Originally published at: BBC cancels broadcast of "Crypto-Millionaire documentary" at last moment | Boing Boing
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Wait, could this trend we’ve been reporting on breathlessly and uncritically as something not to be missed out on actually be a pyramid scheme run by flashy grifters?
[Applies to cryptocurrency, NFTs, political campaigns led by right-wingers with weird hair, etc.]
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I don’t think the BBC has any journalistic integrity left at this point
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Always remember: the majority of journalism is still about making money. There are things that are hard to understand at first like crypto and NFTs, and they get suckered in because they see people (supposedly) earning millions. This is like the flip side of fear-mongering, whether it’s Satanism or comic books or video games or hip-hop/heavy metal. The bottom line for all this stuff is drawing an audience and generating ad revenue.
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I’ll still take Auntie Beeb over U.S. TV news outlets. As Rob notes, they’ve been deliberately starved of funding to the point where their investigative capability has been hollowed out.
That’s not to make excuses for them – there are deeper and more long-standing problems with the BBC’s institutional culture that one needs to be aware of when considering their reportage.
I can confirm that broadcast journalism is really bad with any story involving math or science. Not long after I started in my first writing job I quickly became the go-to person for any and all stories involving economics or tech because no-one else in the newsroom really grasped the subject matter even at the shallow level I was able to.
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Yeah, they probably are still better than U.S. TV news and I admittedly have a bias against them for being openly transphobic.
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That’s an understandable and well-grounded bias. It does look like the BBC has a significant number of trans employees, though, and the younger staff in general are starting to push back against anti-trans stories approved and given a pass by the Boomers at the top. One hopes there’s room for change and progress.
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I did read that a lot of trans and other lgbtq+ employees have left though.
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It’s worth bearing in mind that the BBC is obliged to do local coverage that its funding no longer adequately covers. It can’t do what a normal media company might do and scrap local coverage to focus on national and international news.
Without excusing its institutional failures and shortcomings, it’s got no way out of this death spiral except political change in the UK. It is doomed by its contraints and obligations.
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I admit my knowledge regarding the structure of the BBC is lacking and my criticisms are informed from sources with a bias towards LGBTQ+ issues.
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See also - there’s less people with a STEM background than there used to be in journalism.
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This article also caused me to question the journalistic integrity at the BBC.
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And that figure was never good, but it’s getting worse.
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Do any of you guys remember how the BBC caught onto a kid who supposedly got super rich by creating a million pixel website where people, for some reason, would pay him to ‘own’ a single pixel. I don’t blame the kid, he was so young he probably didn’t realise the extent to which he was bullshitting, but the BBC chose to believe every word of his weird tale, making him an ever bigger liar as one news update followed another.
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That really happened.
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Sure, I know the page went up, it’s just that to my knowledge the kid never produced any proof of having made a million quid. He was living with his mum and supposedly turning down amazing job offers for years afterwards.
I imagine he made a bit of money, sure, but if he had a million to his name I am pretty sure the evidence would materialise in some way.
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Letting bullshitters speak their tiny little minds is not impartiality. FFS
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People have blown bigger fortunes than that.
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It’s pretty easy to convince non-business reporters that you have more money than you actually do. They seldom ask for receipts or bank statements. A compelling/fun story and just the right amount of bling (owned or rented) will convince them. Biff knew it, Epstein knew it, Anna Sorokin (subject of a new TV series) knew it, that cringe-rapping pair of grifters knew it, and so did this shite-coin peddler. Maybe the million-dollar Web page kid knew it too.
Lottery winners tend to do this, in part because this is the first time they’ve had to manage that kind of money (very different from running a household budget on earned income) and in part because family and friends and strangers immediately show up with their hands out. Many lotteries now allow winners to be anonymous to avoid the latter situation.
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