Why BBC news cannot be trusted

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During the propaganda campaign to get us to take down Gaddafi, the BBC airs footage of an alleged demonstration in Libya, the only problem being that the demonstrators are waving Indian flags. They hoped no one would notice-



During the propaganda campaign to get us to take down Assad, the BBC doctors footage from a doctor, changing her words from "napalm" to "chemical weapons", hoping no one would notice-



During the massacre on Gaza in 2008/9, the BBC refuse to broadcast an appeal for humanitarian aid in Gaza, because of being instructed by Israel not to do so. Tony Benn does it for them-



The BBC like pretty much every news station, repeated the lies during the second Iraq war. They have refused to mention the US and UK support and weapon sales to the Saudis, with those weapons going to blow up schools and hospitals in Yemen. They called the organ eating Jihadis in Syria 'moderate rebels' and refused to show the videos of our 'moderate rebels' carrying out the brutal murders and cannibalism, rather saying that it "allegedly" happened.

I've seen a lot of people here say they believe BBC news is credible. Hopefully this might help them question that.

I remember pretty distinctly some high profile news organizations(maybe the BBC) circulating pictures of the victims of our war in Iraq as victims of Bashar al-Assad

I think the thing that shows that the BBC is fair and balanced more than anything else is how almost everyone with a strong opinion hates it. People on the right claim it has a left-wing bias, people on the left accuse it of being a Conservative mouthpiece, anti-Semites accuse it of being too strongly pro-Israel, Zionists accuse it of being too strongly pro-Palestine...

The napalm thing was not doctored to add in a fake reference to chemical weapons. There's a full and detailed explanation available here. tl;dr: original broadcast contained both "chemical weapon" and "napalm", it became clear it wasn't a chemical weapon so "chemical weapon" was taken out, then the full clip was used again in Panorama at the end of September but cut short. In all cases, the surrounding footage made it clear that there was initial uncertainty and that it was eventually confirmed to be napalm or similar. I'm not really sure why someone would doctor a video to mislead people into thinking that a different weapon of mass destruction was used...

The Indian flag thing is probably just a mistake. In big organisations, occasionally someone plays the wrong footage. Actually this happens quite regularly in totally innocuous situations. Agree that this one is particularly unfortunate. Doesn't look like anyone thought it was worth officially complaining about though.

The BBC don't ignore arms sales to the Saudis and Yemen, that's a complete fabrication on your part that was easy to fact check.

The Syrian rebel who ate an opponent's heart was an al-Nusra commander, not a "moderate" in the FSA or a similar group. It was also reported on by the BBC. Again, this was quite easy to fact check.

Reporting what politicians say about classified intelligence is a no-win situation. Of course everyone reported it, and nobody was in a position to challenge it. You can't really hold that against anyone. In the same way, you couldn't hold it against the news if tomorrow Trump said the CIA had just foiled a terrorist attack by a Yemeni. Nobody would be able to challenge him from a position of strength unless they had access to classified information.

So, of the five claims made by the original poster, three were inaccurate, one is a fact of life, and one is probably a valid complaint but also probably just a mistake.

If the BBC was wrong three times out of four then I'd stop paying attention...

There is no effective moderate fighting force on the ground in Syria besides the Kurds, all other opposition are Islamists of varying levels. "Moderates" Sunni Arab fighters straight up don't have the courage or fortitude to wage this fight, this is a sectarian conflict which lends itself to the extreme and pretty much all of civil society in Syria has either left and sided with Assad at this point whether they like him or not because they do not want to be ruled by Islamic State.

I thought it was common knowledge that people didn't trust the BBC. You shouldn't really trust most media anyway, everyone over exaggerates everything. I normally go with The Independent before anything or the Metro for fun browsing although the Metro has become rather clickbaity and annoying but no news source is perfect.

The daily fail/The daily racist is probably the worst newspaper in the entire country but it's fun to troll the pondlife on their facebook comments.

As an aspiring journalist I've always taken the view that if you're being accused of bias by all sides of politics then you're doing a good thing. It's because people in their own political camps always want their side of the story to be told; when this doesn't happen they cry "Bias" despite the fact that their opponents have also claimed the same thing. I remember a radio broadcaster saying that whenever he'd chair a debate on the Israel-Palestine issue he'd always receive accusations that he's both a pro-Palestine anti-Semite and an anti-Palestine Zionist at the same time.