As some of you may have experienced, the quality of BBC News’ journalism has decreased exponentially in the last couple of years or so (referring specifically to articles on their website). This is particularly true of their reporting of all aspects of technology.
Essentially, the BBC gives the impression that:
One example is the collective hatred of Bill Thompson, especially amongst the IT community. His irritating pseudo-technological dumbed-down style of journalism is succeeding in injecting speculation and utter, utter falsities into the minds of the previous generation.
One example is this article[not one of BT's].
To summarise, it tells the story of a taxi-driver, driving his taxi into a fucking river.
There are two things that should be noted about this article:
- The headline ‘Sat-nav takes cabbie into river’
- The line ‘Pat Bowles, from Streamline Taxis, said: “Normal people would stop and back out but because his sat-nav told him to keep going that’s what he did.’
Firstly. The headline is misleading. You and I may think that it’s entirely acceptable or even amusing and harmless, but no. Of course, the less knowledgable and impressionable in society who pick up their technological soundbites from the equally ill-informed media are going to take this on board. I know this happens when [for example], my mother recounts these stories to me, and rounds off with ‘Oh my God you should stop using your sat nav, you could drown’.
The sat-nav device did NOT have its sprawling robotic appendages connected to the car’s steering wheel and pedals. The fact is, I have some breaking news of my own: THE CAB DRIVER IS A FUCKING IDIOT.
This is in fact backed up by the quote from his slightly less mentally comprimised colleague.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Daddy or Chips? // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:29 am
Sh!t! They told me that no one would ever believe anyone who discovered that we were using Quake to make new homos.
They’re onto us… damn!
2 Nick // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:42 pm
“Yeah, clearly the taxi driver is an idiot. But what does Bill Thompson have to do with it? He didn’t even write the story and isn’t even a news reporter, he’s a columnist, dur brain.”
To Nick: RTFA, I said it wasn’t Bill’s article. My point is that from reading Bill’s ramblings[this is not ONLY my opinion] – I can safely say that he is somewhat behind the times and quite backward in many of his opinions and musings, the guy’s not cut out for it and needs to be replaced. For samples of why I and so many others dislike him, you should check this link.
His relevance to this article is that the BBC pitch him as being knowledgable and the “facts” he presents are gospel which clearly isn’t the case, in many cases they’re plain wrong, in other’s they’re simply out of date.
To be honest, I’m not even sure why I’m dignifying you with a reply. How can I seriously respect anyone using any insult to express an opinion, let alone ‘dur brain’.
Seriously, Nick. Get with it.
3 Nick // Apr 25, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Yeah, fair enough. I just think that the attack on Thompson is a bit random, despite the – admittedly – absurd news story, which isn’t his doing. From what I can see, Thompson is attempting two thing, neither of which are dishonests: 1) to explain potentially complex and involved issues to an audience who may not be as expert as you are, and 2) to offer an opinion (unusual amongst BBC columnists).
The attack on Thompson was not random, I used him to demonstrate the general “dumbing down” of tech-reporting from the BBC being potentially damaging. I’m not saying he is directly dishonest, I’m saying that his omissions of detail and backward views lead to people forming incorrect opinions. The net result is the same – ill-informed people forming damaged opinions, thus, I do not believe that he should be offered anything more than self-purchased web-hosting. Sure he has a right to free speech and to offer his own opinion, but I also believe that the BBC is doing a great disservice to society by giving him a vehicle.
Also, I think your criticism of Thompson – which is valid in itself, as far as any old opinion goes – isn’t helped by publishing a picture of the man himself, as if that somehow wins your argument. Yes, Tony Blair is a wanker. A wanker – I would contend – indirectly responsible for, say, the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. Thompson isn’t in the same league, and his physical appearance is beside the point.
I did not publish the picture, I merely linked to it for fun. It’s someone else’s, a friend in fact. I made no reference to his physical appearance. As you say, it’s irrelevant.
I think, the ‘getting with it’ thing may apply to more than just me. I apologise for the ”dur brain’ comment by the way. But I do think your point about Thompson was slackly made.
Apology accepted. Please try and see what I’m driving at here. Thompson is merely an illustration of a hugely frustrating lack in quality in technology journalism. The very nature of technology [and under this umbrella, I'm referring to things such as Web 2.0 inc. social networking], is precision, and this is lost when information is poorly/incompletely/inaccurately reported.
Organisations like the BBC are abusing their trust by being slack in this, because scaremongering is much more worthy of public interest.
Take for example a conversation I had recently with a ‘senior’ relative of mine.
Them: “Are you on that Facebook thing?”
Me: “Yep”
Them: “Oh my goodness no! You know you could loose your job! Employers will look at your profile!”
Me: “No but….” [Pause while I consider explaining the concept of privacy settings and the workings of Facebook's profile access control] “No, it’s safe”.
Them: No no you should be on it, I read an article in the Telegraph about it…
Me[surpressing urge to scream "OH WELL IT MUST BE FUCKING TRUE THEN"]: “Uh huh”.
BTW Nick. I see your ISP is BTOpenWound. Don’t forget to opt out of Phorm. Or better yet, change your ISP for the next time they decide to launch another ‘trial’.
4 Nick // Apr 25, 2008 at 6:12 pm
“Before we continue this interesting discussion: thank you for the warning, but what’s Phorm? Should I be worried?”
Well Nick, I’m not going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t worry about. You have to make up your own mind about that, I can’t do it for you.
Essentially, it depends on your attitudes to privacy and civil liberties. To sum up, the Phorm system plants tracking data on your computer to identify “you” – [By 'you' it actually means just your computer which is why some are questioning even the efficacy of this system as it sort of fails if more than 1 person uses that machine]. It then intercepts and watches all of your browsing (what web-pages you look at, key-words on those pages), and uses this to build up a profile of you. Your ISP (in your case BT) then uses this Phorm profile to send adverts directly to your browser, based on the information they have harvested from watching you. Cash-strapped BT among others have signed up to this as they get a considerable slice of the advertising revenue generated from selling their customers’ browsing habits.
There are many, many, MANY issues with Phorm.
1. If they can pull keywords out of pages you’re looking at, they can pull out your credit card numbers [Phorm has acknowledged this, but has promised not to store numbers greater than 3 digits in length].
2. Phorm is created and managed by a team of programmers from Russia whose previous job was developing Spware.
3. BT have already trialled this system without telling their customers, it was forced to admit, and even that could be a lie.
4. Phorm is trying to maintain a media blackout of bad press[note especially the last line - removal of agreed factual information].
5. The bad publicity is already losing Phorm customers.
6. The ICO has warned ISPs that Phorm should be opt-in only. This is something that would destroy Phorm’s business model as it would rely on the fact that most people are too apathetic to bother making the extra effort needed to explicitly opt out.
7. Anti-virus/security firms are generally of the opinion that Phorm is adware, and consequently will remove Phorm tracking cookies.
8. The government’s own experts have advised that form is illegal.
And the general:
The WikiPedia article.
Consumer protest group.
Government petition.
There’s another great article in which Richard Clayton [known security expert from Cambridge University] was invited by Phorm to come and inspect [on the record] their Russian-developed code to prove that is was legal and much to their dismay, Clayton walks away even MORE convinced of its illegality.
Aside from this, Google it. Read for yourself. Make your own mind about Phorm.
Don’t rely on someone else to make your mind up and form opinions for you.
BTW. Those links are aggregated here [regularly updated].
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