Wed, 20 Jul 2005 18:33:57

| Wednesday 20th July 2005 18:33MDT | → |

Although I think BBC News is better than practically all media in this country, it has tended towards a somewhat tabloid approach over the past few years - especially in its 6pm news, which seems to be presented with a ‘Coo! Look at this!’ attitude, and News Online. In the latter case, it has an article entitled ‘Teachers say no-one should ‘fail’. This has caused a storm of protest and has been attacked from all sides - until you look carefully and in fact it’s one teacher proposing a resolution to one conference of one teacher’s union - a far cry from it being the opinion of all teachers.

Another example is ‘Vitamin controls backed by Europe’. Apart from implying in the title that Europe is ‘them’ and not ‘us’, it states:

The European Court has decided to tighten rules on the sale of vitamins and minerals.

… which gives the impression that the Court made the law itself, when in fact it was merely ruling on the legality of it.

This may seem like Daily Mail style nit-picking but these aren’t trivial issues and I’m afraid the BBC seems to be letting accuracy slip in its ‘new media’ - maybe to try to catch up with competitors.