BBC News is closing BBC Trending, its 13-year-old investigative unit focused on social media and online disinformation, Deadline reported Monday. Four journalists are losing their jobs.
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Key Takeaways
- BBC News is closing BBC Trending, eliminating four investigative jobs.
- Closure follows recent investigations into AI-generated Holocaust scams.
- Cuts disinformation expertise just as AI misinformation is intensifying.
The timing is hard to ignore. Recently, BBC Trending published an investigation revealing how Facebook grifters were profiting from AI-generated Holocaust imagery. The team also recently examined the phenomenon of Down’s Syndrome deepfakes.
BBC Trending launched in 2013 as what the broadcaster called “the bureau on the internet.” The unit published investigations on the BBC News website and produced a regular radio show for BBC World Service. One former journalist described it as a team that “married artful and considered storytelling with meticulous investigative journalism.”
The closure is part of broader cuts at BBC World Service, which announced plans last year to eliminate 130 jobs to save around £6 million ($8.3 million) by the end of March. BBC News declined to comment on the decision.
BBC Trending was among the few units at a major broadcaster dedicated to tracking viral disinformation and platform manipulation. As AI-generated content floods social platforms, newsrooms are losing one of the few organizations that actually tracked it. Who will fill that gap?
The cuts come as AI-generated images and deepfakes become harder to detect and easier to produce. Verification work is getting more difficult precisely as the teams doing it are being downsized.
