does your country have an unbiased news source by law?

14 comments

1. There is the National Broadcasting Corporation, _Danmarks Radio_, shortened to DR, which is like our BBC. That said, I don’t think it is required by law to be unbiased nor is it required to be neutral, since, you know, it is kinda hard, if not outright impossible, to be neutral and unbiased.

   Most people _think_ of it as somewhat unbiased, though not all the time. Liberals, conservatives and right-wing populists take turns accusing DR of being full of “reds,” while a few left-wing thinkers have written paragraphs about the ideological role of “neutral” reporting, and how it isn’t actually neutral at all, because it is hard, if not outright impossible, to be neutral.

   I don’t think DR sees itself as neutral or unbiased, rather, I think they have a self-image of wanting to report the truth. And the truth is often unbiased; just think about climate change. Neutral reporting would be, to present as the same amount of truth and emphasis on the arguments made by people denying climate change, as they would the arguments of those who research it. Climate change is an obvious example at how neutral reporting would, and often does, results in very politically biased reporting, as the realities of how the current society destroys the planet becomes reality.

   There is one law that may be relevant, the _Communication on law regarding radio and television-operation_, §10, which says that those operating radio and television should, “when sharing information, strive for objectivity and impartiality.” Though when the two are pitted against each other, DR _tends to_, though not always, choose the former over the latter.

2. There’s no such thing as a completely unbiased news source. Every news source has an intrinsic bias; even if it isn’t necessarily due to an ideological leaning, it might just be a matter of journalists and editors who all come from a similar background and so who consider certain things worthy of more news coverage than others.

   Having said that, all TV news in the UK has to comply with impartiality laws and not be overtly partisan. This is especially true of the BBC since it’s funded by a TV licence that everyone who owns a TV has to pay each month. In practice, that also means that it’s accused of being biased to the right by the left, and being biased to the left by the right (particularly regarding Israel/Palestine issues). A few channels somehow find loopholes in these regulations, particularly RT back in the day and now GB News (the closest thing we have to Fox News), but they still have some limits to how overtly biased they can be in a way that Fox News in the US doesn’t.

3. Bbc is required to be “balanced”, which in practice can mean extremely biased, if you’re ‘balancing’ a minority with a hate group

4. Yes, the national broadcaster ORF. The “ORF law” says they have to be unbiased and nonpartisan.

   I believe that no news source can be truly unbiased, because as long as humans select what to report and how to present it there will always be a bias.

   I’d say they do an alright job fulfilling their purposes.

   They’re specifically not a government department and not funded by taxes, but a mandatory individual fee and ads. So in theory no current government should be able to influence them directly by threatening budget cuts.
   While the supervisory board is rather diverse, a third of them are decided by the current government.
   Each individual state has their own broadcasting studio so not all the content is centrally controlled.

5. We have something that is supposed to be unbiased. But if it is? That is a different story. Best humor comes from that channel though.

   Sweden btw. Don’t know how to add a flair 😅

6. Germany has the most expensive public TV and radio broadcasting system in the world with an annual budget of more than 8 billion euros.

   But sadyl, I think one can’t say that they are unbiased. Of course it differes greatly by the individual programme or boradcast but in general they tend to have a bias towards the green party.

7. Not by law. Usually the most neutral and unbiased news source that other media use is Agence France-Presse (AFP).

8. For context: all the other parts of Dutch public broadcasting are **explicitly** aligned with political and religious identities as a remnant of pillarisation , so the idea is not so much that the NOS has to be “balanced” to the point that despite all evidence climate denialism is equal to activism , it just needs to be independent of these political and religious groups.

9. Best we’ve got is Česká televize. Closest thing to the BBC there is here.

10. In Ireland we have a national, state funded broadcaster RTE. I’m no expert on the law around this but my understanding is that it has no obligation to be unbiased except when a referendum has been called. If a referendum has been called, a supreme Court ruling known as the McKenna judgment is understood to apply, and RTE strives to give equal weight and airtime to both sides of the debate. During the recent abortion and marriage equality referendums, some campaigners (anecdotally mostly on the pro-life/anti-marriage equality sides) were known to have their stopwatches out during radio and television debates.

11. We have a public broadcaster – TVP, which theoretically is supposed to be unbiased, but in practice it is a government propaganda tube.

12. The BBC has to be impartial due to having no advertisers and being funded through TV licensing

    They’re often accused of favouring the left by the right and accused by the left of favouring the right so that leads me to believe they’re doing a pretty good job of staying as impartial as they can in todays world

13. Yes, we have SVT (Sweden’s television). It’s up for debate whether it actually is unbiased or not but yeah.

14. Yes. We have NRK. Financed through taxes, and not allowed to sell commercials, and by law, they are supposed to be unbiased. They do a pretty good job.