Do we take news on the web seriously enough?

I’m sure we all know about the “Most Popular” section on news websites. The place to go when you want to check out what everyone else is finding most interesting in the news. The BBC News website has a separate sub-section for the top five “Most Read”, “Most Emailed” and “Most Watched/Listened” stories currently on their site. And most news sites will have something similar for their readers to check out.

So what do we expect to find topping these lists? Would it be the most tragic story? The one which talks about the growing global economic crisis, perhaps? Well, no. It is very much more probably that the story will be the one most likely to have you chuckling into your monitor.

Probably the most famous internet news story ever is that of the Sudanese man who had sex with a goat and was then forced to marry it as punishment. Heard of it? Well, if you’re a regular on internet news websites it should ring a bell. It has topped the list of BBC’s Most Popular on several occasions over the last few years – even after it has gone way pass being described as “news”. In fact, even the reporting of the death of the goat made it to the top of lists.

It seems that when it comes to looking at news stories on the internet, the funniest, weirdest, or most disgusting stories are the ones that get the hits. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have sat for hours trawling through the Metro weird section finding the most improbable stories. They never fail to make me laugh. Take, for instance, the story of student who was suspended from an American university for wearing a pirate outfit as part of his “religion”. Since it was published it has been commented on 311 times. Pretty impressive for a news story and something that not many more serious issues could ever hope for.

There is no doubt that the zanier the story, the higher up the Most Popular lists it will make it. As I write, one of the BBC’s Most Emailed stories has the headline “Dr Who fan in knitted puppet row“. While on Times Online’s Most Read the number one story’s headline reads “Chinese bloggers cook up quake conspiracies” – rather than concentrating on the disasterous side of the earthquake in China – surfers have chosen to click on to a more off-the-wall side to the tragedy.

Overall, it seems that news on the web may be a far less serious affair than it is in the papers. And if it is providing the much needed hits that website editors crave then I would expect this trend to continue. I say bring it on!

Cherie Blair’s autobiography

Cherie Blair has hit the headlines across the UK after the latest release in her serialised autobiography ‘Speaking For Myself’ published in The Times and The Sun.

She has revealed details about her miscarriage which, she says, was treated by her husband and the former Prime Minister Tony Blair as a PR crisis as well as claiming that the current PM’s wife, Sarah Brown, has enjoyed greater popularity because of a PR campaign organised by Downing Street. These claims have been vehemently denied and Cherie has, once more, been turned on as more vindictive than victim in the press.

Daily Mirror columnist Sue Carroll is leading the charge today describing Cherie as “money-grubbing, back-stabbing and self-obsessed”. Libby Purves of Times Online continues the onslaught by describing her as “self-serving, smug, and opportunistic” amongst other things.

Such criticism was always likely to be meted out to a woman who had seeked to protect the privacy of her family while in the public eye but who now conveniently feels it is the right time to reveal all, while happily pocketing a cool million pounds as a result.

One of the biggest gripes in the press has been her revelation that Leo did in fact have the MMR vaccine – something eluded to in an article in the Daily Mail. At the time, amid press speculation, she had refused to confirm or deny it citing family privacy as her main motivation. Now, for Cherie, there seems to be no problem. Why…we wonder.

Guardian columnist Mark Seddon explains that this current trend of sniping former colleagues from the relative safety of an autobiography is damaging an already crumbling Labour party. John Prescott has had his say among others. It seems that party politics are becoming more and more of a soap opera.

So Cherie is not the only one who is sticking the knife in but she will probably carry the greatest burden for the back-biting and this she can be given little sympathy for. She never sought to maintain a positive relationship with the press while she was at No. 10 and the way she has reacted to criticism down the years has made her a prime target for the papers.