‘Soft’ news poser

IS PORN addiction a real thing? That was the question posed by an article published recently on the website of the BBC, which was then widely disseminated and discussed on various social media networks.

The article was part of a concerted effort by the corporation to reach a new and younger audience that gets its information online, not from television or radio.

Whether the BBC is right to depart from its traditional broadcasting and expand its online publishing arm is a question worthy of debate.

An independent report by consultants for the department for culture, media and sport concludes that the BBC’s move into “soft” news online reduces commercial publishers’ revenue.

In short, the BBC is spending licence fee payers’ money doing things that the private sector already does.

That harms commercial media companies, some of whom, local newspapers especially, are struggling in an age when the internet has taken away traditional sources of revenue.

Is this in the public interest? Is it in keeping with the BBC’s obligations to public service broadcasting? It is hard to argue with John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, when he says that “the soft news element of the BBC’s online services is of limited public value”.

Whittingdale is not the first Conservative minister to make sensible comments about the damaging impact of the BBC’s aggressive and unwarranted expansion into online publishing: George Osborne has decried the corporation’s “imperial” ambitions.

But having offered the correct analysis of the BBC’s error, what will ministers do to correct it? Licence fee payers expect action to back the fine words, ministers.