The BBC asked marginalized groups how it could do better. They didn’t hold back. – Nieman Journalism Lab

Participants told Kulkarni and his collaborators that, first and foremost, they viewed journalism as a form of oppression that had the same impact on their lives as the police. Journalism in general, and the BBC in particular, they said, felt like an arm of the state, and almost half of them refused to pay their license fee — essentially a legal permit that allows people to watch live broadcasts and forms the backbone of the BBC’s funding — out of protest against the BBC’s journalism.

That doesn’t mean they don’t engage with the news, however; participants were incredibly news literate, Kulkarni told me, and preferred to get their news from other sources. Many people favored Al Jazeera recently, for example, because they appreciated its coverage of the war in Gaza. Often, people got their news from social media or simply word of mouth, and the majority of them were engaging with the news every day.