> But the BBC is a de facto government agency — an agency for which all Britons who own televisions are forced by statute to pay — and, as a result, the material that it is modifying is effectively publicly owned.
This is a massive simplification which somewhat undermines the overall article. The government does not automatically own or have the copyright of the material broadcast by the BBC, definitely not in the strict IP sense. The BBC is a 'public corporation': neither a private corporation nor a government department. Furthermore, it generates revenue independently of the license fee, e.g. from sale of content overseas (and advertising on its .com site, as opposed to the .co.uk site we see in the UK).
I'm not saying that the BBC is right or wrong to modify it's historic content, just that the argument that the content is publicly owned is flawed.
I don't care what the technical status of the BBC is. It is publicly funded and thus the public has an interest in ensuring history is not being rewritten.
It is not "publicaly funded" in the same way that the roads or NHS are. I didn't pay a penny to the BBC the entire time I lived in the country because I never had a television. I still paid for the roads though, despite not having a car (yes, everyone actually pays for the roads, not just motorists).
So while I agree they shouldn't be doing this, I wouldn't use the "publically funded" argument. It muddies the waters and makes rebuke easier.
I would absolutely use the "publicly funded" argument, because the public was forced to pay for BBC productions if they had a Television (a device for viewing them).
When much of this content was made, there were not even VHS tapes or streaming sticks, meaning the only thing a television would have been used for was the BBC. And you can't argue that it was not compulsory - BBC ran scare campaigns for decades about their "TV Detector vans" to fine people who didn't pay.
To me, the method might be different, but that doesn't change the publicly funded status.
I don't care if it wasn't funded the same way as roads. It was still publicly funded, just in a different way. I believe that anything that had compulsory public money going into it should be properly archived, be it film, or software, or old documents.
For the purpose of this article, though, they are "intact" in the sense that the archives themselves are not being "censored", right? Only broadcast repeats from the archives (which remain untouched and, for want of a better word, intact.)
From now on, at least, they should be. Storage is relatively cheap and the shows can be monetized in other ways to help fund new productions.
What would not be acceptable would be to delete original content that has already been created because it's unsuitable for modern sensitivities. The best approach could be to offer the adaptation and have an option to watch the potentially upsetting content. I think broadcasting content that, for instance, promotes racism, homophobia, or misogyny, violates the BBC's mandate "to act in the public interest". OTOH, pretending it never existed also goes against that mandate.
> I don't care if it wasn't funded the same way as roads. It was still publicly funded, just in a different way. I believe that anything that had compulsory public money going into it should be properly archived
There is no compulsory public money going into the BBC, as evidenced by the fact that I was not required to pay a single penny to the BBC for the 36 years I lived in the UK.
This is putting aside the argument that were it to be publicly funded, it must be properly archived. I don't know where that entitlement comes from.
> yes, everyone actually pays for the roads, not just motorists
That's because everyone benefits from roads, not just motorists. I make this argument constantly in California related gas tax discussions...
The majority of wear and tear on roads is due to large commercial vehicles. Most of the cost and benefit of roads is transportation for the good you buy not the people they move.
And don't cause any wear and tear on the roads - but of course cyclists pay for goods and services that commercial vehicles provide which include fuel taxes and registration and licensing fees in their pricing.
> It is not "publicaly funded" in the same way that the roads or NHS are
The mental gymnastics around funding for the BBC (and other government owned medias like CBC) is really interesting. Ultimately funding comes from the government, no matter what.
It's just that instead of writing them a check, they give them the privilege of collecting a tax (and the government decides how much they can collect). I don't understand why some people try so hard to muddy the water around this to make it sound like these broadcasters are not government sponsored. It's very dishonest.
Note that these pain points could end at any time by simply… making the BBC/CBC private entities that must fund themselves by simply making content that people want to watch. That’s what everyone else is already doing (and if you look at companies like Marvel and Disney, is extremely profitable).
>> (yes, everyone actually pays for the roads, not just motorists).
> Cough fuel duty
Revenue from fuel duty isn't exclusively used to pay for the road system. Same for vehicle excise duty. As with most government spending, road building and maintenance is paid for out of general government funds. Hypothecation is rarely used in the UK tax system.
> I don't care what the technical status of the BBC is. It is publicly funded and thus the public has an interest in ensuring history is not being rewritten.
The organisation has a duty to serve all members of the UK.
Removing language which degrades segments of this audience, is clearly within its remit.
A dogged determinism to 'not rewrite history', is not.
In the US there were Senators who defended the practice of lynching in newspaper pieces. Should we go back and edit historical records to remove this on account of those opinions degrading some segments of the modern audience?
I think it's important to keep an archive of unaltered content. But, given that much of this content is for entertainment, curation is important.
For example, when Disney Plus was new, I decided to watch Peter Pan with my kids. One was 4, and one wasn't even two. Curiously, I couldn't find Peter Pan in the "kids" mode, so I switched back to the adult mode and put it on. There was a very subtle warning about "outdated cultural references," but I didn't think much of it as I've seen Peter Pan a few times.
The Disney Plus version reintroduced "What Made the Red Man Red?", an extremely racist musical bit. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Made_the_Red_Man_Red%3F) In the past, this song was cut from the VHS and DVD version. (And I have vague memories of wondering why the lost boys returned to their tree dressed as Indians.) I had no idea that this was put back in the movie. My jaw dropped when the song came on. I was in so much shock that I didn't think to skip the scene.
Now, I have no problem preserving the uncut film, and making it generally available! But I also would prefer to show my young children the cut version of the film, and only show them racist material when they're old enough to understand why it's wrong. (After all, those who forget history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history.)
I watched that scene on yt, read the lyrics and even wiki page about that song. I can't understand why it's considered "extremely racist". It looks even cute. However I'm from Eastern Europe and probably miss some subtler context here. Or is this a case of overcorrection in US society? Excessive political correctness for past wrongdoings?
It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist. Guess what? It's also called "black magic" in Serbia since centuries ago, when noone here ever saw non-white man. Black in this context symbolizes darkness, and fear we feel in the dark. Not a skin color.
Btw. "roleplaying" cowboys and indians was a pupular childhood game in 80-ties here. Although Indians (I'm using this term since it's still the only one used around here) were typically portraited as bad guys in movies, they were as popular as cowboys in our games and many children wanted to be like them.
Mostly because it reinforces/reinforces several stereotypes by associating the group as exotic and savage (less developed).
For example, making their skin literally red. Potentially artistic license, but also very odd considering that isn't a real skin color. Or stating that they were white to begin with and then were turned red, implying a type of deficiency/aberration from "normal" white. Plus the term "redskin" was used historically as a pejorative and associated with contempt, derision, condescension, or sentimental paeans to the noble savage. The stereotype of huge noses also is frowned upon since it was used to make claims of their savagery and brutishness unlike the civilized Europeans. (See also stereotyping Jews as having big noses)
Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language. This is probably the biggest issue. The tribes actually had a full language for communication, not just a bunch of grunts.
It also takes something that would have very specific and special meaning, a war dance, and turns it into a party dance.
The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid since she's a girl instead of letting her join in the fun.
> Or stating that they were white to begin with and then were turned red
The lyrics never say that the native were once "white" and turned red. It says that they're red because they've all been blushing. The "white" skin color is never mentioned nor even implied, anyone can blush and it has nothing to do with skin color.
> Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language.
The song gives actual words in some constructed native language, together with their translations. For such a short and simple text, the implication that they can do a lot more than just grunt could hardly be any clearer!
> The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid ... instead of letting her join in the fun.
They're showing that their native culture encourages women to work and make themselves useful to their community and tribe, and that their contributions will be properly valued in return. Have you never heard of the Ant and the Grasshopper? It was quite a popular story among native Americans, despite originating in the Western world.
> I watched that scene on yt, read the lyrics and even wiki page about that song. I can't understand why it's considered "extremely racist". It looks even cute. However I'm from Eastern Europe and probably miss some subtler context here. Or is this a case of overcorrection in US society? Excessive political correctness for past wrongdoings?
It's "extremely racist" because the new requirement by certain ideological groups is that depictions of certain ethnic groups has to be done with extreme sensitivity, otherwise they're racist. It's an extremely high bar (e.g. I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied). The result seems to be a general expungement of Native American imagery in the US, even of some stuff created by Native Americans themselves.
> It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist. Guess what? It's also called "black magic" in Serbia since centuries ago, when noone here ever saw non-white man. Black in this context symbolizes darkness, and fear we feel in the dark. Not a skin color.
First they go after the mockery, then they of after the innocent stereotypes, then they go after the things that just have a coincidental relation (because they can't stop).
> I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied
I think what you are missing here is that there is no history in the US of genocide against people of English or French descent. The US has a long history of exploiting American Indians, forcibly relocating them at gunpoint, or just killing them outright.
Part of what made this possible was systematic dehumanization of American Indians by portraying them as ignorant savages who were incapable of being "civilized" due to their race. This is the exact dehumanization that Disney was engaging in for laffs in Peter Pan.
Obviously, we need to do more to make up for this history of injustices against American Indians. But I find that those who speak loudest to justify racist caricatures against them are the ones least likely to want to do anything to redress those injustices.
>> I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied
> I think what you are missing here is that there is no history in the US of genocide against people of English or French descent.
I'm not missing that, and I'm well aware that kind of logic is used to justify the different standards. However, those justifications aren't terribly relevant to what I was describing, which was the standards themselves and their results.
As an aside, that justification isn't terribly satisfying, and has some pretty significant rough edges/internal contradictions (e.g. implying that racist/stereotyped depictions are OK so long as there's "no history in the US of genocide against" against the stereotyped group).
This tone isn't helpful and it's not the tone we expect in hacker news.
Additionally, the parent commenter talks explicitly about genocide, not wars. And I don't think the particular displacement you're talking about compares to systematic displacement and genocide in some cases of the native americans
You're making my point for me. The US was capable of fighting multiple wars against the English without a campaign of dehumanization against all people of English descent, based on claims that the English were inherently and irredeemably savage and uncivilized.
I invite you to find a Disney movie with caricatures of English people that portrays them with exaggerated features, outlandish clothing, and speaking incomprehensibly, and where non-English people then dress and act like them as a goofy lark. The best I can think of is specific goofs on the English aristocracy at specific historical times (like revolutionary America) -- as opposed to American Indians, who were often shown to just be primitive barbarians, whether it was in the 1700s, 1800s or 1900s.
> a campaign of dehumanization against all people of English descent, based on claims that the English were inherently and irredeemably savage and uncivilized.
> Americans of European descent classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.[3] Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes, included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy in English, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved African Americans.[4][5] For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the European Americans, before the United States promoted Indian Removal of these tribes from the Southeast.
Maybe not against all people of English descent, but certainly those who stayed loyal to the Crown. Tarring and feathering especially was not only a form of physical torture and public humiliation but also of rather overt, unambiguous dehumanization, since to be subjected to it meant being treated as akin to a medieval outlaw: someone who would altogether lose the protection of the law as a consequence of their "savage and uncivilized" crimes.
Exactly. Individuals were treated based on their individual political beliefs. Compare that to a Disney song about how American Indians are dark savages who speak a nonsense language. These are two completely different treatments, one of which is based entirely on race and white supremacy.
Did the Americans do that with Native people? Historically, some native tribes were aligned with the US government, and some were not. It would be weird to malign your allies as irredeemably savage. For example, modern day Western racists might not differentiate between Chinese and Japanese, but the US government in WWII made sure to try teach people how to differentiate between the two(using racist tropes - negatives one for Japanese and positive ones for Chinese): http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6795/
> ... Indians (I'm using this term since it's still the only one used around here)
Many of the tribes still in existence today refer to themselves, in English, as "Indian" or "American Indian" (and many Native American) but most just use their actual tribe name. "Native American" is a weird term to be the "PC" term as it's very Euro-centric. I think the outrage culture's issue over the term "Indian" is a lot more being offended on other's behalf than the parties themselves being offended. At the very least, they're grouping together a lot of different tribes who have different opinions and treating them as a monolith which, to my eyes, is the thing we shouldn't be doing.
"European" or "asian" seems to be as big of a monolith than native american and yet it's a convenient term and in many cases it's not offensive.
I don't see why "native american" has to be euro-centric. They are the people that were living before the europeans (and middle-eastern, asians and africans) arrived. Those are also american now (as in: they are now citizens of a nation in the american continent), but I think we can distinguish the original population as "native".
On the other hand I (personally, as a mixed race native american, I know other people don't mind) quite dislike the term "indian" as it stems from a confusion that europeans had many centuries ago...and somehow they haven't bothered to correct it?
“Extremely racist” seemed odd to me too after watching it? Maybe outdated? It didn’t seem like the characters were interacting with the Native Americans in a racist way? They participated in their cultural traditions and seemed to have a fun time doing it?
The characters aren't participating in the cultural traditions of Native Americans, they're interacting with and participating in a pretty ridiculous stereotype of Native Americans.
> They participated in their cultural traditions and seemed to have a fun time doing it?
That might well be the problem. Some people will regard that as "cultural appropriation" regardless of the surrounding circumstances. That is, even if the "appropriated" subculture is totally okay with the practice, it's still considered wrong - apparently, the new standard is other cultures must always live totally isolated from the "dominator" culture, as if in a zoo or under a viewing glass, for the sake of hipster-like "authenticity".
I have definitely seen this before but it seems pretty more on the extremities. Although that's where all these ideas started, good and bad.
Not just with magic but the idea of white/black, light/dark as a placeholder for good/bad qualities being racist. Seems much more obviously related to illumination than color to me (scary/bad things happen in the dark/blackness/night).
Sorry, I don't have references, I think I saw it in discussions when github switched from master to main.
This is a bit of problem for us outside of USA. We don't experience US culture from everyday interactions. We mostly get it online where many things are exaggerated and polarized more than in reality.
So, is there a controversy around "black magic" the US or not?
It's similar overcompensating logic as people use to now rename git branches from 'master' to 'main' or whatever -- even though the concept of master was never anything about, or analogous to, slavery (i.e. there are no 'slave' branches -- it's just not the mental model, at all). Keep in mind that it's ostensibly smart people doing this.
Surprisingly (but maybe I missed a memo), the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), is in fact defined in terms of master and slave devices; but, I'm not aware of any movements to redefine it. The embedded systems world has not (yet) been cleansed and re-educated.
> "Main" _is_ a better name for that branch though. It's shorter and more intuitive.
That's just making stuff up. IIRC, "master branch" comes from "master copy," which has long established usage and connotations of "thing you make copies from." My educated guess is that "master" in this case ultimately comes from the idea of someone who "mastered" a craft and created an item that less skilled workers would then copy to mass produce. "Main" lacks those connotations, which actually makes it more confusing.
If you want to use a different branch name, fine, but please don't make up BS justifications for doing so.
Honestly, if you're looking for an alternative that's about as intuitive as "master," "root" is probably a better choice than "main" (at least given the branching system I've always used).
>In the past, this song was cut from the VHS and DVD version.
Having grown up with Peter Pan on VHS I can assure you it was not cut from the US VHS release (at least not the ones in the white plastic clamshell cases that Disney VHS releases in the 80's/90's came in).
Maybe you are sarcastic or maybe you are trying to make a point in a light-hearted way, but while the word has plenty of history, "American Indian" is not a term particularly frowned upon. The museum in DC is called that way, and plenty of tribes prefer to have ownership over the term instead of it being unilaterally changed. I personally use the two interchangeably (which would probably make *someone* uncomfortable because of some connotation, and I will just be respectful and talk with that person).
I was asked by an Indian to use the term Indian: "I'm not a 'Native American'. I'm an Indian!"
Then again, a friend of mine who's Apache asked me to use the term "Native American": "The people who want to be called Indian are ignorant people from the reservation." Which, wow. Seemed kinda presumptuous to me, but whatevs.
Apparently, some Indians find "Native American" offensive, and some Native Americans find "Indian" offensive. Just ask directly, is your best bet.
For a similar anecdote, I was in a group situation with someone from the Chumash tribe who demanded that he be referred to as "John" instead of "our First Peoples' representative" and further gave a brief lecture about how none of the Chumash were anywhere near "First" in the area.
Well, if it's a more believable story to you, I've driven by many reservations that use either "native american", "american indian" or "sioux (or any specific name) nation" on the "now entering" signs. There's no consensus term and, as op said, your best bet is not to make assumptions and ask. Rational people aren't offended if you ask them how to be respectful.
A stranger on the internet disbelieving my true story irritated me more than it should have! Anyway, from one internet stranger to another: believe me, it's true. Have I ever lied to you?
Yes, that is the whole point (and it is why I edited to add the parenthetical at the end). My claim was based on books and lectures on the experience of Native Americans. If a person prefers to be called (or their people called) a certain way, of course I would respect their preference.
This is a great reference, but you might need to give some context if you do not want knee-jerk downvotes.
This video is from CGP Grey's educational channel and it is an essay/study on different people's (in particular Native Americans) views of the name "American Indian".
Fair enough. I was on my phone when I posted that and I agree that I could have provided a bit more context than a random Youtube link. Thanks for filling in the details for people
This is not a particularly productive way to bring on a fruitful conversation. What is the point of just trying to offend or attest your emotional superiority?
Presumably it's to make the sorts of people who push for censorship feel embarrassed/ashamed of themselves so they will stop pushing for censorship so much
I personally think calling this censorship is cheapening the word and making it easier for real censorship to happen. If anything, we should make sure that everyone actually knows that mass-media has always been edited to fit the zeitgeist and that it is important to always be curious what the archival footage shows. Which brings me to my other nitpick: BBC are *not* censoring their archives as the title is suggesting, they are *editing* their current broadcast, which has been happening for centuries when old media is being reused.
I agree, discussing why these two are different would have been a much more interesting and fruitful talk to have. Subverting the main message of a piece of art is chilling and terrifying and it is what we should be up in arms about. Instead we are talking about the cutting out of an inconsequential racist joke. There is certainly a spectrum between these two extremes.
I agree. Especially with the differentiation between altering a message and cutting a scene that does not add to the overall story and message and is only an inconsequential point in the work of art.
There are really muddy waters to be traversed in other cases, but I fail to understand what the problem is in the specific case here.
To name an example I am thinking of: changing the guns in E.T. imho actually changed the message, made the movie/story less understandable and painted a more rosy/pacifist image of US law enforcement.
It changed the underlying critique against the government's reaction mode into nothingness.
Not even a scene cut, but altered in a way to tell a different story.
Also I would like for the originals to be preserved in an accessible way so that we can learn about gone times and what was normal/acceptable for people in these eras. To be able to have the 'true' sources as objects of study. And their reception and changing over time. This way we could learn.
They're either both works of art or they're both just films, that you like one over the other subjectively (and conveniently for your argument) is by the by.
My point is that these seemingly innocuous changes are not innocuous, they are correlated with what we would all agree is censorship, because it's an indication of a culture of censoriousness. A snip here is a snip there, it's all for your own good.
Censors definitely don't care about whether something is art, that's for sure.
But isn't it reasonable to make distinction between "edit the broadcast (so that it is still entertaining) and keep the archive accessible (so we can study who we were)" and "edit all accessible versions of the media"? We all agree the second is censorship. The first, I would say, can be done incompetently and insensitively (if it is done with zero acknowledgement), but I have very hard time calling it immoral/malicious/censorship.
Can I rattle off “sticks and stones…” or is that too aggressive in 2022?!
What’s next?
It’s not that I’m superior, not at all. I consider myself normal. Jaw dropping reactions to Peter Pan is not normal. Let’s agree to make that distinction now.
Again, my question was, how do you expect to start a fruitful conversation with someone if your opening salvo is to try to offend them. Do you expect you will change anyone's mind? It does not matter if you are right if you can not illuminate the people around you.
I'm gonna steelman here and say that "jaw dropping" and similar language describing the reaction of the original poster was hyperbole in the same realm as "I shit my pants at [jumpscare]"
>Again, my question was, how do you expect to start a fruitful conversation with someone
That's just it though, there _isn't_ a fruitful conversation to be had with someone suggesting that a "jaw dropping" reaction to a children's cartoon is normal.
You used the words "snowflake" to describe someone who was trying to start a conversation, and I assume you would ascribe it to me as well (there are old Mickey Mouse cartoons I would call "jaw dropping" and I would probably have used similar hyperbole to describe racist stereotypes in more recent media or recently changed names of sports clubs). Yet you are the only one acting triggered and refusing to even talk through what they found so silly or offensive in other people's behavior.
The distinction between excising content from the actual archive as compared to editing a version for broadcast is an important one. The former would be awful but the latter is reasonable, unless the broadcast is part of a series about past approaches to such matters (and is available with suitable warnings).
The whole thing should be a non-issue though now, because they have their own platform (iPlayer) with which they ought to be able to provide both versions in a user selectable manner (with necessary age checks if that's deemed necessary, as it is for certain content already on there). This gives the ideal compromise, as it doesn't rewrite history whilst ensuring that people who may be offended have an option suitable for them.
This leads into the other thing they should be pushing to achieve, which is to get much more of their archive accessible to UK license payers - clearly 100% would be a tall order but it's a good target.
What the hell went wrong with the western world that a nontrivial number of people think that free speech is bad, censorship is good and it’s ok to rewrite history when it’s inconvenient or unpleasant?
My read of the article gave me very different impression. No archives were actually censored. Entertainment programs were edited to fit the zeitgeist as has been done with theater plays for centuries and with TV for decades. If anything, today it is easier to access unaltered archives than ever. This hand-wringing is cheapening the word censorship and making real censorship more difficult to notice in the noise.
>” making real censorship more difficult to notice in the noise.”
Just about every debate about ‘censorship’ I’ve encountered ends up with people debating the meaning of the word itself. And, there is a sizable contingent of people asserting only the government can censor. It’s already too late.
When the hell was this mythical past in the west where people weren't absolutely destroyed and jailed for things that they said, media wasn't bowdlerized and censored to hell, and history wasn't rewritten when it was convenient or unpleasant?
I'm old enough to remember when the only things that weren't censored were the racist and sexist bits.
For most of my Gen X life here in the US, the only censors of note were the far right, trying to ban porn and naughty words. We had the press and the ACLU that would scream bloody murder and fight like wolverines whenever censorship reared it’s head.
Now, a ridiculous number [1] of Americans support censorship. We have surveys showing most college kids want to ban “hate speech” and heterodoxy [2] (big problem- who gets to define “hate”?).
The ACLU is backing away from defending free speech; here’s a former director of the ACLU [3].
Journalists now regularly host intelligence community propagandists [4] and support “fact checking” and government mandated bans on “misinformation” [5]. Again, who decides? And not just who decides what the facts are, but who decides what facts to check? Who decides what is “misinformation“ and what are the consequences if the holders of this power are shown to have misjudged?
> For most of my Gen X life here in the US, the only censors of note were the far right, trying to ban porn and naughty words.
That's definitely not the case in the UK however. And literally never was. The UK has a law banning "obscene publications". It has strong libel laws. It has a broadcasting regulator who can tell the BBC or any other broadcaster (including cable ones) what to do. There is no change to the status quo here.
This is ahistorical. It wasn't the far right, it was everybody from the far right to the center left, and they didn't just censor porn and naughty words, they censored socialism, realistic depictions of slavery, descriptions of history that weren't hagiographies of slaveholders, all details of the red scare, accurate depictions of our wars, among a billion other things.
The ACLU has gone to shit, but that's because all institutions go to shit.
> Journalists now regularly host intelligence community propagandists
I hate to sound like a broken record, but "now"? I just don't know what media you watched that didn't do this. Maybe pick up a used copy of any Bagdikian from the 80s/90s? Or Project Censored?
I feel like young people who grew up on the internet, saying whatever the fuck they wanted because the tendrils of capital and the state hadn't figured out how to stop them yet, have no awareness of the very recent past. And it somehow turned them all into John Birchers.
The reason corporations are woke now is because right-wingers, centrists and apolitical pseudo-libertarians are going to vote in their interests no matter what happens. The only people who potentially oppose them are also woke, so the effective thing is to focus on getting as many of them as possible to ignore everything but racism/sexism/homophobia, which profits couldn't give half a shit about, instead of focusing on our kleptocracy, which is a necessity for profits.
I understand that the situation is oppressive, and violates your sense of justice and your basic ideals of an open society. Society has never been a spherical cow, it's been a production system sitting on the backs of women, minorities, and wage laborers. If you only notice the suppression of speech when it's largely aimed at scientific racism, men's rights activists, and people fighting for the right to spread disease, that says something about you: maybe not that you're a bad person, but that you're a young person, or a sheltered person, or that you've been inattentive to the world until it encroached on your ability to complain about affirmative action or accuse China of being an ancient evil enemy trying to kill us all.
Other people are trying to pay their rent and eat. You might have trouble trying to pay your rent and eat. But if so, name a single thing that woke fascism is keeping you from saying that's materially important to your life?
All I can say is: First they came for the Palestinians... then they continued to come for the Palestinians while white dudes were protesting for the right to say that women naturally hate math.
What went wrong with the Western world isn't so much the totally unchanged mainstream position that television companies can and should be able to cut away from or bleep content deemed "objectionable" or even mildly inappropriate for the audience as they have done since the beginning of broadcast media, but that certain groups only became interested in contesting this (by means of dubious analogies to constitutional speech protections) when the definition of "objectionable content" expanded to include casual racism.
While this is very nearly true despite my disagreement with the framing, there is an important distinction between offensive graphical content, like porn or violence, and offensive intellectual content, like racism or sexism. That is what changed - they previously attempted to make sure you were not exposed to imagery they didn't like, now they attempt to make sure you're not exposed to ideas they don't like.
That's not a distinction the BBC's editorial team has ever used. Historically it has bleeped words ranging from "fuck" to "Coca Cola" and discouraged talking about ideas deemed inappropriate for the audience like most verbal references to sex before 9pm. People who range from neutral to outspokenly in favour of that sort of censorship are, however, liable to be enraged by the renaming of a dog in Dambusters (the original naming had far less expressive purpose than the average expletive!).
The shift is clearly more of one from ideas that certain groups consider to be of no value ("vulgarity") to stuff which they consider to be at least relatively valuable "the treatment of casual racism as completely normal behaviour which shouldn't provoke any reaction and might actually be funny, because that's just how things were in the good old days".
Bleeping is another important distinction. It lets you know something was there, and leaves you with a pretty good idea of what it was, preserving the message without preserving the shock value. Cutting bits out entirely and leaving nothing in their place is censorship in the sense that the article is trying to evoke, in a way that bleeping isn't.
You're cherry picking bleeping from that post. There is no type of censorship the BBC and TV regulators have not engaged in throughout its history. Bleeping, cutting away, using euphemistic terms, selective editing, not permitting discussions at all, demanding artists record versions with words like "cherry cola" seamlessly inserted in place of the inappropriate "Coca cola" for broadcast, banning other songs for openly political reasons or just because a senior exec hated jazz, excising material that might be subject to libel action, avoiding giving representation to political views sufficiently far outside the Overton Window, censuring presenters for expressing their own political opinions, even relatively unusual ones like requiring Sinn Fein politicians' statements to be revoiced by an actor just in case the original vocal inflections carried any coded messages to terrorists.
The type of edits engaged in have not changed at all, merely the subject matter, which has always had an ideas and politics and offence-based dimension but now takes a somewhat less conservative stance on what is and isn't appropriate. Arguing a threshold has been crossed because casual racism has replaced other things like homosexuality or mocking royalty on the long list of reasons the BBC might deem a sequence inappropriate for broadcast in certain contexts isn't a principled preference for freedom of artistic expression or the circulation of political ideas, it's a culture warrior's opposition to antiracism specifically .
One minor nit: the Sinn Fein revoicing was done by the BBC, but not for that reason. The government had required them not to broadcast SF and IRA 'propaganda' and the revoicing was a way to get around that ban. Thatcher was, apparently, livid.
Our politicians looked at China, realised they could simultaneously have totalitarianism and profit, and started constructing a Potemkin village called democracy behind which to hide its total destruction.
When I would watch BBC Shakespeare productions and follow along with the text, I noticed BBC would change things like "O Jesu" to "O Lord" or change complicated medieval political terminology to "we are fighting for our rights against the king." If they'll do it to Shakespeare, they'll do it to Dr. Who.
You can blame James I for that, not the BBC. Blasphemy was banned on the English stage in 1606 (the "Restraint of Players" act) and so later publications are usually expunged.
The BBC production could have been using a later edition (possibly based on the First Folio from 1623) which censors all the references to God and other blasphemy like "zounds", which is short for "God's wounds". You where almost certainly following along with an edition where the editor had restored the original published text from before the act was created.
As an example where I imagine this may have happened, in the early two-thousands I listened to a radio show (Brothers in Law) from the 1970's. It was in general a light-hearted comedy series starting Richard Briers - something people may know him from playing Tom in 'the Good Life' sitcom.
One episode of the show was particularly uncomfortable to listen to. It was an episode which featured an abused wife - beaten by her husband. I can't recall the full context of the episode, but basically it turned out that she was happy when her husband beat her - 'because it showed he loved her' (not a direct quote).
Whilst I agree this episode should be available in some form - it could be important to show some people's attitudes at the time towards domestic abuse, I think that it would be totally appropriate to remove it from the series if the series were being broadcast at tea-time, in a slot which would normally be a light-hearted comedy.
But this is just a single person's viewpoint. It's not like the BBC is taking the position that husbands who beat their wives actually love them. And in fact, you will find many abused women who, yes even in 2022, would say something like that.
This is a a strange article. I have no doubt that the 'archived' version is retained. However, yes if they are rebroadcasting some radio show from the 1950 for a contemporary entertainment, it's possible they will edit the content.
They don't repeat the black and white minstrel show from the 1970s at all. Shoud they? No.
> I have no doubt that the 'archived' version is retained.
Working in the preservation area, and being aware of what the BBC has lost over time, the title immediately had my interest. But this isn't a serious piece of journalism at all. The author doesn't make any attempt to verify the claim, and liberally decorates his piece with specious references to Orwell. He doesn't appear to know what an archive actually is, and thinks the BBC is 'state owned'.
It appears to serve little purpose than to ensure the header and footer are visually separated in a pleasing way.
This article is a pretty fascinating experiment showing how propaganda (or, to be more generous: click-bait) works in real time. Look at how many comments in this thread think that the archive versions were censored based on the misleading title. You could probably argue that the title is technically correct and that's what makes propaganda so effective.
It's unfortunate, because there is a nuanced discussion to be had here, about whether re-broadcasts should be modified (e.g. should we be okay with that if there is a disclaimer?), but the conversation gets derailed immediately because many people only read headlines. But of course, they know what they are doing, trying to get a rise. They could have easily used a more accurate, but boring, title such as "BBC re-broadcasts differ from archived versions."
> “Out of public view, the state-owned broadcaster has been altering old episodes of its shows to make them ‘suitable’ for modern listeners.“
I don’t get why grown ups need to be threated as kids. I am doing same for little ones, but why for grownups. Times changes, what is or not ok changes. In that case maybe adding some context commentary would be fine for those who dont know history. But erasing it is not cool
The beauty of the internet is there's at least a chance for us to catch them erasing history. Before, if it wasn't mentioned on the 3 TV networks, no one would ever know.
What is the problem with editing a show for rebroadcast? If the archive is destroyed or inaccessible, that is certainly terrible. But seems perfectly normal to edit a show broadcast (the same way a modern version of a Shakespeare play is different than the original).
Well, good thing that it was the former, right? Which is what is being described in this article: editing entertainment programs for today's broadcast, not censoring the archive copy and definitely not touching newscasts.
I'm assuming you read the article, but the BBC is sanitizing historical programming concerning entertainers who have been involved in and recently convicted of certain crimes, notably organized paedophlilia and sex trafficking.
That seems less like harmless cleanup as much as it does a directed PR campaign on behalf of the perpetrators and their associates at the BBC.
I don't think cutting a brief clip introducing much loved national treasure Jimmy Savile from an old magazine show on repeat and not rebroadcasting his original shows is going to make anyone feel more kindly disposed towards Jimmy as a perpetrator.
I do think it's going to stop people ringing OFCOM to complain that the TV/iPlayer is still broadcasting that disgusting man like he's a lovable guy.
If they wanted to control the PR narrative, they'd hide references to him as a notorious paedophile or questions about whether the BBC staff working on his programmes should have known, not Jim'll Fix It.
I am (sincerely) missing something in your second paragraph. Why is that on behalf of the perpetrators? It sounds more like taking away from the perpetrators (they are not celebrated as great entertainers anymore) and ensuring the people they have targeted do not need to see their faces on TV presented to unaware watchers as some great "nice funny guy".
Why would that kind of sanitization be a good thing?
People, e.g. do not need to be protected from the fact the Hitler was a pretty good painter, lest they think in classic black-and-white disney-villain stereotypes, and give the next Hitler a pass just because "he can't be that bad if he's such a good painter".
Equally, I have no trouble celebrating good works by people who were later found to be objectionable, as long as the works themselves are worthy in isolation. Human nature is flawed, sometimes deeply so, the good can coexist with the bad, and there's no better reminder than this.
And I haven't even touched the whole "every hero is some other guy's traitor (and vice versa)"
Yeah, sure, you are making a good point and I mostly agree. But my question (about which I am still confused) is why "on behalf of the perpetrators" was the claim being made.
The articles being sanitized are a subtle attempt to distance the BBC from the above scandal by removing the public's access to reporting that tied their employees and facilities to (now) known abusers.
There's a film from the 80s, Broadcast News, where a charismatic upstart anchor doctors an interview to make it appear he was crying after hearing a young woman's tale of sexual abuse, and when his producer and potential love interest discovers it, she abjures him professionally and romantically.
Journalism ethics would dictate that the BBC account honestly why they are changing the past. They can republish the articles (corrections are not a new concept) and link to the old ones with a "trigger warning" if they wish to, but to make it appear there was less involvement than there was, and to use the victims' feelings as an excuse, is nothing if not wrong.
I've read through that article, and it doesn't seem to give any specific examples. The through-linked article has said that they removed some racist jokes and mentions of child abusers. And, much like in the comment, I'm like well... yeah.
> Because it is so old, much of the material that the BBC has been altering is not available to purchase or download, nor broadly owned on physical media,
That's not true. The majority is available to download via either official or unofficial archives. Huge amounts of BBC material was released on cassette and CD.
If you watch a movie on an aeroplane, it will quite often be edited - both to remove excess sex and violence and - duh - mentions of plane crashes!
If you watch BBC shows syndicated in the USA, they'll have advert breaks edited in.
The original archive isn't altered. If you want to go to the British Library in person or if you want to obtain an academic pass to the BBC archive you can still see the originals.
This reminds me of the adage that the winners write the history.
This has always been going on, it’s just now so easy to track. The funny thing about editing the past is that those living automatically win, so it isn’t much of a fight.
It seems people would rather edit the past than be offended. This behavior certainly fits well with our understanding of modern sensibilities.
its much easier to get people to go along with historically bad ideas if they've never been allowed to know how badly the previous incarnations have been for the world.
Other comment mentioned "Peter Pan," and the unsuitability of some of it for modern kids... Why aren't kids allowed to know that people once thought of things differently than we do now? We tell them "someone discovered the earth was round" even though thats arguable, but on this subject the fear of controversy mandates ignorance and silence?
> We tell them "someone discovered the earth was round" even though thats arguable
It's arguable that "someone discovered the earth was round" or that "the earth is round"? Because I'm pretty sure that neither of those is actually arguable.
You absolutely can argue the Earth isn’t round. You won’t win the argument, but it’s an acceptable idea to challenge.
Indeed, having to defend the position that the Earth is in fact round can help you gain understanding and have confidence in your conclusion.
Not to belabor the point, but the idea that the Earth is flat is actually natural. It seems to be flat based on our senses. I think it’s a great teaching moment about how things are not as they seem.
It's certainly arguable that a particular namable someone first found some way to communicate the concept that the earth is spherical to someone else... but it was many someones and the actual origins are lost to us.
Its easy enough to say "the earth is a ball" because you've been told, but how can you prove it?
> It's certainly arguable that a particular namable someone first found some way to communicate the concept that the earth is spherical to someone else...
If you mean "it's not likely everyone thought it was flat until someone said 'wait, it's round!'", yeah, sure, I agree. If you don't, what do you mean?
> Its easy enough to say "the earth is a ball" because you've been told, but how can you prove it?
Same way Eratosthenes did in 3rd century BC to get his fairly impressively accurate estimate (39,060-40,320 km; real is 40,075km) for the Earth's circumference. Or do the laser shining through holes in boards on the salt flats. Or go to that huge long lake in Canada and note that you can't see the other side unless you raise your camera. Any of those will give you results that show it to be roughly spherical.
From reading the article it doesn't seem that the BBC is actually censoring its own archives. It's just choosing whether or not to rebroadcast certain episodes in their original form or omit them entirely. You can still access the originals, admittedly you may have to leave your computer and actually go to the archives themselves. This is... fine? Or is the demand that you must have access to absolutely everything all of the time?
Why can't the now-offensive stuff not just go behind a clickwall?
A big full-screen disclaimer. That this material no longer conforms to current standards, or was made by persons who are now considered bad. Continue at your own discretion.
Or even have a scrolly banner or watermark in the material itself to prevent it from being stripped of the disclaimer by others. But preserve the historical record.
Because for the most part these are actually broadcast, that is to say the archive that the BBC makes available have been sent out over TV or radio waves within the past few weeks.
It's not a matter of someone actively seeking out content on a webpage. Its a matter of, say, leaving the radio on in the background when you are cooking, and hearing content with outdated language and ideas.
The title is slightly misleading. It would be more accurate to change "its own archives" to "its reruns of the old shows".
That's bad enough though. They are making "woke cuts" [1] to old shows, lest their viewers question the universality of cultural norms by being exposed to an unfiltered version of the past.
Sure, the unaltered versions are probably accessible somewhere, but that doesn't make what they doing "not censorship" and ok. It would be like saying that the Hogwarts Library wasn't censored because you could find the banned books in the Restricted Section or elsewhere. At least Hogwarts had the defence of being something of a high school.
[1]: The Telegraph: BBC makes 'woke cuts' to archives, including Dad's Army https://archive.is/Y5nJw
I wonder if they edited "The Dambusters". In the American release, Guy Gibson's little black dog's name was overdubbed as "Trigger." The BBC version always aired the original name, which was NOT "Trigger."
Netflix does this also. I've noticed in a documentary, I believe it was "The Social Dilemma", which now includes comments about COVID-19 disinformation campaigns.
I very much doubt that it would ever be difficult to access the archive copies. It is unsurprising that a new broadcast is edited, but this is no more censorship than editing Shakespeare for modern audience is. If you are curious what the original was (and you should always be, no matter how old the media is), you can always check out the archive (which are becoming more and more easy to access, not more difficult as this article is implying).
I think it's extremely important that mass media organisations are held accountable to what they publish, given their reach. As such I always wonder if there is a collection of revisions that major news articles have made, especially in this age that it's simply a page on a URL.
There is archive.org but has someone identified the noteworthy alterations?
Should we expect the quote of George Orwell of "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped." To be rewritten as "Everything is fine, trust the government."
This is a massive simplification which somewhat undermines the overall article. The government does not automatically own or have the copyright of the material broadcast by the BBC, definitely not in the strict IP sense. The BBC is a 'public corporation': neither a private corporation nor a government department. Furthermore, it generates revenue independently of the license fee, e.g. from sale of content overseas (and advertising on its .com site, as opposed to the .co.uk site we see in the UK).
I'm not saying that the BBC is right or wrong to modify it's historic content, just that the argument that the content is publicly owned is flawed.