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Last week, a Eurasian owl died in New York. Flaco the Owl, who escaped into the wild a year ago after his fence was vandalized, died after colliding with a building on the Upper West Side.
Even though I’m not a New Yorker or an animal lover, the story proved rather harder to escape than the Central Park Zoo. I’m certainly somewhat to blame: I’m planning a trip to New York for Passover, and the various Internet recommendation engines have confused my interest in which art exhibits are worth checking out with a concern for the city’s wildlife . I then made the mistake of making a surly joke about the owl’s blanket coverage on social media, putting further bars on my algorithmic prison.
One reason it’s hard to escape Flaco’s sad death is that the story was widely covered: not just by the New York Times, but also by NPR, the Associated Press, the Independent, Mail Online, the Guardian, and many other publications. I bet there are more people who could nominate Flaco than a single member of the New York City Council.
When I complained to a friend about the significance of the owl’s death, they assumed I, too, had discovered it on Apple News. (My friend, to be clear, is a 100% satisfied customer when it comes to boring avian news.) It is, however, absent from Apple News’ only real rival in the UK: the Apple News app BBC.
That’s right, because apps are pioneering two different approaches to news in the 21st century. On the one hand there is the unique and correct approach of the BBC, on the other the personalized service of Apple News.
“The BBC homepage is the same for everyone” and “no two Apple News are the same” are just one of the ongoing debates about the future of news. Many of the loudest and most contentious disputes revolve around who pays for it (the Indonesian government is the latest to insist that tech platforms must pay news providers for their content).
But in terms of the social function served by news, Apple News and the BBC are among the most important platforms. Their news apps are by far the most popular in the UK, with over 13 million users each. And while I find the Apple News app much more fun, useful and interesting, the BBC app does a better job of keeping me in touch with the approximately 65 million people I share an island with. This is definitely part of the social role of news, rather than simply reflecting a curated selection shaped by my interests.
The benefit to tech giants – and indeed news organizations – of curated selection is that readers and users are less likely to get angry at you. Instagram’s approach to politics and news is that if you follow the BBC, you’ll get the BBC, if you follow a Labor MP, you’ll get Labor MPs, otherwise you’ll get nothing.
This is a great way to avoid complicated conversations about whether you’re promoting hate or putting your thumb on the political debate dial. It’s also a great way to create disengaged citizens with little understanding of what’s happening in their areas, and with a better understanding of the final moments of a Eurasian owl 3,000 miles away than what shapes the places they actually live.
In some ways, the “BBC News versus Apple News” debate is a bit disingenuous: many people use both. Even more worrying is the large number of what might be called “no news” places that we can now cultivate for ourselves online.
I, for one, was grateful that in September 2022 both Netflix and Apple Music Classical allowed me to escape the constant royal news following the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the apparent requirement that the radio not play anything too saucy or cheerful. But the fact that we can all, perfectly easily, help but engage in the stories that shape the country if we choose to do so is taking the isolation a little too far.
Ultimately, it is fear of the regulator that causes tech companies to reduce the reach of news and politics, because it is controversies over news and politics that push governments to start making their way to tech companies’ doors. And it is precisely the fear of financial failure that makes the media incentivized to tell me about an owl rather than my local council.
One thing governments could do to solve both problems is to impose the same requirements on new media companies to provide a measure of local, national and global news as they have on commercial radio and broadcast. This would mean that Netflix, Spotify and others would have to stream a few seconds of news between songs at regular intervals, just as their predecessors did. But please, no more owls.
stephen.bush@ft.com