One thing often said by Biased BBC commentators when I describe something the BBC has done as a “mistake” is to say “funny how the mistakes are only in one direction”.
So here’s a reminder that there are people who think that the BBC has a bias towards the right.
I’ve posted on Biased BBC what I think about the mistake (see very bottom of page) in rewriting p.a. copy with an error in, based on a blog.
“Not being a journalist by training this is the kind of strange practice that I find hard to understand.”
Bias is a red herring here.
But it shows that the old newspaper model doesn’t work on the internet. Three people were being paid, one to blog, one to produce agency copy, one to rewrite copy into a news story. Is this the best way to spend money on news? Do you need this if you can just link to the blog? Why doesn’t the agency turn its copy into freely available feeds so you can read the copy direct, or turn the feeds into a website? If they did that, would others need to rewrite it?
It is true that people still want news delivered to them in a packaged way. But I wonder if the balance is quite right.
Nick Reynolds At Work 