What goes around, comes around...

[mrph]

Remember the Fox News opinion piece that attacked Gilligan and the BBC, pretty much implying that the BBC had been pro-Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq? (It was available as video online, and got linked from several LJs).

Well, OFCOM has just finished investigating and has found Fox to be in breach of British broadcasting rules - in particular, the "respect for truth" and "opinions expressed must not rest upon false evidence" sections of the code.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1239094,00.html

Comments

[smogo.livejournal.com]

The full OFCOM report is here.

[deeply-spurious.livejournal.com]

Thanks for flagging this up. It is a reminder, I think, that if people complain to the regulator as well as to their lj friends, action can and will be taken... It only took 24 people to complain - if anyone on here was one of them, then well done :)
If enough people complain about Fox in the future, I suspect the same will happen...

I am less encouraged, though, by the reference to changing the rules on impartiality... this sounds to me like code for significantly relaxing the rules on impartiality... the prospect of Sky News (which currently provides a populist but basically decent service) becoming like a UK version of Fox is very scary indeed...

[taoist-goth.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is, given that Fox were in breach of guidelines, what are the reparations?

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

snap

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'd wondered about that bit...

[taoist-goth.livejournal.com]

It seems to happen so often that someone is found to have broken the rules, but then nothing is done to either punish them nor prevent it from happening again. No wonder people have no feckin' respect any more. Fox should be fined heavily and put on probation under penalty of having their UK broadcasting licence revoked.

[mina-laury.livejournal.com]

'Fox News could justifiably claim to have achieved a level of accuracy and impartiality that was appropriate to its audience in the US, where different rules apply.'

Ouch.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Fox News is shit.