The BBC is not neutral. They are the mouthpiece of the UK government.

Hardly. They're pro-immigration, anti-Brexit, anti-any cuts anywhere for anything. They're the voice of the Guardian-reading middle classes.

This thread nicely illustrates the BBC's long balancing act.

From a (BBC) radio sitcom from the 80s:

> [interviewer to Director General of BBC] Director General, everyone seems to hate you. How would you respond?

> [DG] Well, I think that shows we have the balance about right.

Maybe in the 80s, these days they don't have the balance right.

This makes me think they do in fact have the balance right

Nah, for example Arabs love their coverage of the conflict. It's way more slanted than Reuters for example, and almost as slanted as Al Jazeera.

It's normal for news organizations to be accused of bias in the conflict, as you say, if both parties think that, that's normal.

But BBC has the lovely distinction of also being accused of anti-Semitism, which is a badge of honor that most news organizations have not received.

To be fair, pro-immigration is governnment policy too. Just for different reasons. The Tories want cheap labour/low wages, and sky-high house prices.

Fair point.

And for those unaware, the Guardian is one of the most biased mainstream publications out there.

No, what they actually are is a mouthpiece for corporations and capital owners. Just like every other major media company out there. The government is also a mouthpiece for capital owners and corporations which is why you might think that

You seem to be implying BBC is not biased. I have bad news for you in this case.

How do you do this in a country with more than 2 political parties such as the United States [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_t...

Pretending the US has more than two political parties is a weird hobby. There are only two that matter, and it can't be any other way with the current federal election system. It's a problem worth fixing but Wikipedia is not relevant to any solutions.

Ok but ideally the federal election system will be fixed eventually (and also most of the states). And I'd prefer if then we also didn't need to fix a bunch of other systems because they had a lot of 2 party assumptions baked into them.

Okay but your ideal scenario is not our current reality

The reality is that the US Federal government currently has elected members belonging to neither the Democratic nor Republican party [1] [2] (Sinema doesn't count since she changed her party after being elected). This has been true for the majority of the US's short existence.

There is no reason to make long-term decisions based on the current short-term circumstances of a two party dominance.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_elec...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_elec...

Two-party dominance has been a feature of the American political scene since before the Civil War - that is, for most of its existence. I wouldn't call that "current short-term circumstances".

It's also very hard to change because both major parties benefit from the existing system and are protective of it, knowing full well that proportional representation would cost them a lot of votes. Republicans usually trot out the old "but small states!" canard, while Democrats are getting creative and claiming that IRV and RCV are racist because e.g. "majority voting may seem innocuous, but if the vote is racially polarized, “runoffs discriminate against Blacks because they are a minority of the voters.”"

Given that Congress has the final say on how federal elections are run, I find it rather unlikely that this is going to change anytime soon - at least, not as long as federal politics is consumed almost entirely by polarization and voting against rather than for.

> Two-party dominance has been a feature of the American political scene since before the Civil War

Really, since America had a meaningful national government with the Constitution rather than being a loose federation of states under the AoC.

The Federalists and Democratic-Republicans both were establisged, as was their duopoly, by 1792.

Indeed; I just didn't want to get into the whole debate about whether the replacement of the Whigs with the GOP as the other dominant party was a meaningful change or not. But it's safe to argue that the present system, including the specific parties in question, has been around for >160 years now.

Idk I live in a place like that I find there are still two broad groups of parties that rarely make coalitions a large distance across the divide. It's not like there is only one axis of politics but there is a sort of broad undercurrent of older/conservative and younger/change broad split.

But speaking to your point, there is no reason at all why a two party system is required to have a rule of thumb that if everyone thinks you're biased you're on the right track...

s/Both/All/

Move to Canada, Germany, Australia or wherever.

> Move to Canada, Germany, Australia or wherever.

Your solution on how to cover a topic in a neutral fashion when there are more than 2 political parties is to move to a country where there are more than 2 political parties?

That doesn't seem like a productive comment.

A Wikimedia based in a country with much less polarised politics will have a much easier time with neutrality.

I guess I didn't include enough elaboration in my comment...

There are only two parties in Canada. Three if you count the Bloc.

That’s a weird comment. Were you trying to be sarcastic?

There are 3 major federal parties (Liberals, Conservatives, NDP), who received 33%, 33%, and 18% of the popular vote respectively.

There are two minor federal parties (Greens and the People’s party) who together took around 7% of the popular vote, and

Finally there is the Bloc Québécois. It is a federal party but it exists only in one province. It grabbed around 8% last time.

Of course those percentages aren’t entirely representative, because seats are won in a first-past-the-post style in each riding.

The NDP has never formed a federal government.

But being heavily biased in different directions on different issues doesn't sum up to neutrality.