Small but telling

Always interesting what you turn up when idly roaming the web…..The NUJ was concerned about ‘social media‘ in February 2016….and seems quite put out that politicians now have an outlet to allow them to make their own voice heard without the media filtering them…

We can’t ignore social media, whether we like it or not. For good or ill it is shaping our industry in many ways. Whether it is a lurch towards clickbait journalism with reporters forced to have audience targets at the forefront of their minds rather than newsgathering, or whether it is the ease in which politicians and celebrities can be reached for comment via twitter, it is a force we have to work with.

Oh and this might explain a lot…..James Landale…

James Landale (born 1969) is a BBC journalist who is the current Diplomatic Editor at BBC News.

Denis McShane, shilling for the EU, reveals….

The anti-EU Brussels correspondent was invented by Boris Johnson when the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent there 25 years ago. His fellow Old Etonian Brussels journalist at the time was James Landale who wrote a little ditty:

“Boris told such dreadful lies It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes”

Nothings changed all these years later as Landale and his BBC colleagues still peddle the same old tripe about Boris and the EU.

Still, confirms Boris was anti-EU even 25 years ago….so one in the eye for Kuenssberg who reported ‘vicious Westminster rumours’ as fact that Boris only joined Leave as a launch pad for his leadership ambitions…he was, she assured us, in fact pro-EU.  No he wasn’t.

McShane also puts the lie to the BBC’s claim that we are now living in a post-truth era, presumably pre 2016 we were in a golden age of accurate, honest and truthful journalism?

Again though this is of course from a pro-EU stance as told by McShane…

In 1990 another legendary Sun headline “Up Yours Delors!” can be taken as the starting moment of non-stop propaganda against European integration.

According to Roy Greenslade, former Fleet Street editor, now our principal commentator on the press, “For years Britain’s rightwing press has done everything in  its formidable power to demean the European Union and  all its works. Drip by drip by drip, the newspapers have heaped abuse on the EU, blaming every domestic ill on its policies and actions while giving it no credit whatsoever for its benefits. “The coverage of the issue has been marked by a mixture of misinformation and disinformation, replete with inaccuracy, innuendo and insincerity.”

Naturally the pro-EU media are entirely blameless and have conducted their reporting over the decades with integrity and honesty.

McShane whinges about the overwhelming power of the anti-EU papers…

In 2015 the combined circulation of the Eurosceptic press, dailies and Sundays, was 10,239,526. Assuming the Mirror, Guardian, Independent and I to be pro-European their circulation is 2,656,735 so in circulation terms the Europhobe press outnumber the pro-EU press 4-1. Circulation isn’t readership of course, still less on-line readership. Here the Daily Mail with 16 million on-line readers based on monthly aggregates far outweighs anyone else especially those papers behind paywalls.

But McShane fails to note the revelation in the same publication that it is the pro-EU BBC in all its guises which absolutely dominates the news and doesn’t just do ‘drip drip drip’…it bangs, beats and bashes the drum loudly, rolls out the red carpet and a fanfare of trumpets for the blessed EU and excoriates those who oppose the orthdoxy…….

Print newspapers are now the least popular medium people use to keep abreast of news and current affairs, according to research by the communications watchdog Ofcom. The regulator’s annual news consumption study for 2015 found that 31 per cent of the population read a printed newspaper to keep informed down from 41 per cent in the previous year. The decline means that print newspapers are now the least popular medium for checking news, behind television (67 per cent), the internet (41 per cent) and radio (32  per cent).

The top news source in terms of reach was BBC1, which 48 per cent of those surveyed saying they used it to check news, down from 53 per cent in 2014. ITv ranks second, with 27 per cent saying they use it as a news source. The BBC website remains the third mostused news source (23 per cent) with the BBC News Channel in fourth place at 14 per cent. Facebook is the joint fifth most popular source of news in terms of reach, with Sky News, at 12 per cent. The most-used radio stations are BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 2, while the most-read newspapers are the Sun and Daily Mail.