BBC Practitioner flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Inverted pyramid

News writing structure placing the most important facts - who, what, when, where, why - in the opening paragraph, with detail following in descending importance so copy can be trimmed from the end.

News values

Criteria such as impact, timeliness, proximity, prominence, novelty, conflict and human interest that journalists use to judge whether an event is newsworthy and how prominently to cover it.

Due impartiality

The requirement to give significant views fair weight on matters of public controversy, without obliging equal time to every position regardless of evidence.

Right of reply

The practice of offering a person or organisation facing serious criticism a fair opportunity to respond before a report is published or broadcast.

Attribution

Naming the source of a factual claim - a person, document or dataset - so audiences can judge the reliability of the information presented.

Correction vs clarification

A correction fixes a factual error and states what was wrong and what is right; a clarification removes ambiguity without asserting that the original was factually wrong.

Anonymous sourcing

Using information from a source whose identity is withheld; normally requires editorial approval and an explanation to the audience of why anonymity was granted.

Embargo

An agreement with a source that information will not be published before a stated time, allowing journalists to prepare coverage in advance.

Aggregate score

In a two-legged tie, the combined total of goals or points across both matches, used to decide which team advances when a single winner is needed.

Offside rule

A player is offside if nearer the opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent when the ball is played, and is penalised only if involved in active play.

Tennis tie-break

A scoring game used to settle a set level at six games all, won by the first player to reach seven points with a margin of at least two.

Cricket over

A set of six legal deliveries bowled from one end; a bowler's figures are conventionally written as overs, maidens, runs conceded and wickets taken.

WADA

The World Anti-Doping Agency, which sets the World Anti-Doping Code that national bodies and sports federations apply when testing athletes and imposing sanctions.

Olympiad

A four-year period beginning with each Summer Olympic Games; Summer and Winter Games alternate so that one of the two occurs every two years.

Home team convention

In UK sports reporting the home side is named first in a scoreline, so '2-1' means the home team scored two and the visitors one.

News access clips

Short extracts of rights-restricted sports footage permitted for news reporting under agreed conditions, distinct from full live or highlights rights.

BARB

The UK body that measures television audiences, producing overnight ratings for live and same-day viewing and consolidated figures that add time-shifted viewing.

Audience share

The percentage of people watching television at a given time who are tuned to a particular programme, as opposed to reach, which counts distinct viewers.

Consolidated ratings

Audience figures that add time-shifted viewing, typically over seven or 28 days, to the overnight number for a programme.

Strip scheduling

Placing a programme in the same time slot on each weekday, which builds habit and is common in daytime and early-evening schedules.

Tent-poling

Scheduling a new or weaker programme between two established hits so that inherited audience from the surrounding shows lifts its ratings.

Format rights

Legal protection over the underlying rules, branding and structure of a television format, licensed to producers in other territories to make local versions.

Watershed

The 9pm UK threshold before which television content must suit a general audience, with stronger material scheduled later and appropriately signposted.

Commissioning

The broadcaster's formal decision to fund a programme, taken after development and often a pilot, with rights negotiated at this stage rather than after delivery.

Hours viewed

A streaming metric totalling all time spent watching a title; it is not directly comparable with broadcast average audience figures because it counts repeat and partial viewing.

Scientific method

A cycle of observation, hypothesis, prediction and controlled testing whose findings remain provisional until independent researchers replicate them.

Correlation vs causation

An association between two variables may reflect confounding, reverse causation or chance; causal claims require controlled or natural-experiment evidence.

P-value

The probability of observing a result at least as extreme as the data if the null hypothesis were true; it is not the probability that the hypothesis is correct.

Confidence interval

A range around an estimate that indicates its precision; a 95% interval is the range that would contain the true value in 95% of repeated samples.

Peer review

Independent expert assessment of a study's methods and clarity before publication; it screens quality but does not guarantee that findings are correct or fraud-free.

Binomial nomenclature

The two-part Latin naming system for species, with the genus capitalised and the species name lower case, both italicised in print.

Weather vs climate

Weather is the short-term state of the atmosphere; climate is the long-term distribution of weather over decades, so individual cold spells do not contradict warming trends.

Absolute vs relative risk

Absolute risk states the actual rate, such as 3 in 1,000; relative risk compares rates, such as 50% higher, and can make small effects sound large.