I hadn’t realised quite how much reach our tax-funded public news organisation, BBC News has. It’s impressive.
From this week’s New Statesman:
The BBC News website is by some distance the largest English-speaking news website in the world.
According to analysis of November 2024 data by Press Gazette, BBC News is the only news website to receive more than a billion global views per month. Its audience is 50 per cent larger than its closest competitor (the New York Times).
It reaches nearly ten times as many people worldwide as the Washington Post. In the US it has millions more readers than the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, Bloomberg, CNBC, Newsweek or Google News. Its US traffic is also growing rapidly, by 40 per cent in the past year
Although the point of the article itself is that this reach, and the BBC’s apparent fascination with writing stories about him, is possibly the reason that Elon Musk has been saying so many incoherent, stupid and dangerous things about the little ol' UK in recent times.
To maintain the world’s attention and the riches it brings, Musk must therefore continue to make himself a rolling news story, serving up outrage and provocation on the platforms that command the largest audiences.
Obviously I can hardly say anything in criticism of those who give the world’s richest public bore undue attention. But it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.