On October 18th 2016 the Daily Express published this headline:
"Cheaper Food After EU Exit".
Last Friday, 11th October 2021:
"Stark Warning: Get Used to Higher Food Bills".
No sense of irony in the reporting.
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Todays news is tomorrows fish and chip wrapping (no longer true of course as the chippy now uses little cardboard boxes).
The Daily Express has helpfully demonstrated why. Go back a few more years and it would have been a useful alternative to soft comfort quilted ...........
It may actually still be a better substitute than newspaper!
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Similarly with the screaming weather predictions - the "blizzard" or heatwave" hype.
If it's ever accurate it applies to a tiny proportion of the country.
Here's one of the latest: "UK snow forecast: Wales, Scotland, England all at risk as -2C FREEZE hits – long-range maps" (Daily Express, Tue, Oct 12, 2021)
Accurate for the mountains of Scotland, perhaps, and just overnight.
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The problem with all the non-subscription news sites is that they need advertising income. That’s achieved by either driving sheer volume of traffic to their sites with ever increasing hyperbolic headlines (Express, Sun etc), or by driving a certain type of visitor to their site by putting a particular slant on events (Guardian etc). Some, like the Mail, do both. But as a result, anyone using those sites alone as source of news ends up at best as uninformed, or at worst mislead
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>> The problem with all the non-subscription news sites is that they need advertising income. That’s
>> achieved by either driving sheer volume of traffic to their sites with ever increasing hyperbolic
>> headlines (Express, Sun etc), or by driving a certain type of visitor to their site
>> by putting a particular slant on events (Guardian etc). Some, like the Mail, do both.
>> But as a result, anyone using those sites alone as source of news ends up
>> at best as uninformed, or at worst mislead
The other way is paywall or other subscription model. The Guardian has followed the latter using a membership model but without, at least overtly, paywalling content.
The Guardian's liberal left slant is what it is. I'm not aware of it being more slanted now on line than the paper I bought daily throughout my commuting life.
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>>
>> The other way is paywall or other subscription model. The Guardian has followed the latter
>> using a membership model but without, at least overtly, paywalling content.
>>
>> The Guardian's liberal left slant is what it is. I'm not aware of it being
>> more slanted now on line than the paper I bought daily throughout my commuting life.
>>
No, I’m not suggesting it’s more slanted than it was. But it has taken the approach of offering advertisers a relatively small set of readers with ‘known’ interests, and so will be able to charge more per reader/click or whatever to advertisers who want to target them. So it is in its interests to retain that ‘type’ of reader. The likes of the Sun are more likely to rely on sheer volume or readers/clicks and a relatively tiny cost per reader to drive revenue.
As the old adage goes, if you’re not paying for it you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.
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I think all media inevitably has a slant. I read The Times because mostly its slant annoys me less than that of some others, but it definitely plays to its audience. Or at least, to what it perceives its audience to be.
Occasionally it grates, but mostly it's OK.
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>> I think all media inevitably has a slant. I read The Times because mostly its
>> slant annoys me less than that of some others, but it definitely plays to its
>> audience. Or at least, to what it perceives its audience to be.
>>
>> Occasionally it grates, but mostly it's OK.
I'd agree with the thrust of that. I don't like The Times, even without the additional consideration of my enmity for all things Murdoch, but it's a starting point.
The trick is to let the media be a guide, a starter for ten if you like, and follow up to sources like Hansard, Court Judgements, research reports etc etc.
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>> I'd agree with the thrust of that. I don't like The Times, even without the
>> additional consideration of my enmity for all things Murdoch, but it's a starting point.
I assure that you'd like him a great deal less if you'd met him.
>> The trick is to let the media be a guide, a starter for ten if you like, and follow up to sources
>> like Hansard, Court Judgements, research reports etc etc.
You are quite correct, of course, but it seems that persuading the people generally to care very much about the veracity of their reading, never mind putting much effort into it, is an impossible struggle.
Having been here for a while now, and looking at the UK with fresh eyes, my conclusion is this; The UK is a pretty damned good place, by and large run pretty damned well, and life over all is mostly good.
That does not mean there is not suffering or inequity, but that there are good people fighting it.
The media, however, is a disgrace. It exists to criticise, find fault with, whine and sensationalise. It never stops to emphasise all the disasters around the next corner and causes things such as petrol panic buying, and then proceeds to revel in it.
People generally are far nicer and far less radical than the media woudl have you believe, and the country is far better.
The UK is a good place, and not just because I have lived in worse, but because it is genuinely a good place. People seem to delight in whining about how awful it is, but it isn't.
Much as I dislike all politicians, I place much/most of the blame at the feet of the media.
Last edited by: smokie on Wed 13 Oct 21 at 14:43
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To get any sense of uncoloured facts (truths if you will) from any UK media source, one has to read all the source types and make a judgement based on your own leanings.
It will however, make you terribly depressed - not the fact blatant untruths are presented as factual news in some sources, but the fact a significant proportion of your fellow countryman are prepared to accept it and believe it to be so.
Its not a UK phenomena, The US suffers badly from it, France & Germany have significant issues, and watching Sky News Australia is positively scary,
For my part I get the Times in print, and counter that with online Guardian and Independent. Think that keeps my hereditary facist genes in check.
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Eating one's words - Terry
