BBC Trust

It was felt that the BBC was good at providing background information to news stories – with the news story of the commemoration of the centenary of the Senghennydd colliery disaster in 1913 on the day of the meeting being a good example. Participants felt that the coverage of Radio Cymru, Radio Wales and the BBC Wales News website had all done this well.

BBC News was considered too ‘safe’ by many participants, and sometimes suffered from a boring image because there was not enough comment. However, the feeling was that the BBC’s News output was accurate and to be trusted.

Generally, while the BBC was praised for its investigative journalism, it was felt that even more could be done in this regard.

With reference to Network News coverage for Wales, a number of participants felt that only tragedies that had occurred in Wales were covered e.g. deaths of soldiers on the Brecon Beacons or the murder of April Jones. Some felt that “all the negative stuff that comes from Wales harms Wales’ image”.

They also felt that too little was heard about what was happening in Wales on Network News. This was also the case for Scotland – with the exception of the independence debate.

The BBC was thought to cover major stories “very well”. This was even the case when covering stories relating to the BBC itself, such as the recent travails to have hit the Corporation. It was felt that these had been covered in an impartial and transparent way.

Participants said that they were glad that broadcast news had not been part of the remit of the Leveson enquiry.

BBC better than ITV for having more in-depth coverage of news stories.

The BBC’s TV News bulletins were considered good, with foreign affairs explored well and issues explained well. Participants also felt that having correspondents in post for some time was good because this engendered a familiarity and reinforced their authority amongst audiences.

It was felt that to have a variety of accents amongst correspondents was a good thing.

BBC Breakfast was thought to give too little attention to news from Wales, an omission considered to be even more strange being as participants felt there was a lot of repetition during the course of the programme. There were a number of negative comments regarding the more ‘magazine’ feel of the programme during its final 15-20 minutes. One participant felt that Bill Turnbull was a good journalist and that it was strange therefore to see him present more ‘fluffy’ items during the ‘magazine segment’ of the programme.

The perception was that the BBC’s news was to be trusted and that the high viewing figures for the BBC’s TV News bulletins demonstrated that audiences valued the BBC’s News content.

Participants felt that radio in Wales has a better range of voices than TV and that there was a good range of demographics, geographical locations and ages in the radio coverage

Radio 5 Live was popular amongst several participants, though their perception was that the station had a very masculine feel – “even the 5Live logo is blue – which makes you feel it is male”. While the participants listened to Radio 5 Live for its news coverage, they felt that the station’s main audience attractor was its sport coverage.

One participant said that she listened to Radio 2 in the mornings specifically so that she could hear Moira Stuart reading the News bulletins.

Several participants said that they listened to Radio Cymru or Radio Wales to find out both about what was happening in Wales, but also the news from their local area. Some participants felt however, that Wales would also benefit from a more regional news service. The topical debates on both radio stations were praised.

Being able to become familiar with the schedule was important when it came to the news offering of the radio stations. Participants then felt they could pick and choose the elements within the schedule that were of interest to them.

The BBC News web-site was very important for all participants. The BBC News app and the Guardian news app were considered good.  However there was a feeling that the breaking news alerts seemed at times to be somewhat random and  not what they always thought constituted priority stories. In this context one participant said that it would be good if you could choose the geographical area or subject about which to be alerted e.g. news about health.

One participant said that it had been interesting for her that the Newyddion page (BBC News’ Welsh language news service) had given noticeably more space and attention on the day of the event to the centenary commemoration of the Senghennydd Pit disaster in 1913 than Wales’ English language news pages.

Participants felt that it was important that the BBC should embrace social media and was praised for having done so with Twitter. One participant said “young people want news in brief – an app which sums up each story in a few words.”

Wales Online was considered a good source of news stories about Wales and was also praised for being searchable according to post code. The number of stories about Wales on the Wales Online website was considered far higher than the BBC Wales news website, and on the whole they felt that there was little about Wales on the BBC News websites.

The Guardian was considered by some participants as the first port of call for art and culture related news stories, and also for comment on news stories.

The Daily Mail website was also a very popular (“It is on all the time”) source of news and information for the contemporaries of the participants and a frequent destination for a number of the participants themselves – mainly for human interest stories, and the graphic nature of the photographs - “the uncut version”, “all the gory details”, “people who are not into journalism go to The Daily Mail”.

Many participants felt that the best local news was only obtainable by buying the local newspaper – “it is good to know about what’s going on in the local area and to feel safe there. You need to know what’s happening in your town. One participant, who was from Usk, said that with Usk having two prisons, it was important to know of any escapes, and it was the local press who would inform her of such an eventuality. Another participant said that she regularly read The South Wales Echo so that she could find out about what was happening in Cardiff.

Channel 4 News was praised by several participants for its in-depth coverage of stories, the ‘cutting edge’ nature of its coverage and because it didn’t always lead its bulletin with mainstream stories.

One participant, who was a Welsh speaker, said that one key challenge for the BBC’s radio stations in Wales was to make audiences aware that they offered distinctly different output, and were not mirror images of each other.

Other participants said that there had been a great deal of coverage recently “on women being too old for television” and decried the continuing gap between the perception of men and women’s capabilities. They felt that it was important to have a greater average number of women on television and questioned the lack of balance in the emphasis placed on the appearance of women presenters.

Participants also made the point that there was often a lack of gender balance in panel discussions – particularly on Newsnight – with often only one woman appearing on a panel for a discussion. However, participants felt that it while they wanted to see more women on TV giving their opinions and sharing their views, they wanted this to happen because they were valued rather than as part of a ‘box ticking culture’.