Like millions of Britons I have the BBC News app on my phone, and like millions of Britons I get Breaking News alerts flashed to me on my screen when something happens. But all too often I find myself thinking "That's not breaking news", or even "that's not news", as another journalistic non-event whizzes by. So I thought I'd do some proper research to try to see what the app is actually pumping out, because facts are always better than supposition.
What I did was keep track of every Breaking News alert on the BBC News app for a week. I picked the first week of September - that's the seven days just completed - and attempted to count and log them all.
For example these are Tuesday's seven Breaking News alerts (or at least the gist of them):
I may have missed a couple of alerts during the week because the notification soon disappears if you're not watching carefully, but I'm hopeful I got (almost) the full set. And here's what I found.
1) Last week the BBC News app sent out 43 Breaking News alerts.
That sounds like quite a lot. But on average it's six a day, or one every four hours.
2) Not all days are equal, because news doesn't work like that.
A typical weekday, it seems, does see about six alerts. Maybe this is deliberate, in that the team who send out the alerts have a nominal daily limit and try not to overwhelm us. Weekends seem to be quieter, mainly because workplaces, court rooms and the Houses of Parliament are closed.
But some days are special, in this case Wednesday because that's the day the Grenfell Tower report was published. I received as many as five alerts about the Grenfell report that day (which interestingly left six alerts for everything else).
3) Some news stories generate multiple alerts.
In Grenfell's case the first three alerts were "Grenfell Tower final report published..." followed a few minutes later by "Damning Grenfell Tower final report published...", followed shortly afterwards by "Grenfell: Tower's path to disaster". After lunch came Sir Keir's apology, "It should never have happened", and later in the afternoon a link to a much more detailed response in "Merry-go-round of buck passing". On the same day there were also two alerts about a US school shooting, one to say it'd happened and another to say a 14 year-old had been arrested. That's a lot of alerts for just two stories, but on a day like Wednesday probably justified.
4) The alerts are broadly focused.
About 60% of this week's alerts have been about UK news while about 40% were on foreign affairs. The foreign stories included four on Israel/Gaza, two on Ukraine and seven from the USA. Two were even about events in Africa. In UK news only five alerts were specifically about politics, five about what I might describe as 'police matters' and three about sport. Education, consumer affairs and prison overcrowding also got a look in. You may not be interested in all of these, but it's hard to argue any one topic predominated.
5) The alerts aren't obviously biased.
Looking at this week's list of 43 alerts they are not pushing a certain agenda or explicitly skewing the narrative, indeed they were generally very factual.
6) Not all the Breaking News is breaking.
If a story's been on the BBC News website for several hours, I always think it's a bit cheeky when it pops up as a Breaking News alert. This week we had "Has Starmer's bleak message for voters gone too far?", a political opinion piece suddenly blurted out hours after publication. There was also a lengthy report comparing cladding issues at two tower blocks in London and Margate, plus on Tuesday that in-depth analysis of Joe Biden's economic record. All of these were exemplary journalism and likely well worth reading, but not in any way 'breaking'.
7) Not all the Breaking News is news.
Sometimes the Breaking News alert is merely a blatant plug for another BBC programme. On Monday we had "How social media algorithms show violence to boys" which was a summary of that evening's Panorama, and yesterday we had "Starmer's 'blame the Tories' strategy will not hold forever" which was essentially Laura Kuenssberg trailing her big Sunday interview. That's two in a week - arguably too many, but perhaps not excessive.
8) Not all the Breaking News is genuinely important.
I don't know who decided "John Lewis brings back 'Never knowingly undersold' pledge" was worthy of Breaking News treatment but I think they over-reached. That's the most egregious of this week's alerts, the vast majority being far more justifiable. But it's a shame you can't turn off some of the topics you're not interested in (in my case the sport), or indeed opt for a Top Stories only option.
9) In summary...
It's hard to judge, but I'd say about 20% of this week's alerts were neither properly 'breaking' nor properly 'news'.
10) If it really annoys you, you can always turn it off.
You might then be last to hear the King's died, Sir Keir's resigned or that aliens have landed. But on the whole BBC Breaking News alerts aren't that over-frequent, ill-judged or over-needy. You just have to count them to see that.
