Is The Bbc 24Hrs News Too Parochial'

[modeller]

Several of my foreign friends have told me they don't watch BBC because it's far to home based and spend far too much time on one subject and sport. Instead they watch Al jazeera , France and European News.
I tend to agree but RT is probably the worse as it is largely anti-US propaganda.

What do you think ?

[boxtops]

I'd agree to some extent - in the daytime, we often watch Al Jazeera for a world view.

We often listen to the World Service on the radio too - you get to hear about matters which are often not raised in the daytime BBC news channels.

[ichkeria]

The BBC News Channel is indeed frustrating for its lack of foreign news. There is a BBC World channel of course which is along the lines of the excellent Al Jazeera etc. Unfortunately though it can't be shown in the UK as it's commercially funded.
The less said about the abysmal RT indeed the better.

[ladybirder]

I agree modeller, I think it is parochial and I have a wonder around Al Jazeera et al as well to find out what's happening.

[Answerprancer]

I think it's far *too* home based ;-)

[237SJ]

I quite like BBC News 24 but Sky News is better. When I`m abroad (which is about 50% of the month) I watch RT and Al Zazeera. BBC World is rubbish though - they are so busy being PC that they don`t show any news in the UK let alone the weather. They seem to forget that there are people like me that actually want to know what the weather is like in the UK. RT and Al Zazeera are not anti Western. They just portray the news from the point of view of parts of the non-Western world and there is nothing wrong with that. When you watch those channels on a regular basis, you realise how much we in the Western world are subject to propaganda.

[ichkeria]

I'm sorry but RT is just ridiculous. It has a self-confessed agenda to promote 'Russia', which would be great if that was what it actually did. But what it actually does is act as a sort of anti-Western soap box. If you notice, they take one or two news stories at each bulletin and after a short lead-in they immediately wheel out carefully chosen interviewees who they know are going to give a particular view that they want people to hear. Some people live that sort of thing, but, personally, I want information, balance and to be able to trust a station that it is not trying to feed a certain line. They've plainly studied Fox News and decided they are going to 'out-Fox' them.

Particularly awful is 'Breaking the Set', fronted by a rather manic American presenter, which aims to break the 'Left-Right paradigm' pushed by the 'political establishment' and present the 'truth'. Yeah right: what is the name of that Soviet paper again: Pravda = truth (?)

[237SJ]

Funilly enough, I have never seen any evidence that RT promotes Russia. RT and Al Jazeera just portray the news in such a way as to not be Western-centric IMO. But then again, I only spend half of my life in the UK so what would I know ? ;-)

[ichkeria]

No RT doesn't promote Russia. Or at least they do in a good way with travelogue style stuff. News-wise though they are a disaster. Al-Jazeera on the other hand is excellent.