BBC: World News & Stories

In the past year American news has become so focused on Donald Trump and celebrities that I just straight up gave up watching any news. Im so thankful I finally found this app to stay informed on news from all over the world. Of course a little Trump gets in but that's the world we live in. You can customize what areas of the world you want to see news from so you can stay informed on Africa, the middle East and Latin America. I also don't feel like there are hidden political opinions behind the stories. This is the first review I've ever actually taken the time to write I usually just hit ignore when it asks me to.

Fine, balanced reporting: check. Clear, grammatical, properly spelled & punctuated prose: check. (Getting hard to find in Leftpondia. Bless the Beeb.) Easy navigation: check. Customizable topics focus: check. Readable font: not so much. I don't know what the font is called, but it makes me squint. It looks very stylish and modern; 20 years ago I might have loved it. But the sans serif font is so fine-lined as to appear pale gray on the white background, a low-contrast combination that strains the eye. I searched in vain for controls to adjust the display. I followed the app support link, but was directed to use my iPad’s controls. Well, really. I already did that and I’m still having trouble. Besides, iPad’s “smart invert” option screws up photos. Ironically, when I read about a playground for kids with disabilities, the text display was in a nice bold white font on black ground—very high contrast and so easy to read! Now why not let me choose that all the time? In a perfect world, I would also get to choose specific fonts (Bookerly, anyone?), foregrounds, and backgrounds. (I am fond of yellow on navy blue, but your mileage may vary.) Someday.... So, developers, you lose two whole stars for making it hard for me to use your otherwise five-star app.

This app focuses mostly on the distressing news throughout the world. It repeats it ad nauseum. There is so much news out there, it would be good for this app to broaden its horizons. It gives a bit of news from the most "noisy" places (repeatedly), but fails miserably in wider coverage. If it's not bad news, this app doesn't cover it. Except of course for the little Royals. Now that's cute. The main problem that I have with it is that if you want to read one of the stories and you happen to be way down in the column on the story, when you finish reading it and go back to the column it puts you all the way back up to the top of the column instead of where you were. That is extremely frustrating have to go all the way back down to the bottom of the column where you were!!!

Great app for content; not so much for quality user interface. Even though settings are set to never auto-play video, video commercials do indeed auto-play with annoying sound immediately starting. Shame on the program for allowing that. The practice of always going back to the top of the list when returning to it is also lazy programming just because the list is now different from what it last was as the user entered it. If I want to see “new news”, allow me to refresh it manually. Otherwise find the article where I was (reinsert it into the master list if it is no longer there) and allow me to see the rest so that I can choose which one I want to read next.

To more knowingly be able to assess the neutrality of news reporting (which should be the gold standard), this rating should have been after one has read the day’s articles with, perhaps, a more critical eye. Also, a simple 1 through five star system is ludicrous. In reading reviews, some focused on videos, some focused on bias, some focused on layout and presentation, some focused on breadth of coverage. It is easily possible to have perfect scores in one area, and atrocious in another. Does 3 stars mean great reporting, bad video? Or perhaps it means great video, poor reporting? What does the simple 3 star rating really mean, if anything?