No, it’s not a formal challenge, but here it is: If you are a news fan, watch the BBC World News America for a week and see what it tells you about the news source you were following.
In my case that was ABC World News Tonight with David Muir (formerly Diane Sawyer). Here’s what my time with the BBC showed me:
- ABC has gotten lazy, or underfunded, or something. ABC now covers far too many stories by capturing tweets and using voiceover. The BBC still has actual reporters in a lot of places, especially overseas. Those actual reporters can tell you a lot more about what’s going on in places like Syria and Egypt than you can get from ABC’s scanning of Twitter.
- ABC News is for children. I don’t want to be too harsh, but ABC anchors often take on the tone of a preschool teacher telling her children they must be very, very sad about the people who were caught in the tornado. BBC World News America is more likely to simply report the story and let the tragedy explain itself. The BBC’s anchors (Katty Kay and Laura Trevelyan are the ones I have seen the most) are more like your British cousins than your preschool teacher.
- ABC News is in love with shallow “solutions” to public policy problems. Was there a school shooting? Pass a law. Is there an unemployment problem? Buy American. That’s the ABC approach. BBC World News America has more interviews, and while this can seem like “talking head” news, there’s more room for nuance. ABC News wants to divide the world into two parts: good people who favor their solutions (usually law or regulation) and bad people who do not. BBC holds open the possibility of a third group: people who are for solving the problem, but not in favor of the conventional solution.
- ABC News over-covers entertainment. Maybe it’s the Disney ownership of ABC, maybe it’s what the audience wants. But ABC News is obsessed with entertainment and entertainers. One thing I noticed with BBC World News America was that it just didn’t spend much time on entertainers, box office totals and the like. ABC over-covers entertainment, and it cross-promotes Disney, often without any notice or apology.
I don’t think BBC World News America will ever get great ratings. It’s a splinter audience at best. But it has helped me become more aware of how ABC News has changed in recent years.
(Note: I’m a news fan. It was my career before I went into economics, and even now I follow more news sources than I should — partly for entertainment, and partly for good teaching examples. Here’s a guy who recommends not watching the news at all, and I don’t really disagree with anything he says.)