> 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.
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 There was a very subtle warning about "outdated cultural references," but I didn't think much of it as I've seen Peter Pan a few times.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.
>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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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).
[+] [-] KineticLensman|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|4 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] grujicd|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] HideousKojima|4 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] aidenn0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xdennis|4 years ago|reply
Take it as an opportunity to learn and raise antifragile kids.
[+] [-] donatj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nix23|4 years ago|reply
Watch your mouth young man! It's "dressed as native Americans".
[+] [-] aaron695|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] NDizzle|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nmstoker|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] efitz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krastanov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
I'm old enough to remember when the only things that weren't censored were the racist and sexist bits.
[+] [-] notahacker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soniman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flonkyflonk|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] NeoTar|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xdennis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|4 years ago|reply
They don't repeat the black and white minstrel show from the 1970s at all. Shoud they? No.
[+] [-] shellac|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mahogany|4 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] orlovs|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Consultant32452|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krastanov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tpoacher|4 years ago|reply
If it's barney the dinosaur to make the dinosaur less pink, I don't care.
If it's stuff which was used to haul the country to war on Iraq, I do care.
[+] [-] edent|4 years ago|reply
> 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.
This is such a non-story.
[+] [-] denton-scratch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mindwipe|4 years ago|reply
This article is about repeat airings.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] h2odragon|4 years ago|reply
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?
I don't wanna teach my kid that, and didn't.
[+] [-] r_hoods_ghost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VancouverMan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bud|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] MarkusWandel|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] NeoTar|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] finite_jest|4 years ago|reply
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
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