BBC’s app can tell us the political weather

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Good morning. Kemi Badenoch is now in a war of words with the former chair of the Post Office over the government’s handling of the Horizon scandal. We’ll have much more concrete developments on that front to analyse in the coming days I’m sure.

For today, some thoughts on a neglected but important media battleground in British politics.

Top of the apps

Because of the BBC’s sheer size, its historical presence and the huge attachment most British people have to its brand, the boring-but-true answer to most questions about the UK media is “the BBC”. What’s the most important media organisation as far as the next election is concerned? The BBC! What’s the most important media organisation as far as the next Conservative leadership election goes? The BBC! What’s the most important one for the next Labour leadership contest — you get the picture.

(When, a long time ago, I broke the news of private polling showing Jeremy Corbyn on course to win the 2015 Labour leadership election, one detail that struck me was that for many Labour members, their first sight of the Islington North MP, and the thing that made them decide to back him, was his appearance on the BBC Newsnight hustings.)

As Ofcom’s annual report — always an interesting read — shows, 73 per cent of UK adults get their news from the BBC in some shape or form. When you consider that the news people say they receive from Instagram, TikTok or elsewhere was likely to have been sourced from the BBC, that number may be on the low side.

But today I just want to draw your attention to one aspect of that: the BBC News app. No other curated news app has anything like the same reach and same number of users: the only app that gets close to its 13mn users is Apple News (the two apps regularly trade first and second place for number one news app in the UK) which is much more personally tailored to individual users than the BBC’s app.

And one of the most important editorial decisions the app makes is what to use a push notification for — decisions that at the moment are pretty haphazard and made by comparatively low-ranking journalists, certainly compared with the six and the 10 o’clock news.

As you can see from this recent example, these notifications can often be framed in ways that favour one party or another (this is about the most favourable read possible on why Keir Starmer U-turned). The choice of what not to push matters too: Rishi Sunak’s recent dispute with the bereaved father of Brianna Ghey did not get a push notification. At the last election, policies that got a push notification, such as Labour’s plan for free broadband in all households and businesses, were noticed by more people than those that didn’t. (Though it’s not wholly clear that Labour benefited from the extra focus on that particular policy.)

But as a test of whether a political row is making any impact on most voters, who don’t follow politics all that closely, a good gauge is whether or not it has received a BBC push notification. However, the process behind users getting a pop-up on their phones is not particularly consistent, nor does it really tell you much beyond the news judgment of whoever was making the call that particular day.

Now try this

I was really impressed by the Amsterdam Museum’s temporary home at the H’ART Museum (at Amstel 51) on my holiday: a really well-put-together account of the city, its complicated history and sense of itself, and all the more so for only being an interim affair. I’m sure it will be even better when it moves next year, but if you can see it this year I would really recommend it.

Top stories today

• Private parts | Healthcare investors are optimistic that a Labour government would “kick-start” opportunities for greater private sector involvement in the NHS, including more outsourcing of operations and greater use of technology.

• ‘Knife edge’ | Scottish National party leader Humza Yousaf has struggled to get on the front foot amid a litany of rows. With a UK general election expected this year, Scottish Labour is hoping to exploit disillusionment with the SNP and the weakening bond between it and independence supporters to help oust Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government.

• Labour’s plans for workers’ rights | Most employees on zero-hour contracts have been “stuck” in their job for more than a year, the umbrella body for the UK union movement said, as it called on businesses to back Labour’s plans to strengthen workers’ rights.