After increasing their spending on the US division of the BBC website, and making all those new hires, the BBC has now decided what the best use of those resources is: reporting Twitter.
News tweets: Zombies attack ‘Amercia’
For the week of 27 May, here is the news – condensed into 10 topical tweets, some more serious than others.
The highest possible quality journalism, worthy of the legacy of trust and respect spanning generations, no? It’s especially silly considering the recent error over that Syria photo, which they rushed to publish simply because it was trending on Twitter. This is basically how they do newsgathering now. If they make this a regular feature, will there be any reason to consider the BBC as a serious news source for US news anymore? Lightweight, human interest stuff, with an increasingly small amount of hard news. Alastair Cooke is probably rolling in his grave.
Maybe the bbc will eventually go the way of Pathe News, and wither away, to become mildly amusing and a curious anachronism.
Not sure they spend they bothered spending the money when the coverage and quality is clearly worse AND they only needed clear out the waffling fools and put in a decent journalist or two thereby SAVING money and being better.
Mark Thompson told Andrew Marr in 2010 that they were cutting spending on the website but that would make it better:
It’s also because sometimes focusing what you do means you can deliver what you do deliver to a higher quality. So I believe that the website – which will become about 25% smaller, we’ll spend 25% less money on it – will actually be a more effective, more valuable, higher quality website as a result. And I think the question for us, the challenge for the BBC over the next couple of years is as we look across our services, are there ways in which we can focus what we do? Sometimes it means doing fewer things better, raising standards. Perhaps instead of doing three documentaries, you do two but you spend more money on them and you make sure they’re higher quality.
They’re spending the money over here and building their US presence, reporting less news and producing more magazine-style “bespoke video features” and lowering the standards in a bid to increase audience share and ad revenue. Make no mistake about it.
Plus, they win awards from US media luvvies for having more international content than US news websites, so I’m just a crank who only wants to hear my point of view.
‘..publish simply because it was trending on Twitter. This is basically how they do newsgathering now…”
I have asked the BBC CECUTT a few times how, exactly, me paying them £145.50pa for them to serve me the inaccurate and often pre-selected partisan tripe from a free US-based, wild-west ‘news’ aggregator fulfills the obligations of the The Charter and the most trusted professional news remit bragged about by such as Fran Unsworth and Helen Boaden, but they so far seem to feel such questions being asked is holding the wrong kind of power to account and for my impertinence are trying a banning.
Unique, indeed.
The thing is that’s where they’re getting it from because that’s where a lot of it is starting to be output. I can’t work out though whether it is stupidity or deliberately malign. One thing it does bring out into the open is probably how shallow muhc of their news gathering has been in the past and where they only go to sources who in fact play to their confirmational bias.
Before it folded I once made one foray into the Current Channel on cable. On it’s last day it screened a documentary called “How to Start a Revolution” featuring the work and findings of Professor Eugene Sharp. Personally I found it quite interesting but it was really quite telling towards the end.
For those that remember that oh so glorious outpouring of democracy that was the Egyptian uprising, a number of us questioned the English signs that were being held aloft. Although it wasn’t concentrated on in the documentary, it was was alluded to as a deliberate tactic to send the messages to the western world – in other words there was more to what we were seeing than spontaneous activity. Some of it was very much for a western audience.
Within the same documentary there was an examination of how the whole Egyptian thing had a big social media angle to it. As we moved towards the end of the documentary we came to the Syrian situation. What we effectively had was one guy, who was known to Gene Sharp coordinating the publicity for the uprising from a flat in what I believe to be Englan, using Twitter & Facebook and giving the media what they wanted from their. This wasn’t on the ground journalists but what looked like a one man show with a mobile phone and some computers, all of which seemed to be about getting the message to us.
I don’t actually mind the BBC or any news outlet monitoring this stuff because that’s where a lot of people post things first these days. No problem with that at all. But that doesn’t mean they can let their standards drop. If anything, they need to be even more careful because of the way Twitter feeds on itself. Things trend extremely fast because people just retweet whatever without necessarily thinking. Just because something is trending at the moment doesn’t mean it’s accurate, or necessarily worth reporting.
I hope everyone remembers this incident the next time the BBC defends itself over not reporting something quickly because they had to verify the story first. I’ll admit that a photo isn’t anywhere near as serious an offense as actual story data. But it’s all very revealing of the current BBC mindset, especially when they still maintain that their own Twitter accounts can be used for newsgathering and promoting BBC reporting yet are still personal and outside the impartiality remit. It’s not a safe road to travel the way they’re doing it.
‘I don’t actually mind the BBC or any news outlet monitoring this stuff ‘
Agree. Of course not.
But it’s simply a new resource… a starting point..
Near every blog (promptly closed when asked to account for statements) on the BBC Editors/Social Media Clowns treats every ‘innovation’ in this arena as the final solution.
From RT’ing tweets from ideological fellow travellers to cutting headlines to ‘fit’ mobile screens such that they cease to be accurate, I beg to differ with this view.
Which is why being told they feel they are getting it about right, and for not agreeing with them on this I need to be excommunicated, can be vexing.
The personal/professional blur and/or exceptions when they suit are also, yes, risible.
Anyone else noticed that all three of the Beeboid churnalists on their Science & Nature web pages are nearly always linking to their twatter ramblings. Why should they use / advertise an external supplier when everyone else seems to manage to get actual content onto the website
Richard Black appears to have near given up on blogs, much less interactive ones.
Twitter is great for his purposes because he can simply broadcast only to the faithful, RT only support and block any critique.
Twitter is pretty much the ideal tool for a BBC seeking online propaganda backed by censorship.