Clickbait self-owns

All too often we damage our own interests

Sometimes it takes an outsider to deliver uncomfortable truths. They don’t have to worry about who they offend, as insiders do, and often they bring a clear-sighted perspective, unbound by what we who are marinated in the industry’s custom and practice think we know to be true.

This week I was struck by how Martin Lewis, known to Brits as the brains behind MoneySavingExpert, a price comparison website, let rip at parts of the news industry. He was dismayed that some publications were taking what he’d said, often years ago, and republishing it in the most sensational of fashions.

“I haven’t spoken about air fryers in two years but I keep reading news reports about ‘urgent warnings’ I’ve given about air fryers,” he told London Centric, a new email-based publication that serves the capital. “It’s ludicrous and it’s a disservice to the public and it is a threat to journalism.”

He said that he had seen a number of journalists whose biographies had as their sole reporting beat: “Martin Lewis.”

“The people doing it are not journalists, they are content writers and search engine optimisers,” he said. “This is going to kill – and is already killing – journalism.”

I think he’s onto something. We complain about the market for our services and how others have distorted it, and then we serve up clickbait dross.

Lewis’s comments resonated with me as I’ve been collecting my own (least) favourite examples over the past few weeks. Here are the headlines on social media platforms and what you get when you click.

“Jon McEnroe interrupts live ESPN coverage to make major announcement” … he was wishing his brother Patrick a happy birthday.

“Andy Murray admits split from wife led him to make extravagant purchase” … don’t worry. the split was brief and in 2008.

“Emma Raducanu set to immediately lose half of her Wimbledon prize money” … because, incredibly, she will have to pay tax!

“Tottenham transfer ‘got cancelled by angry club’ after medical due to row over one clause” … this was a transfer that didn’t happen in 2017, eight years ago.

This is a fraud against the reader’s interest and attention. No wonder people are turning off the news in greater numbers.

There is some debate against this. Last week I met a group of German editors who were touring London newsrooms. One of them said: “But all my younger editors say clickbait works. People always click on these headlines.”

Maybe they do – and of course I did on the ones listed above – but the overall experience is alienating. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I have made a mental note never to read some of the offending publications above.

I won’t be alone. And in the long term it just makes people distrust the media ever more.

If we want to fix a broken media then we have to address this issue.