BBC News – Page 3 – Fooyah

March 1 2013March 5 2013

Endless Speculation

This morning was the result of the Eastleigh by-election. I was listening to BBC Radio 4 while getting breakfast and I was amazed at the utter rubbish that the presenters and politicians were promoting.

There was endless speculation about why the public had voted a particular way with nearly every party claiming the result was good for them and using their own justifications. What utter rubbish. I do understand that the political parties are trying to spin the message and make sure that people think that they have done well but when you hear one argument after the other you begin to realise it’s BS.

I like the way that the politicos were trying to gather to mood of the nation and applying interpretations about the thoughts of the voters from this election result. Surely to gather any evidence about people’s motivation for voting a particular way would take some serious questionnaires and detailed investigation. It is not possible for this to be done a few hours after the result. I am sure that the sociologists out there must be swearing at their radios far more than me.

Politicians and spin! Perhaps one day we will get someone in charge who is quite happy to say things as they are and admit that they don’t know much!

February 22 2013February 22 2013

Unreliable

Some time ago I started writing communications about news failures on the BBC News website. It has been quite clear to me that the quality of journalism on the BBC website has been falling for years (subjective rather than hard data). The headlines and stories have not been presented well. Rather than giving accurate news and reporting important things it seems that the BBC feel they are in competition with sites such as the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail “news” websites. The BBC is not in competition and as a public body should try to maintain high standards of news and programming but they push their content to the lowest denominator of population trying to compete with channels that I couldn’t care about.

I have decided to stop using the BBC News website so much. It has been a gradual decision but was forced through the day I saw the following picture and clip on the front page of the site.

This story is not news. It’s not even a new thing. Animals have been given wheeled prosthetics for a long time. I just don’t care!

Goodbye BBC News website. I will still listen to Radio 4. I feel there is still some standard of production there. I guess one day I’ll change my mind. Is it because I’m getting older and therefore more cynical? I think there’s a Phd in looking into these factors.

November 21 2012

BBC News Comments

It had been my intention a while ago to comment on BBC News articles every now and then. See my initial news communication. I am going to try and resurrect this over the next while but if I am being honest I think that:

There’s just too many stories on the BBC News website that are clearly sensationalism and non-stories.

So, I will comment on some over the next few weeks and see if I get a severe reaction to the general anger that these “news” stories give me. If I find that I am too angry and can’t stop moaning about these things then it will be time to quit and find another niche for my considerable intellect and comment.

May 22 2012

BBC Headline #9

Headline from the BBC website.

Bogus PPI Complaints “Hit 6000”

My issue with this as a headline is that it is plain wrong. I know that they put the hit 6000 in quotes and therefore can pretty much say whatever they want because nobody believes anything in quotes, but quite clearly the text in the article states that it is 5661 bogus complaints. I’d argue that this is not 6000.
Perhaps I’m being petty but I always assumed the BBC had particular standards but it is clear they do not and are quite willing to “lie” to make a headline. In reality the real story is that there has been such huge miss-selling of PPI and that the banks are now making massive losses to cover paying people back thier own money. There were just more that 157,000 complaints last year (from the article) and so the bogus claim level is running at 4%. Whether that is a lot or not I’m not sure. There are probably people out there who don’t understand finance and also some people out there are complete blaggers.
I think the BBC should campain and help people understand the real story of our capitalist banks rather than sensationalise such a small part of the PPI scandal.

April 19 2012

BBC Headline #8

Headline from the BBC website.

Scientists create “Dr Who sonic screwdriver”

This fails on the following levels:

Quotation in Headline
Extrapolation
Bull

Quotation in Headline
~~I’m pretty sure they used the quotation marks here to show that they “just made it up”~~. Having looked at the article the reference to Dr Who was made by one of the researchers who is obviously trying to get into the news cycle so he can keep his research grant. In reality it’s an ultrasound device that can turn objects under specific conditions not just make them move backwards and forwards as sound waves would normally do. Now this is very clever but I’m pretty sure that Dr Who doesn’t use an ultrasonic screwdriver. All the references in the shows are to a sonic screwdriver that is the biggest deus ex machina device I have seen and turned me off the show.

Extrapolation
The ~~BBC writers~~ researchers obviously got a little excited and decided that if they followed the technological line for a few thousand iterations then we could link this current device to the Doctor’s sonic screw driver. This is rubbish. It’s like saying that because cars have improved their fuel efficiency over the last decade we should be able to travel miles on a thimble of fuel some time in the future.

Bull
It’s just rubbish to suggest that this device is anywhere near a sonic screwdriver.

April 18 2012April 18 2012

BBC Headline #7

BBC headline from the iPhone app from a while ago (18 March 2012).

Neutrinos “slow down” in new test

This headline suffers the following issues:

Quotation in Headline
Oversimplification
Bull

Quotation in Headline
As I have demonstrated many times you can get any old crank to say any old shit and then put it in a headline. Heck, you could even ask the desk jockey next to you to say something and then include their quotation. “He has a double direction reversible torch to see daylight, he’s that far up his own arse” says industry insider!

Oversimplification
Science and the method of science doesn’t follow a simple narrative or allow for simplification of its ideas. The original neutrino results were released because the scientists wanted criticism of their experiment, not because they believed the results to be true. Now, after nearly a year, they are closer to understanding the problems with the original experiment and are ready to try again. One scientific result does not a whole new paradigm make.

Bull
The neutrinos NEVER went faster than the speed of light and so they can’t have slowed down!

February 6 2012

BBC Headline #6

BBC Headline from the iPhone app today:

Motorists warned of ice ‘hazard’

Problems with this headline are:

Quotation in Headline
No Shit Sherlock

Quotation in Headline
Normally the weasels at the BBC use a quotation so they can state anything they want in the headline. Get some whacko to spout off: “them there aliens have stolen my memory and taken body probe photos for their files” and you can use it in your headline. You don’t really have to ask someone outside the office. Just ask the journalist next to you and claim them as a “source”. Now in this case the word HAZARD is in quotations. Does that mean that the conditions aren’t really hazardous? Or does it mean that the level of hazardness is open to some form of personal interpretation? Is ice on the roads considered a hazard or not? What knobs they are – these headline writers.

No Shit Sherlock
We have had snow reports for about a week now and the Met Office were lovely and accurate (or rather chaos didn’t interfere!). We have known it was going to be cold. You only have to look out of the window to see snow and frozen paths. Isn’t it a bit obvious that the roads might be icy too? My car shows me the outside temperature when I have the electrics turned on. Could the negative sign before the numbers mean something important? How about that funny snowflake symbol I see on the dashboard whenever it’s really cold? I hate how much the obvious needs to be stated to make people think.

January 26 2012January 26 2012

BBC Headline #5

BBC Headline from the website taken today:

Lagging pupils “don’t catch up”

This headline is lacking and, to be honest, the whole article is shocking. Headline problems are:

Quotation in Headline
No Shit Sherlock
Problematic Assumptions

Quotation in Headline
As long as someone wrote it or said it you can include it as a quotation in any headline or article. Say what you want. There’s always some nutter willing to give their opinion to give your leading headline some weight. “Crystal energies healed me” or “watch out for 23 December 2012! Those Mayans knew a thing or two”.

No Shit Sherlock
Pupils who are lagging behind in their work and understanding don’t then go on to catch up. Really! I need a whole BBC Headline to know this? How about “Some schools do really well!” or “Pupils getting better grades” or “Some schools not as good as others!”. There’s a distribution of schools or pupils, you can’t measure everyone and have everyone above average.

Problematic Assumptions
The biggest issue with the article and what the headline implies is that the bottom few pupils as measured by some arbitrary government test do not proceed to do well as measured by some other government arbitrary process. Have these people never heard of the Gaussian Distribution (the bell curve or normal distribution)? Some pupils will always be behind the others and will probably continue to be behind. Elsewhere in the article it is claimed that the top performers go on to get good grades later on. Holy Cow! This curve needs to be explained to them.

This is a graph of the Gaussian Distribution as everyone sees it:

The Gaussian Distribution as the government sees it (blue version):

No one is allowed to fail or fall behind or not be clever or be too far from the mean.

January 9 2012January 9 2012

BBC Headline #4

Headline from the weekend on the iPhone app:

Fast rail link ‘to be approved’

This headline is showing signs and symptoms of:

Quotation in Headline
Not Being News Yet

Quotation in Headline
As long as I can find a crazy person and get them to say something or even take a quotation from another magazine or news source I can write pretty much whatever I want as long as it has quotation marks. What this does not do is actually mean that it is true. Someone’s opinion does not make fact. “Earth to reverse rotation” in a headline isn’t true but as long as some idiot said it to a reporter it could be in a headline. Standards at the Beeb have definitely slipped in this age of 24 hour reporting. Quick, get the story, even if it’s wrong!

Not Being News Yet
Unless the BBC have found the institutionalised corruption in the upper echelons of society that blights our individual and societal gains for the riches of the few then this is a headline about an event that hasn’t happened. Now, I don’t want to get picky (yes I do) but, shouldn’t news be about things that have happened? If the BBC had uncovered fraud and bribes then this would be news but I doubt the headline would be as they wrote it.

January 6 2012

BBC Headline #3

Today’s (this isn’t going to be daily) rubbish BBC Headline taken from the iPhone app is:

Labour ‘should alter cuts stance’

This headline suffers the following afflictions:

Quotation in Headline
Wrong Story Implied

Quotation in Headline
As said before, you can write anything you want in a headline if someone has said it! Just ask a chiropractor about curing colic!

Wrong Story Implied
When you go and read the story you find that it’s actually a quotation from a shadow minister attacking his leadership about their stance on attacking the government (which is the job of the opposition). The real story is probably about the breaking ranks of the shadow cabinet and that a senior member of the Labour Party has spoken “off message”.

January 5 2012January 5 2012

BBC Headline #2

My second example of a poor headline from BBC News. This time it’s from their website rather than the iPhone app.

US spaceplane ‘spying on China’

This headline is poor in the following categories:

Quotation in Headline
No Shit Sherlock
Secondary Source

Quotation in Headline
You can write anything in a headline if you put it in quotes. Just ask any old nutter or naturopath what they think about something.

No Shit Sherlock
Is this really news? Are we to assume that the USA does not spy on other world powers? The only interesting thing is the existence of a super-spy-plane, but given rumour and speculation on the web this isn’t a surprise either. The USA have always had secret stuff. Are they going to some out and deny it? No, because that would mean guilt in many people’s eyes. Are they going to confirm it? No!

Using a Secondary Source
The text below the headline shows the article is essentially lifted from another publication which means the BBC can print anything in the original article as it counts as a source. Have they independently confirmed any of this? I doubt it.

January 4 2012January 5 2012

BBC Headlines

This is, hopefully, going to be a semi-regular blog post topic. I’ve decided now is the time to give this website some meaning other than my vanity project! It’s taken a while to think about and find my area of “expertise” but this is it:

Rubbish headlines on the BBC News website

It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel! I used to have an image of the website here but have decided it was a copyright infringement. All headlines will be linked to the original stories.

Spiderman web ‘closer to reality’

Headline taken from the BBC News iPhone app. As a first example this is a goody. We have two main headline issues:

Unreasonable extrapolation
Quotation in the headline

Unreasonable Extrapolation
Take a science paper and then make the most extreme possible prediction based very loosely on the science. As an example, lemon juice killing cancer cells in a petri dish does not lead to drinking lemon juice curing cancer in a human.

Quotation in Headline
Anyone could be asked for a quotation and then that used in a headline. Quotations need to be in context so the reader can decide their validity. For example a peddler of quackery might insist (incorrectly) that there is plenty of evidence for the efficacy of homoeopathic products but that does not mean that should be in a headline. People rely on headlines being true.

Spiderman web “closer to reality”

I don’t think anyone would be taken in by this headline. Get the credit card out! I want a wrist ejaculator now so I can fly from building to building.