Archive for journalism
What's the role of a newspaper?
“Comment is free, but facts are sacred” – so famously wrote the (Manchester) Guardian editor and sometime Liberal MP CP Scott. The words were penned for an article he wrote in 1921 to mark the paper’s centenary and are frequently quoted in debates about journalistic standards. However, the full piece includes much more than the [...]
News may travel quickly but it sometimes takes quite a while to start
Following on from yesterday’s coverage in the Mail and the Times, my story about the MoJ’s widely over-the-top bureaucracy for staff who drive on work business has now also reached the Scotsman and the Eastern Daily Press. It’s an example of one of the curious habits of the media even in these internet-enabled, 24 hour [...]
It’s not a science journalism problem, it’s a journalism problem
Late last month, Martin Robbins wrote a fantastic spoof of science journalism for the Guardian’s website – This is a news website article about a scientific paper. In his subsequent commentary on the reaction to that spoof he wrote, Science is all about process, context and community, but reporting concentrates on single people, projects and [...]
Has the long-term decline in trust finally bottomed out?
It has been a regular finding of both MORI and YouGov research that the public’s trust in members of different professions has been steadily declining for many years. However, the latest survey from YouGov suggests this decline has stopped, with several professions – including politicians – seeing a recent recovery in their standings. In 2003 [...]
A polite round of applause for the Press Complaints Commission
We’ve often covered the issue of press standards on Lib Dem Voice, including posts such as those from myself calling for the Press Complaints Commission to be reformed – which was also the subject of a speech I gave at party conference. So it is only fair to give credit where some is due – [...]
BBC: we got our coverage wrong for the Labour leadership
At the weekend I blogged BBC, aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!, about the BBC’s decision to cutaway to a voice-over from Nick Robinson during the middle of the reading out of the Labour leadership election results. I’ve now had a reply: Complaints on this issue were forwarded to senior figures within the BBC Newsroom and BBC’s political team and [...]
Why the Press Complaints Commission should be reformed
Regular readers will recognise two themes that crop up repeatedly in my blogging about journalism: that the press’s problems with falling sales are not only a result of the public’s changing use of technology, they are also a result of the public’s low trust in the press and that the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) should [...]
BBC, aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Oh dear. The BBC and Nick Robinson really got it wrong today – but in a way that epitomises one of the dreadful habits of modern journalism. Running live coverage of the (hugely elongated) Labour leadership election result, during the middle of the second round results being read out the BBC cut away to Nick [...]
The flaw in war reporting from Afghanistan
On Wednesday evening I went to a Frontline Club event titled Who is winning the media war in Afghanistan? and was reminded of the way what journalists call “the kinetic stuff” (that is soldiers and shooting to you and me) dominates mainstream TV footage. The set of clips shown to set the scene at the [...]
How the press should make corrections
Earlier in the week I blogged about how some parts of the press are still very backward when it comes to a willingness to admit error and make proper corrections. A great example of how to do it well by the Nieman Journalism Lab has been spotted by Martin Belam over on his blog.
