I wouldn't read those quotations as indicating skepticism that the sonar harms whales but, rather, as just another case of the BBC's odd headline-writing practices. I often find the BBC quoting things in headlines in ways that seem unnecessary and awkward. As in this case, the quotations sometimes give the amusing impression that the BBC is calling obvious or trivial propositions into doubt. Like this one:

BBC 'to launch personalised iPlayer'

I think they're trying to remain scrupulously neutral by quoting as much material as possible, but they often overshoot to convey skepticism about their own article.

Here is a pretty thorough survey (and takedown) of BBC's headline quotations. https://adrianblau.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-curse-of-quo...

The use of quotation marks to indicate sarcasm or doubt is pretty new, while using them to just mean "this is literal text from elsewhere" is much older. Not to say the new usage is somehow "wrong" but neither would I call the BBC's usage odd.

I don't have a strong view about this, and I certainly understand why the BBC is using quotation marks in the way it is. But if I were an editor at the BBC, I think I would be uncomfortable with the fact that the quotations communicate the wrong message to so many readers -- and, worse, mistakenly suggest that my publication is being snarky or skeptical of the claims highlighted in the headline. This seems like very much the opposite of the quotation marks' desired effect.

You're right, even if this usage may be perfectly acceptable, if it gives a lot of people the wrong idea it's probably time to change.

Kowtowing to the lowest common denominator shouldn't be done lightly. We are on a site called Hacker News, after all.

> Kowtowing to the lowest common denominator shouldn't be done lightly

Certainly not when you put it like that! But you might also call it "communicating effectively with your audience." So maybe kowtowing isn't so bad after all when it just involves responding to the linguistic conventions observed by your readers, and the goal is simply communication.

I also don't know that people who read quotation marks as connoting doubt, in the absence of any other evident reason for them, can fairly be called "the lowest common denominator."

> The use of quotation marks to indicate sarcasm or doubt is pretty new

I'm not sure that's true. A writer will always have some reason to use literal quotations instead of their own rendition of things. What makes you certain that skepticism is only a recent addition to the list of possible such reasons?

An extensive scope of reading material, most likely. If you like reading enough to read across multiple decades and centuries then one can usefully make such observations from one's personal corpus. This isn't something that can be easily automated as machine learning is not yet that good at the semantic level, but I concur with the grandparent poster that the ironic use of quotation marks is a relatively new journalistic trend.

Apart from the absurd overuse of quotation marks that you linked, "remaining scrupulously neutral" is indeed a general editorial policy of the BBC. They tend to "report the controversy" - i.e. report that "some people think A, while others think B" rather than weighing the factual support or veracity of either position.

However everyone still has their own personal biases, and from time to time the hosts do inject their personal positions on the less scripted programs (eg the BBC World Service radio program). I actually dislike this as well, because it's not factually-based or institutionally overseen. It's just a host deciding to mock a position or slam a guest on his own. There is a difference between journalism and editorializing, and I have a particular problem when an institution that has a policy of being scrupulously neutral will refuse to touch factual bias but allows their hosts to go off and editorialize. It's not all that frequent, but it really bugs me when I hear it happen.

Another problem is that there's always bias just from what stories get selected as newsworthy and what positions are represented within them. There's an Overton Window inherently represented by that. Overall I do think the BBC does a pretty good job on that one at least.

As an aside - try watching CSPAN after a big state event or something when they do the call-ins. They have the most hilariously stone-faced hosts I've ever seen. To avoid the appearance of bias they will take literally anyone, and they get the full range of people, both in political opinions and sanity. "I THINK THAT OBAMA IS A SECRET CHRONONAUT FROM MARS! HE..." "Thank you caller. Now to Susan from Rhode Island,...". They must have their emotions surgically removed or something.