Tag: bbc

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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!

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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.

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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:

Bell Curve

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

Bollocks curve

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

 

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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.

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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.

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