sun and the Telegraph to the Guardian and the Mirror. And the “only reporting facts” thing is a bit of a myth. The story a reader gets from reading or listening does not just depend on only the veracity of the “facts” presented but also which of the facts are presented. I think anyone who has been on the other side of a newspaper article (which I have several times) is often quite shocked at how the presentation and selection of facts, however, true, can completely skew the meaning they seem to reveal.
The solution is not trying to find some ideal center where pure hearted reporters refuse to violate their ethical code, as if they were doctors or lawyers. Rather the solution is simply a plurality of sources of information from different sources, and then you must find someone you trust to filter it down into terms you can absorb.
If I can, for example, offer one clear example of this. Most news sources spend the VAST majority of their time reporting on politics. The truth is that the outcomes in your life and the most significant things that affect you are nothing to do with politics. In fact by the constant focus on politics we greatly elevate its importance, empower it, and cause its inevitably toxic influence more and more into our lives. The constant reporting on it has brainwashed too many people into thinking that the only thing that can make their lives better is some politician doing some thing they want. But that could not be further from the truth, in fact it is almost the polar opposite of the truth.
Of course the solution is simple, if not easy. People love the BBC? Good for them. People want a TV channel without advertisements? They certainly have the right. Let them pay their license fee and get it good and hard. And those that don’t? Leave them alone to do their own thing without arrogantly thinking the BBC has the right to put its hand in everyone’s pocket. This separation used to be hard, plainly now it is extremely easy. Can anyone tell me the last time they sat down and watched broadcast TV? I certainly can’t. It might have been in the 1990s.
Fraser,
Just as an aside, one of my favourite movie scenes occurs at the begining of This Island Earth. The lead lands a plane he has been testing and is surrounded by reporters. “What’s it like up there, doc? Give me something for my readers.”
Reporters, not journalists, writing about something that has nothing to do with politics that will interest their readers. A different country indeed.
It has to be frustrating that Trump sucks all of the oxygen and ink out of a world containing so many interesting possible discussions.
@Fraser Orr
I believe it was more true than not. Even if my (aged) memory fails me I still have ‘newspapers of your birthday’ to physically view. Certainly only newsworthy facts were reported, a subtle form of news management, and also many articles in local papers were simply wrong in some details, but overall the body of the newspaper was about ‘events’ and ‘opinion’ was constrained to editorials. Now I’ll agree that this reflects my views of the middle of the last century – but I was there. If you were born (say) forty years ago your observations would be different. Just as mine would be different if I based my views on the early decades of the last century.
The evolution of newspapers from broadsheets to tabloids has happened over more than a single person’s lifetime and so is not as obvious as some other changes.
Even in small American towns there were often competing newspapers – locally owned and with deeply opposed political opinions.
Now, due to biased tax law (corporations pay much lower tax rates than individuals and families) and the demand for “qualified journalists”, newspapers are owned by distant corporations, and tend to reflect the same “School of Journalism” leftist ideology.
There is still competition between British newspapers – but television stations are under the despicable “Ofcom”, even GB News is not really a great alternative – look what happened to Mark Steyn and others.
The “Cantillon Effect”, Credit Money, also tends to concentrate ownership and/or control in the United States and other nations – large corporations get access to the Credit Money first (and often at lower interest rates) and can use it to buy assets – before the price goes up.
There is, of course, a more fundamental question:
How can i know whether this is true?
One could quibble that there is an even more fundamental question:
How can i know how can i know whether this is true?
And so on, in an infinite regress.
I agree entirely with Fraser Orr @ November 12, 2025 at 8:41 pm
I do think we have somewhat rose-tinted view of the past. As far as journalism goes it is worth remembering that Clark Kent is a character from a comic book. Nobody views the World from a neutral position (in principle, could even God?*) but what changes is which Worldviews are fashionable. For example the last few decades have seen the left go from from general support of Israel to outright hatred. We have also seen the Green movement go from being a fringe bunch of tie-dyed loons to the Saviours of The Planet. Not that long ago Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (for that is her full name) would have been in a rest home for the emotionally interesting and not Times Magazine’s “Person of the Year”.
Yes, she is a Tintin. Oddly enough another comic book journalist. You’d think knowing Captain Haddock she’d be able to organise a better flotilla!
I agree entirely with Fraser Orr @ November 12, 2025 at 8:41 pm
I do think we have somewhat rose-tinted view of the past. As far as journalism goes it is worth remembering that Clark Kent is a character from a comic book. Nobody views the World from a neutral position (in principle, could even God?*) but what changes is which Worldviews are fashionable. For example the last few decades have seen the left go from from general support of Israel to outright hatred. We have also seen the Green movement go from being a fringe bunch of tie-dyed loons to the Saviours of The Planet. Not that long ago Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (for that is her full name) would have been in a rest home for the emotionally interesting and not Times Magazine’s “Person of the Year”.
Yes, she is a Tintin. Oddly enough another comic book journalist. You’d think knowing Captain Haddock she’d be able to organise a better flotilla!
*I mean God is omniscient** but He does also have well set-out moral viewpoints.
**Tricky because if He knows the future then what does that say for free will and therefore sin and salvation and all that malarkey?
*I mean God is omniscient** but He does also have well set-out moral viewpoints.
**Tricky because if He knows the future then what does that say for free will and therefore sin and salvation and all that malarkey?
@Snorri Godhi
How can i know whether this is true?
A more interesting question is what does it even mean to be “true”? That was my original reaction when I saw this article on samizdata. I don’t like to say too much about this because it is shockingly pedantic, but the simple fact is that the scientists of the 19th century sought, among other things, an absolute truth, whereas one of the lessons of the 20th century was that there wasn’t an absolutely truth, or at the very least it cannot be determined absolutely.
There are several examples of this but perhaps the two most prominent ones are Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and quantum mechanics.
Much of the thrust of mathematics from time immemorial and certainly since the renaissance, has been seeking out a mathematics where we assume a fundamental set of axioms (including productive rules like induction) and from that we can show the whole of mathematics to be true. However Gödel’s two theorems actually proved that this was not possible. That there were some things that were true or false just because, and that if you took those “extras” as axioms then it would produce a whole new set of things that were true just because. Which is to say there is no set of axioms that can be used to produce a complete, verifiable, mathematical system of anything but the most trivial degree. This theorem essentially dismantled the whole core thrust of mathematics from its very foundations of counting things with tally marks.
Of course this might seem to be some dusty, old irrelevant theory, but mathematics is, effectively, the most pure form of reasoning and logic we have, and so any other reason or logic is at least as fuzzy as this. Morality, for example: there are no sets of moral axioms that you can create that will not produce surprising results.
And as to quantum mechanics: what it tells us is that everything we measure we measure only to some degree of probability. The lesson of quantum mechanics is that nothing, in the physical realm, is certain, only probable to some degree.
So this matters at the macroscopic level how? Well I think for sure people are way too certain about things. When one declares something to be true it is backed by a shockingly large number of assumptions, known and unknown, that are very readily challenged and are based on observations that are only probably correct to some degree. All of our houses are built, to some degree, on the sand and not on the rock. So I think we should be rather more humble about our certainty on various points.
Says me, the man living in a glass house with a big pile of rocks.
No honest “mistakes” were made – it was not that the BBC did not know what is true and what is false, they CHOOSE to mislead, to attempt to deceive the public.
As has often been pointed out before – it is an error (a terrible error) to think that there is a “knowledge problem” and that such leftists would stop doing what they do, if only they had more information. They know (they know) they are behaving wickedly – and choose to behave wickedly.
Were you involved in publishing the USA econ stats during the Biden years? 😉
The BBC knew what they were pushing was not true – and, as is often the case, all they cared about was that it helped their political and cultural agenda.
Again there is no “knowledge problem” here – they know what is true and what is false, and they choose (choose) to push what is false.