Profile of Steve here.

PS. There’s suddenly a lot of Martins around here!

In addition to Shane’s comment on it, there were some far more interesting comments on this issue by Seamus McCauley and BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann on Pods & Blogs the other day.

Of course that programme is on Five Live, which was described in the Today package as “those populists down the hall”.

Thanks for the link.

Shane’s assessment certainly rings true with me. When I check bbc.co.uk, it’s always to see what the headlines are (sometimes I prefer to read a properly laid out webpage than text from the wire). But I also always check the most read section because I know that’s where I’ll find a few “quirkies”.

This must make the “Most Read” section self-reinforcing.It would be fascinating to see the stats on behind it.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/jan08/popularity.htm

Being a very regular Radio 4 listener may explain why I said “try and appear objective” rather than “try to be objective”.

To be honest, I don’t think anyone who tells a story about something can ever achieve objectivity anyway. They can try and be fair, even balanced, but objective… I don’t know. Anyway, that is a different debate entirely.

What surprised me was that Today was employing anything-but-subtle bias. It was more sustained-pummeling-in-the-face-with-a-brick bias, which is unusual for them.

How long have you been listening to Today? They are notorious for subtle bias and slanting stories.

What strikes me about this is that we don’t necessarily want our newspapers and sites to just be full of what we actually read. I confess to occasionally reading Royal stories but I’d be happy if the BBC never published them. Similarly I didn’t read all the Bhuto coverage but I wanted there to be a lot of it above the fold.

There’s a context here. I might not read the political coverage of the Guardian but it’s an important part of the paper and influences the style of the more fluffy pieces I do read.

In other words, news should not be dictated by what people want to hear. It should be the news. And, whatever the stats show, people generally like it that way, even if they don’t read it in depth.

Or something.

At the time of writing the BBC was “13% in touch with what we’re reading”.

Dave