In The Atlantic this week, Casey Newton writes:

One hallmark of our current moment is that when an event happens, there is little collective agreement on even basic facts. This, despite there being more documentary evidence than ever before in history: Information is abundant, yet consensus is elusive.

He’s referring to the USA. I don’t think we’re quite that far down this dark road in the UK yet, but it’s clear we’ve taken the same turning.

Lately, I’ve been increasingly irritated by the willingness of the news—and, it must be said, especially television news—to broadcast liars lying. You may mutter “’twas ever thus”, but I’m afraid I must disagree. Over the past six months, it has got considerably worse.

Tune into BBC News or Sky News—or any of their UK competitors—on most evenings, and you’ll see them take prolonged live coverage of Donald Trump. Inevitably, because it is what he does, Trump will lie during those segments. Not misleading spin. Not reasonable interpretations of contested facts. Lies. Simple, plain, incontrovertible falsehoods: that the January 6 rioters had no guns; that Ukraine started the war with Russia; that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship; that he coined the word “caravan”; that Canada prohibits US banks; that he had invaded Los Angeles.

These statements air uncontested. There is rarely even an acknowledgment that they may be disputed. They are simply allowed to play out. It is literally the case that Sky News has repeatedly broadcast someone stating—as uncontested fact—that the 2020 election was rigged. That is not journalism, and it is not acceptable. There should be a reasonable expectation that things broadcast on news programmes ought to be true.

But the problem is deeper than that. Watching the BBC’s coverage of the local elections last month, I think I was even more tired than Laura Kuenssberg was of her lengthy, pre-written ‘fact check’ every time someone mentioned the financial ‘black hole’. The point—as we’ve seen time and again—is that allowing people to repeat the lie lodges it in people’s minds, regardless of the correction. So, even when there is a correction, it’s often ineffective.

We in the UK ought to be insulated against a failure to agree on basic facts because of the existence of the BBC: an unbiased source of quality journalism; a publicly funded bastion of information, education, and entertainment.

And yet: our population believes that 21% of the country is Muslim (the real figure is 6%); that 51% of wealth is held by the richest 1% (the real figure is 21%); that more than a quarter of the population was born abroad (the real figure is 14%).

The BBC is operating on assumptions that no longer hold true. The idea that we allow politicians and others the freedom to speak on air is grounded in an old-fashioned idea of the “gentleman politician” whose statements are tethered to reality. That is no longer the world we live in. We need a different approach.

So, here’s a proposal: let’s make the BBC a bastion of factfulness. Make it responsible for improving the population’s understanding of the basic facts about life in the UK. Allow it to pursue that goal in whatever way it chooses—I’m no broadcast expert—but judge it on an independently measured outcome.

This would be good not just for the population, but for the BBC, too. We can stop arguing about whether the BBC should show programmes individuals personally dislike, because we can accept that to educate, it must reach. For the same reason, we can stop arguing about it branching out onto social media platforms. But it would also suddenly behoove the BBC not to mislead: to preserve the integrity of its airwaves, not try to backpedal after broadcasting lies, and certainly not allow lies to be aired unchecked.

This ought not to stifle public debate. I’m not suggesting that the BBC start policing the ‘truth’ of genuinely controversial ideas. I am, however, suggesting that we need to understand those competing visions in relation to a basic, agreed set of facts—and that we can test the audience’s understanding of those facts.

Of course, the reflexive rebuttal is: “but whose facts?” This is solvable: we’ve done it many times over, reaching consensus—however peculiar—on the content of the citizenship syllabus, for example. Once the ‘syllabus’ is agreed, measuring it is straightforward enough through population sampling.

And yes, the libertarian in me does find it a little dystopian to suggest that we should have a publicly funded organisation telling us what to believe… but it already exists, and we already assign it that role—we just don’t judge it by its outcomes, but rather bizarrely by its reach.

It’s clearly desirable that people understand the basic facts about the world they live in. We already cite the BBC as our greatest asset in achieving that outcome. So why not hold it to that promise—and make it the goal?

The image at the top was created with GPT-4o.

Earlier this week, John Prescott sadly died. Here’s the headline on the Sky News article reporting his death:

Former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott dies aged 86

Long-term readers may think that I’m going to rant about the use of the present tense “dies” rather than the past tense “has died”—this is a persistent and widespread bugbear—but I was more intrigued by the use of the word “Labour” in that headline.

He was—as anyone would be—”deputy prime minister” for the whole country, not just for Labour. It felt an odd, somewhat tribal, somewhat divisive qualification to make, and it didn’t feel familiar.

I suspected that, previously, the headlines have just reported the office of state, not the party affiliation. It seems like this might represent further tribalisation of our politics. But I chose to suspend my disappointment for a bit while I checked my facts.

This is a tricky thing to do: there have only been eight formally appointed deputy prime ministers in the UK, two of whom were Dominic Raab, and all of which—barring John Prescott—are still alive. Sky News has never had to report the death of a former deputy prime minister before.

Reporting on the death of a former prime minister feels qualitatively different from the death of a former deputy, so that doesn’t seem like a fair comparison. But what about holders of the other great offices of state?

The most recent former chancellor to die was, of course, Alastair Darling, late last year. The Sky News headline:

Alistair Darling: Former Labour chancellor dies aged 70

The most recent former home secretary to die was Lord Waddington, in 2017. The Sky News headline:

Former Conservative home secretary Lord Waddington dies aged 87

The most recent former foreign secretary to die was Robin Cook, in 2005, which is further back than the Sky News website archive stretches… but from the examples above, I think we can safely conclude that this isn’t a new practice after all. Sky News has been headlining the party affiliation of dead politicians for years. For what it’s worth, this doesn’t seem to apply to prime ministers (“Margaret Thatcher dies at 87 after stroke”).

So why did it feel unusual? I suspect it is because the BBC doesn’t do it. Their headlines for each of these stories:

Former deputy PM Lord Prescott dies aged 86

Former Chancellor Alistair Darling dies aged 70

Former Home Secretary Lord Waddington dies at age of 87

Former minister Robin Cook dies

Just because the BBC does something doesn’t mean it’s right—in fact, the BBC News house style often riles me. It’s curious that it often nonetheless sets expectations.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

Every now and again, I find myself moaning to Sky News about some report or other they’re running, usually on a medical topic. This might put me in the same box as the green-ink angry brigade of old, but I kind of hope it doesn’t.

Sky News is normally the outlet on the receiving end of my moans because Wendy likes to watch Sunrise in the mornings, so they tend to be the ones to irk me when I’m sleepy-eyed and vulnerable. Usually, they’ve misunderstood the findings of some piece of research, or are giving advice that needs a little more nuance. Generally, I fire off an email to them, and they correct either their script or package pretty quickly, or else get back to me to explain why they won’t. I actually think I have a pretty good relationship with them.

A few years ago when the whole MTAS debacle was kicking off in the medical world, I helped Channel 4 News with some of their reporting, and also found them really helpful, willing to listen to my explanations, and good at accurate reportage.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I don’t think I’ve ever complained about a BBC News report. But then, the BBC News website published this article about the Queen’s faith role. This couldn’t be further from the stuff I’d usually moan about, but the report was based on a COMRES poll, and originally opened with the claim that 80% of the population supported the Queen’s faith role. I didn’t believe this, and so checked out the original data on the COMRES website, which revealed that 80% responded positively to a question about whether the Queen has a faith role. This is, of course, different from giving support – it’s a question of fact, and, as the Queen is the head of the Church of England, it seems pretty undeniable that she has a faith role, whether or not it’s supported.

So I fired off an email. And, within hours, the article was changed to the current version, which reports the actual survey findings more accurately. What I hadn’t anticipated, and hadn’t had from any other outlet, was that the Religion Editor gave me a call. We had a great chat in which he explained how the article had come about, how the mistake had been made, and also a general talk about the complex rules that the BBC has around commissioning surveys. This was fantastic.

So what’s my point? Essentially, any time I personally have moaned to a media outlet about a factual reporting error, I’ve received a positive response. Granted, it would be better that the mistakes weren’t there in the first place, and it’s probably true that not all sections of the media are as responsible as those I’ve been involved with.

But journalists are humans too. They make mistakes, and many of them seem happy to have these corrected. Leveson might give the impression that all journalists are unethical idiots, and Blair might think they’re feral beasts, but some journalists are just doing a bloody hard job as well as they can, with the utmost professionalism.

I know it’s not a popular view at the moment, but maybe we can consider giving journalists a break sometimes? Just a thought.

I am a Sky News viewer. That’s my guilty confession. I don’t so much sit and watch it as have it on in the background when I’m at home. It’s essentially moving wallpaper for my living room, often ‘watched’ without sound.

I choose Sky News because it’s the least distracting of the news channels. That used to be true of BBC News 24, but there’s something about the presentational style now that distracts me. I don’t know what it is, or whether that’s a good thing for attracting viewers who actually want to watch, but it’s turned me off.

I also like the fact that they respond and change scripts when I send them moany emails pointing out the factual errors in their medical reportage, whereas the BBC generally ignore me.

So, as a Sky News viewer, the iPad App has been marketed very heavily at me. Frankly, I’m fed up of seeing the adverts.

The app is fairly new, and has received a lot of praise from all over the place: Tech Radar basically loved it, Zath thought it was one of the iPad’s best apps, and Crowded Brain gave it 9/10.

The app is often praised for its innovative presentational style and ‘immersive’ experience. It has two main gateways, both of which are video focussed. There is a traditional ‘order of importance’ approach, where videos and headlines from stories are dynamically (read: messily) arranged with size and position indicating importance. Hit a video and it starts to play, while contextual information flies in from the sides. The contextual information is generally more video content on the same story, textual content, or interactive graphics.

Alternatively, the ‘timeline’ view gives me a virtually minute-by-minute index of what has been presented on Sky News over the last 24 hours, and allows me to jump to any bit of it, with the contextual fly-ins as above.

Conclusion: I hate it.

I really do very strongly dislike this app. I just don’t think I’m a person who enjoys consuming news through video. I might have Sky News on all the time, but I guess I don’t really watch it. Save for some recent very big stories, few newsworthy items lend themselves to videos – moving pictures rarely add all that much to understanding. I’d far rather scan-read a written article than spend three times the time being spoon-fed a simplified version of the issue via video.

I didn’t realise how strongly I felt about this until this app came along. I rarely click the videos in online news articles, but they don’t bother me – I just ignore them. But when you go down this Sky News route of removing almost everything but the video it becomes painfully clear that this isn’t the way I like to consume my news.

I’ll concede that the app is visually striking – though I wouldn’t necessarily call it attractive. I’ll concede that it’s innovative – I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. But I’ll conclude that it’s not for me – when it moves to a subscription model, I won’t be paying.

This is the third in a series of posts reviewing iPad Apps. Yesterday’s review was of the iWork Apps. Check back tomorrow for my review of Who Wants to be a Millionaire HD. Yes, really.