Welcome to your daily Press Gazette media briefing on Tuesday, 15 July.

Yesterday was another tough day for the reputation of the BBC as two high-profile reports were released revealing failures of standards.

But yesterday’s revelations were not in the same league as previous BBC scandals like Jimmy Savile and Martin Bashir.

The Greg Wallace affair had the major saving grace that complaints against the Masterchef presenter were exposed by a BBC News investigation last November.

The BBC was also found to have made a “significant failing” with regards to accuracy in the production of its documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone (full report here).

The report found it was wrong to use a 14-year-old child to narrate the documentary, and it said filmmakers should have disclosed that the boy’s father was the deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s Hamas-run government.

But the review also said there was no evidence “to support the suggestion that the narrator’s father or family influenced the content of the programme in any way”.

The documentary remains an incredibly moving account of the toll taken on civilians, and particularly children, by Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

Since October 2023 the Israeli military has killed more than 180 journalists and media workers and it has also banned reporters from entering Gaza, making it particularly challenging for organisations like the BBC to give coverage a human face.

Today Press Gazette reveals our latest top-50 ranking of English language news websites around the world, which shows most sites losing traffic year on year.

Just for a bit of fun, we have also had a go at ranking the top-50 news websites around the world (in any language) using Similarweb data.

This new top-50 shows that the most popular news website in the world is based in Japan, with the BBC down in sixth place overall. Six of out of the ten fastest-growing news websites worldwide are based in India.

On Press Gazette

BBC wrong to use child narrator for Gaza documentary, review finds

“There should have been more comprehensive scrutiny and discussion by the BBC around the proposed role of the narrator and the risks of this editorial concept.”

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Indian news websites are fastest growers in global English language top 50

Press Gazette's analysis of the 50 biggest English-language news websites in the world, updated monthly.

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World’s biggest news websites: Japan and Brazil sites top ranking

Press Gazette has ranked the top 50 news websites globally based on Similarweb data (in any language).

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News in brief

Five years of previously secret family court judgments have been made public today following the conviction of Constance Martin and Mark Gordon. This followed a legal challenge by the BBC, Daily Mail and other media. (BBC)

Conde Nast and Hearst have both signed multi-year deals for their content to be used in Amazon's AI shopping assistant Rufus. (Press Gazette)

Forbes has made a series of leadership promotions including SVP of global sales Kyle Vinansky leading a new "AI and strategic platforms group" as chief business and strategy officer, focusing "on identifying, building, and scaling the next generation of revenue for Forbes" especially via AI, social and creators. (Forbes)

Hearst UK has appointed Saska Graville as Country Living editor-in-chief. She was previously product director at Good Housekeeping UK, where Hearst said she " played an instrumental role in connecting the dots between editorial, tech and consumer experience". Former editor-in-chief Louise Pearce is now creative director of Hearst UK's licensing division.

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