‘Journalism in the age of mobile and social media’ gives insight into the current culture of reporting by Nic Newman, a digital strategist and founding member of the BBC News website.
Newman tells us that there is a ‘dreadful state of affairs’ in news broadcasting now that social media has burst upon the scene and normal people can shape and share their own narratives.
Amusingly he also says that news is increasingly celebrity obsessed and ‘many of my journalistic heroes sound increasingly shrill and out of touch’…..at which point he puts up this slide…….
Ouch!
Here’s the video……
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDgLY8s3UHI
Newman tells us that the growth of social media drives how people use news and therefore how it is made.
If news isn’t shared, he says, it has no value and people only share simplistic stories that do not need interpretation or analysis…..however very long, indepth reports do get picked up and read…it is the medium sized articles that are ignored…all too often those provided by the BBC:
“Too much reporting is 700-word articles that everyone else has got,” Delaney [from Buzzfeed] said. He explained that the site either published articles of less than 500 words, or else more in-depth and analytical features of around 1,200 words.
‘As you can see, much of what Delaney says about the ‘middle zone’ of 500 to 800 words makes sense. The BBC seemed to be the one publisher whose articles were consistently in this range. These were almost all news stories rather than features, analysis or commentary.’
The BBC is not providing the context, analysis and nuance for its news…and so not really providing the news if it cannot be interpreted by the reader in the fullest sense….they are especially guilty of this on radio bulletins.
Of course much of the time that suits the BBC as to provide such context would undermine the narrative….as with Thatcher and mine closures…..let’s not mention that the NUM called Labour’s pit closure policy disastrous…it ‘decimated the industry’ with ‘madhouse economics’.
And so on for many other subjects that the BBC try to use to bash the Tories with.
However the BBC is storming Twitter:
BuzzFeed and BBC revealed as February’s most-shared news sites on Facebook and Twitter
On Twitter the BBC has the highest number of shares, with just under 25 million in February.
“There are different motivations for sharing and different relationships. Twitter is public, there are professional relationships mixed with personal ones there and those dynamics create a different type of sharing atmosphere and I think without Twitter you’d lose a lot of the fast reaction to news stories.”
140 characters on Twitter…..might be worrying if that that is where people get their news from and don’t bother to read any further….very open to abuse or misinterpretation…….ie…news from Gaza….frequently twisted by BBC journo’s bias….but of course the Tweets go around the world and become fact and stay ‘fact’ as any complaints and corrections get no where near the same coverage.
As noted here by ‘Is the BBC biased’ it took over two years to get a final decision on a complaint about BBC coverage of the Middle East.
The story though is already history and has become part of the legend, the narrative of the Middle East….a fact that will keep being brought up by internet searches ad infinitum.
The BBC knows this happens….hence its knowingly inaccurate report by Chris Cook on Newsnight that told us the Government was ‘suppressing a report on immigration that was incendiary and undermined its case for immigration control’.
Trouble was that was complete nonsense…the government wasn’t suppressing anything….and the report said nothing new that hadn’t already been published in 2012.
However the story was splashed across the headlines and went ‘viral’….it is now established fact that the government suppressed an incendiary report and that immigration is beneficial to us all.
The BBC’s job is done….they lied, they knew they lied, but it doesn’t matter because once the lie gets out there is no way to recall it.
When the legend becomes fact print the legend.
This is the full report from Newman on-line:
JOURNALISM MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY PREDICTIONS 2014
people are looking at the BBC news and noticing that its a load of balls.searching the web will give you a rounded view of everything that the BBC puts out especially if they look on this site and notice the BBC is biased to the core
Actually, quite fascinating. Great share.
The bit about twitter is especially damning, as with the BBC their obsession with this and the demands of social media delivery systems such as mobile has led to them being front runners in the quaint news headline notion of ‘Accuracy Wouldn’t Fit’.
And when challenged on this, as with the BBC Watch case above, and others, the full force of CECUTT denial and obfuscation will get in by default to fight it all they way down to a grudging mutter from ‘The Trust’ in clear view in a locked cabinet in a basement…
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“do not need interpretation or analysis”
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About the only ray of hope. As too much BBC interpretation of events, enhancing of narratives, etc, is based on analysis as bent as a Head Drama’s conflict of interest-free commissioning choices.
Time was when many of us would have been up in arms about the likes of “UKIPS Nikki Sinclair” getting a chance to stick his hobnailed stiletto boot into Farage and…well, men in particular I`d imagine…as if he wouldn`t know!
Said transpondent was on Womans Hour yesterday I was warned…but who amongst us would expect anything else from the BBC these days?
Witness too the death of our interest in the panels of the Dinsdale Brothers as they spout off on their Prius vehicles of liberal cant…their dad Richard Dimbleby must be spinning like the becalmed wind turbine on the Richmond Estate.
AND-the supreme irrelevance of Newsnight these days…can`t remember the last time I bothered…oh yes, Kuennsberg/Harman and PIE Chartist movement!
Were I the BBC I`d be very bothered that we now go miles away for our news, and we want them dead…MacAlpines Fusiliers hate them and all their evil works….except for Stewart Lee when he`s not an idiot, and 2012 was good too!
The BBC are dead…but it takes time to note the vital signs when your head is up Pattens arse, in Yentobs manbag and you actively hate the British people…
Say goodnight to the folks Nikki!
I do not do twitter. I am really not interested what one celeb I have never heard of has to say about the death of another celeb I have never heard of. But listen to Radio 4 news who seem to see twitter as their major source of news, Justin Webb on Today for example. But most of these tweets are unconfirmed opinions or facts. The Publicists are free to say anything they like, probably with anonymous accounts. The BBC I used to love would have had none of the way they gather news now. As for the BBC’s 800 word analyses, no depth to anything they produce. If in doubt, consider the BBC’w analysis of what is happening in Ukraine and Crimea.
An interesting post which increased my optimism that the BBC will lose its near monopoly of news and current affairs in the UK This may happen surprisingly quickly as more and more people get their news from new sources and not from traditional radio and TV. Even if the BBC are able to gain a foothold in this new way of providing content they will face enormous competition and will be forced to play on a level field without all the advantages they currently enjoy courtesy of the state. They will be just one voice in many. Once that has happened the end of the BBC is near because even the Labour party will have less and less use for it. Unless a Labour government manages to give the BBC some control over new media, I think we can see an end to the BBC monopoly.