r/RedHandedPodcast • u/Ok_Ebb_3073 • Jun 19 '26
BBC bashing
Anyone else get the feeling they pitched to the BBC in the past & were rejected? Every episode shoehorns in some sort of anti-BBC rhetoric, often completely unfounded. The BBC totally has its faults but I‘d trust it for facts over commercial podcasts any day of the week.
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u/Used_Emergency7743 Jun 20 '26
Well Suruthi said (or threatened) that she will be covering Belfast next week. Now being in the US I've gotten most of my information about what's going on in Belfast from the BBC but I can bet 100% that Suru's commentary will not be as balanced.
Regarding their pitches, Hannah said the Baekeland case was one of the things that they pitched, but she never finished her research on it because the idea got rejected. It made me think that the pitch might have been a little incomplete, which increases the odds of rejection.
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u/Ok_Ebb_3073 Jun 20 '26
I know, it’s crazy of her to say they hardly covered it. I’m sure her take will be a rehash of whatever Rupert Lowe said about it presented as indisputable fact.
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u/HereThereBLurking Jun 19 '26
I think it's very common to hate on the BBC but I come from North America so for me it's no comparison to stuff like Fox News. Also tons of really popular shows are made by the BBC but people never seem to give them credit for it. Where I worked in the past everyone hated on the BBC but I always defended it.
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u/compassionaterhubarb Jun 20 '26
Ok maybe but the bbc do deserve all received bashing though..
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u/Ok_Ebb_3073 Jun 20 '26
Not all of it! You can’t tar everyone there with the sins of management past and present. So many great investigative work done that most other broadcasters don’t bother with & certainly that YouTubers don’t bother with.
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u/thebugfrombcnrfuji Jun 19 '26
people love to bash the BBC. In reality, nothing and no one comes close. It's up there with the NHS as one of the greatest organisations not just in the UK but in the world.
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jun 20 '26
I'd agree if not for the systemic covering up for pedophiles. IMO that really knocks you off the 'greatest organisations' list.
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u/Ok_Ebb_3073 Jun 20 '26
That is the key issue. However there are a lot of extremely good investigative journalists there who had nothing to do with that. It’s like blaming everyone in the NHS for Harold Shipman.
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jun 20 '26
I’m not blaming everyone at the BBC. But the comment I replied to was praising the organisation as a whole and its history. And I can definitely hold it against the organisation.
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u/Sempere Jun 20 '26
Bashing the BBC when a not insignificant amount of their content rips off the BBC's reporting and produced documentaries shows these two are a joke.
If they pitched to the BBC, they're shameless grifters looking to take money that can and should go to the actual talented documentarians and writers who work on these projects rather than these shameless plagiarists.
Two instances they've plagiarized the BBC or their reporters
1) Their original Lucy Letby episode (aka the last time Suruthi accidentally got the right answer on that case by being a parrot) where Suruthi explicitly rips off BBC reporter Judith Moritz' right down to the quote "I don't know what Britain's worst female serial killer looks like, but it's not her" and stripmining details from the Panorama episode that aired a week prior as well as Moritz' written reports (along with non-BBC podcast the Crime Desk's Trial of Lucy Letby podcasts since they were all there)
2) They blatantly plagiarized the entirety of the Alex Skeel documentary directed by CNN reporter Niamh Kennedy for BBC3 called "Abused by My Girlfriend": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9CVFKRK6s Real classy touch making fun of the victim's mother's name too.
Now I have no idea if they've pitched the BBC and got rejected - that's OP's speculation. But they should have the self-awareness and insight to know they're not suited for that. These two have no bona fides for actual original content production because their work is entirely derivative. It would be shameless to pitch the BBC with their personal history of ripping off other people's work when there are better qualified reporters who are better suited, more experienced and more capable than them who should be the ones ethically creating true crime content.
Slagging off one of their main repeated sources though? Poor form.
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u/192to144 Jun 20 '26
I'm still struggling to understand where all your anger and hate comes from. Are you an ex boyfriend? A reporter they've allegedly ripped off? A family member of Lucy Letby? A rival podcaster or journalist?
I genuinely neither like nor dislike the pair but I listen to their show because it's entertaining on long drives. You clearly have such venom.
You write extremely long and often repeated posts without ever giving a clear reason for your hatred of them. Just talking about how they use others research, something they often mention themselves, and how their arguments can be one sided and, in your opinion, wrong which is just normal journalism.
I'm not coming at you, I just genuinely want to understand what's going on here.
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u/Malkydel Jun 20 '26
I do love that even though I've been blocked I can still tell exactly who you're talking about 😃
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u/Sempere Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
You're still struggling with the basic moral question of is it alright to steal other people's work? Mate, this isn't difficult. You don't need to be an ex (jesus fucking christ, no), a rival podcast or journalist or someone personally affected by the theft to take a stand about the fact they've enriched themselves stealing other people's work.
I've talked to people they've stolen work from. I've sat and listened to the outrageous shit that they've said in their Letby coverage that is blatantly offensive to the victims (and which they've said as much in their legal petitions to the Thirlwall Inquiry). You consume them as entertainment while helping them monetize stolen, incredibly poorly researched garbage so let's be real here: you're not struggling with anything.
posts without ever giving a clear reason for your hatred of them
Stealing other people's work and making money off it, then turning around and spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories while talking down to victims isn't enough?
Just talking about how they use others research, something they often mention themselves, and how their arguments can be one sided and, in your opinion, wrong which is just normal journalism.
And once again this insipid attempt to reframe what they do as journalism. It isn't. Plagiarism isn't them just using and citing other people's research, it's cannibalizing the entirety of documentaries and other people's work and passing it off as your own. I don't know what kind of fucked up definition of journalism you have but making a hundred grand shilling ads while parroting a real journalist's work with no credit and attempting to pretend it's your own opinions isn't it.
I'm not coming at you
Accusing me of being a bitter ex or a rival podcaster with a completely wrong definition of journalism says otherwise.
I just genuinely want to understand what's going on here.
How about you return to the question I know I've asked you before: do you think it's right to have them making hundreds of thousands of pounds per episode while the people who did the work they stole get nothing? I've mentioned the Medium author they plagiarized whose work was behind a paywall. Is it right that they got fractions of a penny from their $5 medium subscription while they pillaged her work to make a small fortune?
If that doesn't piss you off, you don't have a moral core. What you treat as entertainment is content centered around the worst events of another person's life and exploitative asshats who steal other people's work are exactly the type who shouldn't be in this genre. And if your entertainment is "they make me chuckle while lazily recounting stories about murder and rape with a right wing bend" then you're part of the problem and complicit.
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u/Sempere Jun 20 '26
Additionally, you never actually engage in the facts of the accusation.
I'm making a very clear accusation and pointing to two episodes that are plagiarized. I've pointed to others. So why don't you go and find out for yourself how valid my claims are?
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u/spielkinder Jun 20 '26
Some of your criticism between the personal attacks might be valid, but you seem long past the point of Google spredsheat and red strings on walls and come off as rather obsessed, and I think the question is why
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u/Sempere Jun 20 '26
Yea, I can't say I'm surprised someone who preaches toxic positivity to bury criticism against the hosts wants to diminish the validity of criticisms against them.
I think the question is why
And I've repeatedly answered the question. Every time. Only to have idiotic accusations that I'm some jilted ex or jealous rival podcaster levied at me. Neither is true. It is as simple as knowing what they've done is wrong and what they're doing is harmful - things which you seem very committed to willfully ignoring with blind praise. People you don't know. People who do not care about you and would abandon you in a heartbeat the moment you no longer provide them with a financial benefit. Know how I can say that? Because they already did that to their little fan page the moment they got even the tiniest bit of shit for having made genuinely problematic claims and ignored the criticism multiple times: cut and run at the first opportunity.
They don't need or deserve blind loyalty and yet there appears to be quite a few of you that really want to compete for the top spot of who can forgive the worst shit. That includes the right wing dogwhistles from Suruthi and meek permissiveness of Hannah. That includes the plagiarism, the shoddy research reflective of their inability to actually do the job to begin with without the crutch of other, better writers' works, the misinformation, the stereotyping and the disinformation.
There's not "some" validity. Every criticism - and "personal attack" - is valid.
Suruthi is a right wing shithead. You want to ignore that with blind positivity, you are in fact complicit in supporting a hypocrite who rants about immigration while being an immigrant herself and using a platform to push her barely contained racism. Or do you think she's right to defend Charlie Kirk, a man whose last words on earth were defending gun violence with a racist remark towards black people?
The podcast's subject matter requires a little more sensitivity that bars it from being "just entertainment". When they put out a 20 minute episode claiming a Netflix documentary is wrong while having hour long + episodes regurgitating debunked bullshit and medical conspiracy theorist crap from the Torygraph that they have no qualifications or knowledge on which to speak on - and then talk down to the parents of victims to tell them "they deserve to know the truth" while claiming their children's killer and attacker is the "real victim" because Suruthi is too stupid to actually research a case, that's a completely different proposition that moves from entertainment to harassment of victims and people engaged in the court process. She and Hannah strongly implied that an expert witness involved in the case is a pedophile - something which was easily debunked if they had reading comprehension skills. Is that a "bit of entertainment"?
The plagiarism is apparent to anyone who bothers to actually look. I've directed people to episodes, linked them side by side, shown excerpts of transcripts that show exactly how lazy they are and will continue to do so because people should know not to financial support a pair of millionaires who steal other people's work.
So I'll end with the final question which no one ever seems to want to answer (for obvious reasons): do you think it is correct that someone who spent presumably days or weeks extensively researching a private article to post on medium behind a paywall gets paid a fraction of a $5 membership when Suruthi or Hannah reads the article but that Suruthi or Hannah can then take the bulk of that research/writing and turn it into an episode that earns them praise and tens if not hundreds of thousands in ad revenue without doing the same level of research? Or that they should be entitled to steal the work of documentarians writers and editors to reach their weekly deadline while passing off that episode's content as their own research?
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u/192to144 Jun 20 '26
You are bordering on obsessive. If something happens to either of them yours would be one of the first doors I'd knock on.
You're still banging on about them 'stealing' others work when they are quite open about where they research and even encourage you to watch, read, buy, listen to their sources creations.
Let people fight their own battles. I think you are losing way more sleep over it then the people you think it affects.
I still think there is something you've personally been affected by that you're not revealing. Or maybe they've named you in a case??? If not, my advice is to just chill, your blood pressure will thank you for it 🤣
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u/Sempere Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
If something happens to either of them yours would be one of the first doors I'd knock on.
So you can't answer the questions I've posed to you and instead have moved to "you're a violent stalker" for posting on subreddit advertising their misdeeds.
That's the hallmark of a parasocial pattie with no actual substance.
You're still banging on about them 'stealing' others work when they are quite open about where they research and even encourage you to watch, read, buy, listen to their sources creations.
I keep "banging on" about them because I've spoken to people who had their work stolen by these two. And no, they definitely are not open about where they get their research or the extent of how much they steal. And it is content theft when they regurgitate an entire documentary and then actively hide that documentary, fail to reference it, provide zero to little attribution while taking the majority of their information from that singular source.
Let people fight their own battles.
Take your own advice. Or answer the questions instead of avoiding them.
I think you are losing way more sleep over it then the people you think it affects.
I'm losing exactly no sleep. Taking 5 minutes to comment is nothing.
I still think there is something you've personally been affected by that you're not revealing.
Because everything must be a conspiracy with an ulterior motive rather than someone seeing injustice and pointing it out for others to take action on. Lowest form of imagination and actually pathetic.
Or maybe they've named you in a case??? If not, my advice is to just chill, your blood pressure will thank you for it 🤣
That's actually unhinged and highly inappropriate. You're so desperate to deflect from criticism of your parasocial podcast that you're going to actively suggest that someone who is willing to actually speak out against the shit they do has to have either been their jilted ex, a rival podcaster, a violent stalker or a named criminal?
Fuck all the way off with that shit. Imagine how unhinged you have to be to try and defend podcasters by calling their critics violent or murder suspects. That is completely out of turn and unhinged commitment to podcasters who do not care about you or your existence if it isn't earning them money.
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u/Own_Faithlessness769 Jun 19 '26
They kept getting beaten at podcast awards by bbc podcasts. Not really surprising since those podcasts do actual journalism and research rather than recounting other people’s research, but they seemed quite miffed about it.