James Harding, Director of BBC News, is considering ‘slow news’ to counter the constant bombardment of simple but largely unexplained news headlines.
Describing a movement which began with ‘slow food’, Harding argues that people are given too much headline information they cannot deal with, and not enough considered background explanation or analysis. He said ‘The BBC is pretty good at reporting the ‘What’, but we need to be better at the ‘why.’
I agree with him. If people are unaware of the facts behind the headlines, including when there are genuine differences of opinion, we end up with the ignorance and anger we are now facing on both sides of the Atlantic. We’ve come a long way even from CEEFAX and TELETEXT.