Just when you thought you had seen it all with the depths that BBC Sport had plunged to.
The BBC Sport site was once upon a time something to admire.
As in, if you wanted to read something where you knew you could absolutely rely on the truth of it, that is where you went.
The BBC Sport site wouldn’t put out any shameless embarrassing nonsense just to get attention and cheap clicks.
That ship sailed long ago though.
At a time when the media has never been in a more desperate state, BBC Sport should be leading the way in fighting back against all the online nonsense, where truth isn’t vaguely important. Instead, BBC Sport are the ones driving the truth bus off a cliff!
There is still some great stuff on the BBC Sport site written by excellent journalists.
However, there has also been an ever increasing load of rubbish that in the past would never have been published by them.
Reality is that what BBC Sport these days sees as their most valuable commodity is also their most embarrassing.
Their woeful cynical money making exercise (visitors from abroad getting served with adverts when visiting BBC Sport) of ‘transfer gossip’, the most visited section of BBC Sport.
So many of the ‘sources’ they are happy to quote, simply laughable, the online equivalent of the bloke down the pub told me…many of these sites simply making up transfer ‘story’ after transfer ‘story’. BBC Sport also using overseas ‘sources’, frequently with a total disregard as to any truth whatsoever, or the context where something is written.
As Newcastle United fans we have seen BBC Sport with ceaseless campaigns to create unrest, to unsettle players, by publishing article after article pushing for players to leave Newcastle United, often quoting these ridiculous transfer gossip sources and repeating them time and time again. Some of these players have ended up leaving, eventually, some are still at NUFC.
If you thought all of the above was bad, then today’s news is surely the final blow to any remaining BBC Sport credibility.
Martyn Ziegler at The Times revealing: ‘BBC Sport cutting 41 jobs (5 new roles) and will focus on “most-read” stories on website using audience data. A BBC Sport insider said there would be 36 net job losses — 41 jobs cut with five new roles — and that it would aim to cover as many of these as possible through voluntary redundancies. However, when employees were told of the measures on Wednesday morning, they also learnt that the number of people who have requested voluntary redundancy is too low, so there may have to be compulsory cuts. The insider said that it will be using audience data to focus on the stories on the website that are read the most…’
The stories on the website that are read the most…?
What would they be again?
Yes, so it appears that BBC Sport will now focus on putting even more of the embarrassing rubbish out, such as the feeble transfer gossip stuff, with any idiot able to repeat the largely made up nonsense masquerading as transfer stories from their sauces/sources.
Whilst the content that takes more effort and is written by decent quality journalists but doesn’t register the audience numbers that the transfer nonsense gets, will be subjected to the cutbacks.
This is the brave new world for BBC Sport.