Double nitpick: People often colloquially use "I feel like" in place of "It is my opinion that" and it doesn't even strike me as literally wrong to describe an opinion as a feeling...

And do you think this episode is evidence of trustworthiness on the part of the BBC?

I agree with you that politician sow distrust, but poorly researched pieces are the fault of no one but the journalists.

I don't think this impacts the BBC trustworthyness one lick. They reported a story objectively, stating each side, without their own opinion. Even though one side was acting in bad faith. Is the BBC out of their element here, absolutely. But are they engaging in lies and deceipt, like Fox or OANN? Hardly.

> poorly researched pieces are the fault of no one but the journalists

Agreed. THey should have consulted with HN, look at all the experts here.

> literally wrong to describe an opinion as a feeling.

I don't know the gender of the OP, but one area where therapists and psychologists struggle with male patients is that they often say "I feel" instead of "I think", ann when asked what the feeling was, they struggle.

You can't feel an opinion. You can have one, and it can make you feel suspicious, or doubtful, or confused, because those are feelings.

This is a good example of how words used incorrectly are symptomatic of a deeper issue: male avoidance of feelings beyond hungry/angry/horny. It's not exclusive to men, but it is very common.

I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that there is no influence directing the overall thrust of stories, choosing which stories or which versions of stories, or which writers get published, any more than to conclude that every single story was scripted by the Illuminati or the Rothchilds.

We HAVE seen enough evidence to know that much just by tabulating stats and things like that John Oliver bit showing all the tv news stations using the exact same supposedly off the cuff remarks.

I approve of your nitpick.

I am a counterexample to your main point. I distrust most media sources because I've not once seen one present rigorous, transparent, verifiable research about a current event of interest to me.

I think I've seen every media source I've followed get significant facts wrong about things I know well.

I try to fight back against Gellman amnesia in my own head.

I think I put this too strongly, in retrospect.

By "distrust", I just mean that I do not default to trusting any news source I know of. I try to take what they say as plausible but not likely the complete picture. I also keep an eye out for what their overarching narratives tend to be and try to compensate for that in my own interpretation of events.

> I distrust most media sources because I've not once seen one present rigorous, transparent, verifiable research about a current event of interest to me.

"Because I've never seen it, clearly it does not exist."

"I have no reason to believe this, but it clearly must exist"

That's called faith and religion.

You cannot rationally make decisions based on anything other than what you know and have seen or can reasonably project from there.

IE, I can't see an atom with my eyes, and I can't duplicate all the research of history myself, but I can see some things with my eyesb and I can duplicate some research myself, and I can follow a reasonable, logical, defensible chain of trust from what I can directly prove to myself, to proofs I can accept indirectly, and distinguish those from fairy tales.

> "I have no reason to believe this, but it clearly must exist"

Except I never said that, whereas the previous post had a congruent summary of OP.

Strike one.

> You cannot rationally make decisions based on anything other than what you know and have seen or can reasonably project from there.

True. But that isn't what we are talking about, you ventured into strawman territory all on your own. The person was claiming they've never seen a truthful source, this is called the No True Scotsman fallacy. We're not talking about god, we're talking about the fact that some journalism is unbiased. There is much of it out there, but OP seems to think there isn't, or has convinced him/herself due to their own desire to not be wrong.

Strike two.

> can follow a reasonable, logical, defensible chain of trust from what I can directly prove to myself, to proofs I can accept indirectly, and distinguish those from fairy tales.

You've demonstrated that you aren't very good at following a "logical chain of trust" because you've reasoned to yourself, poorly, something that wasn't even being discussed.

Strike three.

First time playing with logic?

It never ceases to astonish me how people who throw around the terms "logic" and "rational thought" really, reeeeeally don't know how to deploy either.

I did not even imply it does not exist, let alone say it. That would be a truly massive claim.

However, if I've yet to see it, I don't know why I'd trust that it's happening regularly just outside my view.

Until I see evidence that it exists and is in fact the default state of journalistic reporting, I am not going to trust that it is.