BBC criticised for using cats to chase clicks

Corporation ridiculed for running viral social media stories under banner of ‘in-depth reporting’

THE BBC has defended its online output after facing criticism over a news feature that asked: “My boyfriend dumped me but how do I tell my cat?”

The article, which featured prominently on the homepage of the website, appeared under BBC Trending, which is billed as “in-depth reporting about social media and digital culture”. In the past 12 months it has covered serious issues such as social-media censorship in China, the prevalence of harmful content on Youtube and revenge porn.

But it also runs stories based on viral videos and posts such as “‘Vandal grannies’ destroy noisy children’s seesaw” and “Justin Bieber challenges Tom Cruise to UFC fight”.

Journalists from the Trending unit scour the web for content that receives tens or hundreds of thousands of hits on other sites. They then repackage the stories. An American woman who invited guests to wear their bridal gowns to her wedding appeared on the BBC after her post about it on the Reddit web forum gained 90,000 “up-votes” – similar to a “like” on other social-media sites.

The BBC directed £236million of licence fee money toward its online services in 2019-20. Critics argue that the scope of the BBC’S website is too broad, and question why it ploughs so much money into content with little or no news value.

However, stories such as these are part of the corporation’s drive to attract young audiences.

The cat story was based on a tweet by Abby Govindan, a US comedian, who wrote: “How do I explain to my cat, who loved my boyfriend more than anything in the world, that he is never coming over again ever?” When the tweet received 250,000 “likes”, the BBC wrote its own story about it.

Among those unimpressed by the story was Richard Sambrook, the former head of BBC News and now a professor of journalism. He said: “Why is this on the front page of the BBC News website? Presumably to get clicks and attract the ‘younger audience’ – in which case, the metrics, or interpretation of them, is badly wrong.”

The author of the article, Dhruti Shah, responded that the issue “clearly affected many people” and pointed out that she had conducted interviews to flesh out her story.

“That’s journalism,” she said.

James Coatsworth, who works in audience research for BBC News, said: “Yes, this is journalism. The piece is inspired by a viral tweet but the BBC journalist has written a full story, including multiple interviews and expert advice from a clinical animal behaviourist. It’s not just a screengrab of a tweet with some filler.”

Ofcom, the regulator, has no powers to look at the BBC’S online activities and the website has never been scrutinised by the National Audit Office to assess if it is delivering value for money.

A BBC spokesman said: “BBC Trending reports on a wide range of social media stories and some that prompt debate beyond the main news agenda.”