mkjones

You know on the news when the person chairing the edition turns to the camera after divulging 30 minutes of painful and sometimes boring content and says “And finally….” before spouting a nonsense story which is designed to enable the watcher to feel slightly better about the world around them??

Well, BBC News has created a whole new section dedicated to this type of news content, they call it “Also in the news…”

Stories in this new section include:

• Naked riders promote pedal power
• Patient bleeds dark green blood
• Sudan man ‘marries’ goat

and…

• Snake bursts after gobbling gator

There is also a huge video cache showing cute baby polar bears, TV show highlights and further ‘cute’ news.

Its not necessarily a bad section, nor is it a good one, and I can see why the BBC have gone down this route. The issue I have with this new area is its bleak future. With more and more bad news being broadcast the BBC will inevitably require more ‘fluff’ to counterbalance this.

For this reason I foresee useless news articles being promoted as actual news simply invented to fill areas like this.

The BBC can and should do better.