The BBC News site these days more resembles a gossipy tabloid than a public broadcaster, and the quality of the writing is similarly poor. There are many, many grammar mistakes, which is especially disappointing in what should be a bulwark and reliable source of “proper” English. The [BBC today used emotive, everyday language (“forced” and “row”) whereas the Financial Times was more sober](https://imgur.com/qekDerx). Is there a reason? It’s funded without advertisement and so does not need to increase traffic to satisfy advertisers.
35 comments
Probably requires enough viewership to not lose funding.
Can’t say I’ve noticed a decline because I don’t tend to watch it.
They changed the layout of the front page recently and I absolutely hate it, I find it so hard to take everything in, and you’re right, it looks and feels like a gossip site now, there are way more silly fluff articles, videos, and opinion pieces than actual important news, and to get to the local news page now you have to scroll so far down to find a link to a list of areas and then select an area to view, instead of your area’s news being shown on the front page along with the weather like it used to be. I have all but given up on it now.
There’s a lot of clickbait type stuff on it too. Their Twitter feed is very “clickbaity” these days. Guess they want more money.
Ive been saying this for a long time now. Some of the spelling mistakes are atrocious and the grammar is out of whack. The new news site layout is really bad too. The local news for me has now been made into the news for the whole county. I dont want to see the news for Brighton or Crawley, its totally irrelevant to me. So yeah, i agree with op.
I have, unfortunately, noticed their Facebook page getting a bit more clickbaity. Engagement must have dropped.
Quality journalism is struggling hard at the moment. It’s hardly a new observation, but it’s just too easy and comforting to wall yourself in with things that you know will flatter how you already see the world. Facebook’s bad for it, Twitter’s bad for it, Reddit’s *AWFUL* for it.
That makes keeping eyeballs harder for anybody that at least *tries* to remain somewhat objective. The BBC isn’t perfect, but in this new equation, it loses out to the New Europeans and Breitbarts of the world. Or, worse still, any page full of screenshots of tweets.
So the way to adapt is to start churning out cheap conversation starters (Do YOU take your shoes off inside the house?) and other eyeball-grabbing mulch.
I hate to be a downer, but if there’s a way out of this, I have no idea what it is.
>It’s funded without advertisement and so does not need to increase traffic to satisfy advertisers.
In theory this should lead to better news. In practice, it doesn’t. The reason is because the BBC needs to demonstrate impact and value for money.
They’ve settled on doing that by chasing views. So the end up in the same place as commercial news organisations, where clicks are prioritised.
The low quality of BBC’s news and current affairs really frustrates me. One of the benefits of having the BBC should be that they can take a different approach to commercial news organisations. But they don’t really seem to very often.
Their integrity fell of a cliff in the years leading up to 2016 when they started conflating impartiality with giving lies equal standing to the truth.
As the parable goes *If one person says it is raining and another person says it is not raining then a journalist should not simply quote them both. Instead, a journalist should look outside to ascertain the truth and relay it to the public*.
You only have to take a peak into who the chairman is and what his proclivities are.
He is basically a mini Murdoch, and the results are clear to see.
I noticed the dodginess for myself in 2001.
However, when I learnt about how they protected Saville and themselves, I realised it’s one of those situations where there is more dirt than any one individual can know.
It is a shame. I like British English a great deal and the BBC are least used to be able to do that well.
There has been a significant drop in the number of BBC reporters following the enforced government cutbacks.
We’re talking over 20%.
The TV bulletins are just as disappointing. Not exactly tabloid, but just unimportant stuff with no analysis. Channel 4 and even ITV blow them out of the water these days.
Interesting that Radio 4 bulletins and programmes are still incisive and cover actually important stories. So the BBC still does proper journalism, they just don’t think it will get them a web or TV audience.
I agree, but at least they have given up with the first person headlines which they adopted for a while. It got so bad that there were frequent articles with just a picture and a headline like ‘I love my muddy sheep’, or ‘i was shocked when I rocket came through my window’. It was really Sun style sh*t.
I used to staunchly defend the BBC but I can’t do that any more.
The news offering is progressively worse, the TV programming is dull and repetitive – just catering to the lowest denominator, and the radio offering is dire.
I can’t really say what the BBC does well at the moment.
They are worried that their viewers are aging and are trying to appeal to 18 to 35 year olds.
We now have presenters who appear to have had no voice training so “three months” is “free mumfs”. One presenter has such a peculiar cadence to her voice, she is unable to make things clear.
Much time is spent on things which are more water cooler topics such as winner of Strictly or silly Westminster gossip or the photoshopped image story.
As a result they are not gaining younger viewers but are losing older ones.
Yeah. There’s been a few stories local to me where they have got details wrong. I even emailed them about one but they did not change it.
I used to read a lot of current affairs on BBC but don’t anymore. I also live in Scotland now and their reporting isn’t the best on Scottish issues imo…
Seems to me that the late night show Newsday is staffed mainly by amateurs. A few of the female presenters can barely speak English.
I’ve started watching Sky news even though i have to put up with commercials, lets face it, BBC news channel shows commericals for it’s own specials incessantly anyway.
I’m sick of having to look at Laura Kuennsberg telling me to sit down and we’ll have a talk. Fuck off Laura.
I got rid of the BBC News and BBC Sport apps because of the incessant notifications. When smart phones were on the rise, a breaking news BBC notification generally meant something major had occurred… or was occurring. Now their definition of “breaking news” is that Leah Williamson has an ankle injury or Katie Price is due in court again. If they think all their news is special, then none of it is…
The articles on the website have been dumbed down so much as to be practically useless.
They bizarrely launched “BBC Verify” – which implies the rest of their news isn’t verified – to try and get some credibility back but inevitably it’s already been used to spread unproven allegations.
The whole news arm needs a serious rethink.
They are almost literally a Hamas-propaganda outfit these days.
Sounds extreme, but every time I click on the homepage I see a top article beating the drum about how sad it is in Gaza.
Massive undue prominence given. They don’t do this for any other conflict or set of terrorists. When it comes to Gaza, Hamas are given 100% benefit of the doubt and sympathy and Israel 0.
World service radio is fairly good, Radio 4 has good content…
Yes I have noticed this. It almost feels as if the One Show has managed to leak all over the BBC website. So many of the stories either appear to be very soft PR releases or stuff that wouldn’t even have troubled a local news website 10 years ago
News is no longer about informing the audience.
Generating an emotional response is now the top priority.
Had to uninstall the BBC News App
Kept getting nonsense notifications for irrelevant stories which weren’t news or noteworthy in any sense, opinion pieces sent to me as if they were gospel
Even worse when I got notifications marked as breaking news which were literally not significant in any sense
Unfortunately, yes and I agree completely with your comments. Sadly, they are also slow to update their website, and breaking stories are often covered more quickly elsewhere.
I tend to rely more on Reuters these days
Most of the like actual work done at the BBC is done by like interns on actual mejia studies courses.
I hate the new app layout. I want news, not a magazine!
It’s staffed by activists now, not journalists
I have noticed this, it bugs me but I think there’s a few understandable reasons for it.
There have been plenty of cuts to their staff, so there are significantly fewer people working on the site but the expectation of output isn’t going to be dropping.
You’re reading first drafts that someone with more time could have worked on, or that someone else could have had a look at before it went out. However, those people are either gone as part of budget cuts or already working on the next thing.
I suspect some of the people the BBC are hiring are bringing in the things they’ve had to learn working for publications which do rely on advertising. The BBC shouldn’t have to chase traffic, numbers and clicks but basically everyone else does so anyone the Beeb is recruiting will have been stuck in this mode.
It’s possible that the BBC has not twigged how serious an issue this is yet, and thus don’t have clear direction which can tell their staff “don’t worry about numbers”. They can and should take a different approach but they clearly aren’t.
They might not need to chase ads but you can expect there will be targets and reviews concerning pageviews and engagement, so there will be bait, gossip and other things in an attempt to boost these numbers.
They laid of roughly half their workforce, so I imagine there is noticeable deterioration.
Yes. I think it’s the pressure of delivering ‘at the moment’ reporting. 24 hour news and the internet has been terrible for the journalistic profession. Corners have the cut and proof reading is neglected
I’ve notified years ago the bbc commonly leaves out key details from news reports. I’m unsure why tbh it doesn’t seem agenda based, maybe genuinely it is quality question.
It’s way past time that the license fee was removed. Some of the money I’m forced to pay is bankrolling these amateur hour bloggers.
Also it’s not solely funded without advertisement, use the BBC anywhere outside the UK and it’s covered in adverts.
Yes, I have noticed a deterioration in the quality of bbc news. In fact, a loft of it is only news because the definition of ‘news’ has broadened to mean ‘something that someone might find remotely interesting’.
And the emotive clickbait headlines are an attempt to keep up with most other forms of ‘news’ media that are equally in a death spiral.
Used to work with an ex journo (he was the PR guy) from 2016-19 and he would get so irate about the quality and subject matter of the BBC news.
So many articles with this style of title now “the man whose life was saved by a crisp packet”. Can we leave that type of title to buzzfeed please?
My best guess is that post social media journalism is about getting your opinion out there and not about the news itself. This has given rise to a generation of writers with less integrity and craft, making everything an op ed or complete fluff.