Category: Media Trends
- Details
Donald Trump’s cheerleaders in the UK’s right-wing newspapers delivered a master class in their gung-ho reporting of the surprise attack by US stealth jets to drop bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
Daring military operations trying to right the wrongs of the world are an intoxicating brew for the British tabloids whose expertise in delivering bellicose coverage was so admired by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1982 Falklands War.
“Stick it up your bunker” declared the Sun (23.6.2025) ahead of ten pages of reports on how the US had hit “Iran nukes in Midnight Hammer” attack – a front-page headline straight out of the playbook of the paper’s legendary former editor Kelvin MacKenzie.
- Details
Towns and communities across the country are starting to grasp the true extent of the troubling democratic deficit that is opening up due to the decimation of regional and weekly newspapers and a dearth of local news reporting.
Many courts and council chambers rarely if ever see a journalist in attendance; there are fewer and fewer of the newspaper campaigns that once held local authorities to account; and that all important safety valve and community platform -- a page of letters to the editor – has disappeared or is a shadow of what it once was.
- Details
A long-standing lament of my final years with BBC radio and television was disappointment at having far fewer opportunities than I would have liked to write considered news reports, or to offer crafted packages illustrated with actuality and interviews. Increasingly the live-two way had come to dominate my daily output at BBC Westminster: the disciplines of the 24-hour news cycle necessitated immediacy rather than the precision of a prepared text.
My 30-year career encompassed a transformation in broadcasting, the shift from scripted reporting towards conversational journalism, a change that has had a profound effect on the delivery of political news.
When I joined Radio Leicester in 1972, 90 per cent of what I said on air had been written in advance. Three decades later, in my last year as a BBC correspondent, before having to retire at 60, the reverse was the case. I calculated that 80 to 90 per cent of my broadcasts in 2002 were live two-ways, either with a newsreader or programme presenter.
Therefore, imagine my fascination when asked to review News and Politics: The Rise of Live and Interpretive Journalism -- the fruits of Stephen Cushion’s extensive statistical research and analysis into the extent to which television news bulletins have adapted their formats to keep pace with the competitive pressures of 24-hour news channels, online services and social media.
- Details
Two events to celebrate milestones in the campaign for freedom of information were coupled with a stiff warning that the United Kingdom’s hard-won rights to know might be restricted in the future due to expenditure cuts in Whitehall and local government.
Two potential threats were identified: a future government might try to limit applications by increasing the cost threshold for inquiries or might follow the example of the Irish government and introduce a charge for FOI inquiries.
The warnings were given by Maurice Frankel, long-standing director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, and by the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham.
They both voiced concern that frivolous and inane inquiries, especially by journalists, should be avoided because they were being used in a campaign by the Local Government Association and Whitehall departments to try to persuade ministers to save money by limiting the number of applications.
- Details
While the Daily Mail’s editor Paul Dacre continues to lick his wounds after a mauling at the hands of what he derides as the “Twitter mob”, his headline writers have had no alternative but to accept the power of social media.
Britain’s national newspapers are finding that the tone and direction of their news content is being influenced increasingly by online insurgencies which instantly reveal a level of public reaction which cannot be ignored.
When defending the Mail’s now infamous headline, “The man who hated Britain” in the row over the attack on the politics of Ed Miliband’s father, Dacre raged against what he said was “the phoney world of Twitter.”
In his opinion the hysteria that had been generated against the Mail’s commentary showed how any newspaper which dared to “take on the left in the interests of its readers risks being howled down by the Twitter mob, which the BBC absurdly thinks represents the views of real Britain.”
But within days of the editor’s denunciation of the power and influence of the Twitterati the Daily Mail was trumpeting the “Twitter firestorm” which had subjected British Gas to “an hour of non-stop abuse” for having imposed a 9.3 per cent increase in gas and electricity prices.