tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/uk-journalism-11651/articlesUK journalism – The Conversation2024-01-01T03:26:03Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2204182024-01-01T03:26:03Z2024-01-01T03:26:03ZThe world has lost a dissenting voice: Australian journalist John Pilger has died, age 84<p>John Pilger, a giant of journalism born in Australia in 1939, has died at the age of 84, according to a statement released online by his family.</p>
<p>His numerous books and especially his documentaries opened the world’s eyes to the failings, and worse, of governments in many countries – including his birthplace.</p>
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<p>He inspired many journalists, and journalism students, with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>But his campaigning approach to journalism also regularly provoked controversy. That was partly because of his trenchant dissent from official stances, and partly because in aiming to reach the broadest possible audience, he tended to oversimplify issues and overstate his views.</p>
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<h2>‘I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian’</h2>
<p>The English journalist, Auberon Waugh, who clashed with Pilger on more than one occasion, invented the verb “to pilger” which he <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185430.In_the_Name_of_Justice">defined</a> as “to treat a subject emotionally with generous disregard for inconvenient detail, always in the left-wing cause and always with great indignation”.</p>
<p>Whatever the merits of Waugh’s criticism, they are, in my view, outweighed by the breadth and depth of Pilger’s disclosures in the public interest.</p>
<p>Pilger never hid behind the safety of the “he said, she said” approach to journalism, which New York University professor Jay Rosen has famously <a href="https://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/">called</a> the “view from nowhere”.</p>
<p>Pilger, however, rejected the label of crusader, telling Anthony Hayward for his book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185430.In_the_Name_of_Justice">In the Name of Justice: The Television Reporting of John Pilger</a>: </p>
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<p>I am, by inclination, anti-authoritarian and forever sceptical of anything the agents of power want to tell us. It is my duty, surely, to tell people when they’re being conned or told lies.</p>
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<h2>Telling the stories of ordinary people</h2>
<p>Pilger was <a href="https://johnpilger.com/biography">born in Bondi</a>, Sydney. Like many of his generation, he moved to the UK in the early 1960s and worked for The Daily Mirror, Reuters and ITV’s investigative program World in Action.</p>
<p>He reported on conflicts in Bangladesh, Biafra, Cambodia and Vietnam and was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/31/john-pilger-campaigning-journalist-dies-aged-84">named</a> newspaper journalist of the year in Britain in 1967 and 1979. </p>
<p>He made <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos">more than 50</a> documentaries. His best known is <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/year-zero-the-silent-death-of-cambodia">Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia</a>, which in 1979 revealed that as many as two million of the seven million population of the country had died as a result of genocide or starvation under Pol Pot’s brutal regime.</p>
<p>His documentaries garnered numerous prizes, including the prestigious Richard Dimbleby award for factual reporting, a <a href="https://johnpilger.com/biography">Peabody award</a> for <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/cambodia-year-ten">Cambodia: Year Ten</a> and a Best Documentary Emmy <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/journalist-and-filmmaker-john-pilger-dies-aged-84-20231231-p5eufs.html">award</a> for <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/cambodia-the-betrayal">Cambodia: The Betrayal</a>.</p>
<p>He also made several documentaries about Australia, including one in 1985, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438974/">The Secret Country</a>, about historic and continuing mistreatment of First Nations people that thoroughly irritated the then Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke.</p>
<p>When the US government of George W. Bush reacted to al-Qaeda’s murderous 9/11 terrorist attacks by invading first Afghanistan, in late 2001, then Iraq in March 2003, Pilger made <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/breaking-the-silence-truth-and-lies-in-the-war-on-terror">Truth and Lies: Breaking the Silence on the War on Terror</a>. </p>
<p>It sharply criticised not only Bush’s actions but those of the most ardent members of the “coalition of the willing”: UK Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, and Australian coalition prime minister, John Howard.</p>
<p>No doubt, if Pilger was still alive he would condemn the absence of the National Security Committee’s papers from the 2003 cabinet papers<a href="https://theconversation.com/cabinet-papers-2003-howard-government-sends-australia-into-the-iraq-war-217812"> released today</a> by the National Archives of Australia. </p>
<p>They <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/01/australia-went-to-war-in-iraq-based-on-oral-reports-to-cabinet-from-john-howard">show</a> Howard’s cabinet signed off on the controversial – in hindsight disastrous – decision to endorse the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq based on “oral reports” from the prime minister, rather than full cabinet submissions.</p>
<p>Pilger wrote or edited 11 books, including <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/tell-me-no-lies-9781407085708">Tell Me No Lies</a>, an anthology of outstanding investigative journalism, and perhaps his best regarded book, <a href="https://johnpilger.com/books/heroes">Heroes</a>, which hewed to what one of his favourite journalists, Martha Gellhorn, called “the view from the ground”. </p>
<p>He did this by telling the stories of ordinary people he had encountered, whether miners in Durham, England, refugees from Vietnam, or American soldiers returning from the Vietnam War – not to parades, but to lives dislocated by the silence and shame surrounding the war’s end.</p>
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<h2>The world has lost a resolutely dissenting voice</h2>
<p>Phillip Knightley, a contemporary of Pilger who was also born in Australia and went to Fleet Street to become a celebrated investigative journalist and author himself, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185430.In_the_Name_of_Justice">summed up</a> his compatriot’s work in 2000:</p>
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<p>He was certainly among the first to draw international attention to the shameful way in which Australia has treated the Aborigines [sic] […] John has a slightly less optimistic view than I have. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://johnpilger.com/videos/welcome-to-australia">Welcome to Australia</a> [Pilger’s 1999 film], he concentrated on the bad things that were happening but not the good. He would say that’s not part of his brief and it’s covered elsewhere. He’s a polemicist and, if you want to arouse people’s passions and anger, the stronger the polemic, the better.</p>
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<p>Pilger made fewer films in the 2000s, focusing much of his energy on supporting Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks. Assange continues to suffer in Belmarsh prison in England while appeals against his extradition to the US to answer charges under the 1917 Espionage Act grind interminably on.</p>
<p>Whatever flaws there are in Pilger’s journalism, it feels dispiriting that on the first day of a new year clouded by wars, inaction on climate change and a presidential election in the US where democracy itself is on the ballot, the world has lost another resolutely dissenting voice in the media.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson is the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Australian Press Council.</span></em></p>Pilger inspired many with his willingness to critique the damaging effects on ordinary people’s lives of capitalism and Western countries’ foreign policies. But he also provoked global controversy.Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2018062023-03-15T13:35:59Z2023-03-15T13:35:59ZGary Lineker tweet scandal shows how the BBC has struggled to adapt to the social media age<p>The BBC’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/jul/12/gary-lineker-remains-bbcs-highest-paid-presenter">highest-paid presenter</a>, Gary Lineker, will soon be back in action after being briefly suspended for what the broadcaster described as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/mar/10/gary-lineker-step-back-match-of-the-day-bbc">breach of its impartiality guidelines</a>. </p>
<p>The former footballer’s <a href="https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1633111662352891908">tweet on March 7</a> described the wording of the new government policy on immigration as language “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. It triggered <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gary-lineker-bbc-tweet-immigrants-statement-b2299839.html">attacks by Conservative MPs</a>, intense national debate and a crisis at the corporation. </p>
<p>The BBC’s flagship TV football review programme, Match of the Day, was aired without presenters or contributors at the weekend amid calls for the resignation of its director general, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/11/bbc-boss-tim-davie-refuses-quit-hints-gary-lineker-climbdown/">Tim Davie</a>. The BBC gave up on finding substitute presenters after <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/tv/motd-commentators-step-down-players-26447190">other pundits</a> stood down in solidarity.</p>
<p>Lineker refused to retract his tweet. After weekend talks, BBC management reached <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/860cb2ef-b121-4c30-b124-f54833a3994d">a deal</a>, obliging him to observe the corporation’s editorial guidelines while it conducts a social media usage review.</p>
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<p>Described by some as a “[humiliating climbdown],(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/14/gary-lineker-bbc-rightwing-national-debate)” the deal aimed to help the crisis blow over quickly. But it did not. </p>
<p>Conservative party deputy chairman, Lee Anderson, claimed that Gary Lineker had proved he was <a href="https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1635400602497830912">bigger than the BBC itself</a>, creating a precedent for a social media “free for all” for those working for the BBC on non-journalistic contracts. </p>
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<p>The crisis has highlighted many unresolved questions about the place of “legacy” media organisations – largely broadcasters and newspapers – in the fast-changing digital information space. And more widely, of the role of journalism in the age of social media.</p>
<h2>Obsolete definitions</h2>
<p>During discussions around Lineker’s social media conduct, media professionals have frequently referred to the distinction between <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/174088/bbc-news-review-deck.pdf">news and current affairs</a> and other BBC output – and the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/gary-lineker-bbc-confusion-sky-news-richard-osman-b2298475.html">difference between journalists and other contributors</a>. This distinction, once quite rigid, is increasingly blurred. </p>
<p>Some high-achieving BBC staff journalists were offered more lucrative freelance contracts in the 1980s and 1990s by BBC management who did not want to lose them to commercial rivals. This <a href="https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Investigation-into-the-BBCs-engagement-with-personal-service-companies.pdf">prompted a government inquiry</a> into the nature of the practice. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, growing celebrity culture forced the BBC to offer generous freelance deals to attract top talent. This triggered resentment among staff on more modest salaries and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/18/bbc-stars-to-defend-salaries-on-social-media-high-earners">wave of public criticism</a>. </p>
<p>Freelance journalists still had to abide by the BBC’s strict guidelines on impartiality, fairness and accuracy. But other non-staff contributors had more room for manoeuvre depending on their contracts – the wording of which has always been shrouded in secrecy. </p>
<p>This discretionary nature of contractual arrangements has led to confusion and controversy. Many members of the public do not differentiate between a BBC journalist and a commentator, interviewee, pundit or studio guest. They are all a BBC voice. But as rightly pointed out by former head of BBC News, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/entertainment-arts-64938252?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=640eef57ff51f554d28c11c9%26BBC%20cannot%20police%20views%20of%20all%20contributors%20-%20former%20BBC%20news%20director%262023-03-13T09%3A56%3A39.790Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:6693742f-8b53-4d3f-b5ce-8ed1f3a4862e&pinned_post_asset_id=640eef57ff51f554d28c11c9&pinned_post_type=share">James Harding</a>, impartiality is key in maintaining the quality of public discourse and fighting growing polarisation.</p>
<p>Former director of BBC policy, Dame Patricia Hodgson, described the threat of such departures from impartiality as “<a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/bbc-gary-lineker-row-impartiality-social-media-guidelines/">culture wars</a>”. But can this level of adherence to editorial standards be required from all actors, musicians, scientists or sport pundits appearing on the BBC without thwarting the principle of free speech?</p>
<p>The BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54723282">guidelines on social media</a> were updated only two years ago. Now, post-Lineker, they already seem obsolete. Little wonder the BBC is <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/bbc-gary-lineker-row-impartiality-social-media-guidelines/">reviewing them again</a>. The BBC’s requirement of impartiality from all contributors who are “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidance/impartiality/">primarily associated with the BBC</a>” can be challenged – and successfully so – as shown by Lineker. </p>
<p>When criticised by BBC news journalists in September 2022 over earlier controversial political tweets, Lineker was actually backed by BBC management. One of the journalists was even censured for challenging the presenter and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11166351/BBC-ordered-senior-journalist-Neil-Henderson-APOLOGISE-Gary-Lineker.html">had to apologise</a>. </p>
<h2>Journalism in the age of hybrid news</h2>
<p>The Lineker crisis, however shortlived, reflects how hard it is for organisations like the BBC to keep up with the world of social media, which has not been kind to journalism, either. </p>
<p>In a media landscape where anyone with an internet connection has access to large audiences and mainstream publishers and broadcasters and their journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of information, the definition of who or what is “doing” journalism has become blurred.</p>
<p>Competition is intense, revenues have fallen heavily and many news organisations have found it hard to survive. The idea of journalism appears to have been subsumed under the more general efforts of “content creation”. This has put a great deal of pressure on the sharp distinction once created by the BBC between news and current affairs and other content. Anyone can today <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2006/01/17/5160990/what-defines-a-journalist">call themselves a journalist</a> – whether a “citizen journalist” or otherwise.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, people with large social media following and significant reach, as does Lineker, can enjoy the benefits of contract escape clauses which do not oblige them to behave like journalists. It seems that journalism has transcended its vocational and institutional identity and is badly in need of a new definition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marek Bekerman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The crisis has highlighted unresolved questions about the role of journalism in the age of social media.Marek Bekerman, Programme Leader for MA International Journalism, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2009492023-03-06T15:04:28Z2023-03-06T15:04:28ZReporting Ukraine 90 years ago: the Welsh journalist who helped uncover Stalin’s genocide<p>Ninety years ago, a young Welsh investigative journalist reported on the Soviet Union’s genocide in Ukraine, Stalin’s attempt to stamp down on rising nationalism. <a href="https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin">The Holodomor</a>, as it became known, was responsible for the deaths of some 4 million Ukrainians through deliberate starvation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.garethjones.org">Gareth Jones</a>’ eyewitness reports, gathered at significant risk, were initially disbelieved and dismissed at a time when many in the west were supportive of Stalin as a potential ally against the growing Nazi threat in the early 1930s. It was only later, after the journalist was murdered in murky circumstances, that the full scale of what had taken place was recognised. </p>
<p>Jones, a linguist and political advisor before he turned to journalism, has become the subject of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o7VoM1jlOs">feature film,</a> several <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-18691109">documentaries</a> and numerous <a href="https://nation.cymru/culture/review-mr-jones-the-man-who-knew-too-much-the-life-death-of-gareth-jones-by-martin-shipton/">biographies.</a> Yet his achievements, which hold lessons for today’s reporters, are still not well known.</p>
<p>Jones was born in Barry, south Wales, in 1905. His mother had worked in Ukraine as a tutor to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40345030">Hughes family</a>, Welsh steel industrialists, who had founded what is now the city of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Donetsk-Ukraine#ref197147">Donetsk</a>. </p>
<p>He had a talent for languages and graduated from Aberystwyth University with first class honours in French and then later from Cambridge with another first in French, German and Russian. In 1930, he was hired as a foreign affairs advisor to the MP and former prime minister David Lloyd George while also developing his freelance journalism.</p>
<p>In early 1933, Jones was in Germany covering <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/german_articles/german_articles.htm">Hitler’s rise to power</a>. He was there on the day Hitler was <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/adolf-hitler-is-named-chancellor-of-germany">pronounced chancellor</a> and flew with him and Goebbels to Frankfurt where he reported for the <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk">Western Mail</a>, a Welsh daily newspaper. </p>
<p>In March 1933, he made a third and final trip to the Soviet Union. He had earlier <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/gareth_jones_diary.htm">reported more explicitly</a> than most on the economic crisis and starvation that was emerging. This time, he went undercover into Ukraine and <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/gareth_jones_diary.htm">kept notes</a> of all he saw:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.garethjones.org/margaret_siriol_colley/The%20exhibition/press_release.htm">I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms</a>. Everywhere was the cry, “There is no bread. We are dying.” This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening.</p>
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<p>The report was denounced by the Soviets and also in the New York Times by its Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty. It was an <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/mr-jones-film-exposes-the-fake-news-campaign-behind-stalins-ukrainian-genocide/">early example of crying “fake news”</a> to undermine uncomfortable truths. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People lie strewn in a black and white scene. Other people walk past looking at the bodies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513619/original/file-20230306-22-it1g4d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Starved people on a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Famine_in_the_Soviet_Ukraine_1932_1933.html?id=k0K5AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Famine in the Soviet Ukraine, 1932–1933: a memorial exhibition, Widener Library, Harvard University.</a></span>
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<p>Jones <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/jones_replies.htm">rebutted</a> the criticism with a detailed analysis of the famine and its causes – but the mud stuck. He was banned from the Soviet Union and returned to Wales, unable to find work with major newspapers until he <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/margaret_siriol_colley/randolph_hearst1934.htm">met the American press magnate William Randolph Hearst</a>. Hearst had bought St Donat’s castle, a few miles from Jones’ home in Barry and supported him by publishing his articles in full.</p>
<p>The following year, he embarked on a world tour, focusing <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/articles_far_east/contents.htm">on Asia</a>.
He spent time in Japan and then went to China, moving on to Inner Mongolia with a German journalist. The pair were kidnapped by bandits and held hostage. </p>
<p>Jones’ body was found in August 1935. He had <a href="https://www.garethjones.org/articles_far_east/berliner_tageblatt.htm">apparently been shot</a> the day before his 30th birthday. Biographers have pointed to circumstantial evidence that the Soviet secret services, the NKVD, were involved in his kidnap and murder as revenge for his reporting. But there is no concrete proof of this. </p>
<p>Lloyd George paid <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cambridgeshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8357000/8357028.stm">tribute to him</a> in the London Evening Standard newspaper following news of his death:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue and one or other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too much of what was going on. He had a passion for finding out what was happening in foreign lands wherever there was trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he shrank from no risk. I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation, and he allowed no obstacle to turn from his course when he thought that there was some fact, which he could obtain. He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at things that mattered.</p>
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<p>Today, as another generation of journalists reports on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Jones’ story holds a number of relevant lessons. Even as we are swamped with digital media, there is no substitute for eyewitness reporting and for reporters taking the risks to see for themselves what is happening. </p>
<p>Attempts to hold power to account will often be meet with denial – including from other media – but cries of “fake news” must be countered with hard evidence. </p>
<p>Reporting can be a dangerous occupation. The press watchdog, Committee to Protect Journalists, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/more-journalists-killed-latin-america-caribbean-ukraine-2022-cpj">reported</a> that 67 journalists had been killed last year – including 15 in Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.</p>
<p>Despite the risks, international reporting is as essential today as it was in the 1930s when Gareth Jones set out to tell the world what he had seen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Sambrook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gareth Jones reported on Moscow’s genocide against the Ukrainian people in the 1930s. His story holds lessons and an example for those reporting on the latest conflict.Richard Sambrook, Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011042023-03-03T16:30:43Z2023-03-03T16:30:43ZOakeshott and Hancock: betraying a confidential source damages journalism and is a threat to public health<p>It is an iron rule of journalism – probably the first lesson that a rookie reporter learns on joining a professional newsroom: never betray a confidential source. A core principle of the National Union of Journalists <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/about-us/rules-and-guidance/code-of-conduct.html">code of conduct states</a> that a journalist “protects the identity of sources who supply information in confidence and material gathered in the course of her/his work”.</p>
<p>This principle is also enshrined in UK law: the 1981 <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/49">Contempt of Court Act</a> exempts journalists from contempt charges for “refusing to disclose the source of information” (with some caveats around national security and crime prevention). Under the 1984 <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice">Police and Criminal Evidence Act</a>, police cannot seize journalistic material without first making an application to a judge.</p>
<p>There are good reasons for such strong protections. They underpin the fundamental role of watchdog journalism in a democracy and the ability of journalists to hold the powerful to account. </p>
<p>We only have to think of “<a href="https://www.history.com/news/watergate-deep-throat-fbi-informant-nixon">Deep Throat</a>”, the famed source for Woodward and Bernstein’s exposure of Richard Nixon’s complicity in the 1970s US Watergate scandal, or the disc detailing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/may/23/john-wick-expenses-scandal">MPs’ expenses</a> that found its way to the Telegraph in the UK in 2009, to understand the vital importance of preserving source confidentiality.</p>
<p>In all probability, neither scandal would have seen the light of day if the original source had not trusted guarantees of anonymity.</p>
<p>What, then, do we make of the decision by journalist Isabel Oakeshott to present the Telegraph with the complete cache of more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages confidentially given to her by Matt Hancock, for which she signed a non-disclosure agreement? Interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme, Oakeshott <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64818969">claimed</a> an “overwhelming national interest” in breaching the golden rule of journalism. </p>
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<p>She said: “Millions … were adversely affected by the catastrophic decision to lockdown this country repeatedly on the flimsiest of evidence, often for political reasons.” Oakeshott insists she wanted the truth to come out.</p>
<h2>In whose interest?</h2>
<p>There are three reasons for casting severe doubt on her stated rationale. First, by her own admission, she spent a year collaborating with Hancock on a book that was published three months ago. Since she had access to his messages at least 15 months ago, why did she wait so long to reveal information in the national interest? </p>
<p>Pressed on this point in the BBC interview, she said that the cache of messages represented <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f69y72/the-hancock-messages-leak">more than 2.3 million words</a> and that the book she and Hancock were collaborating on was twice as long as the average political memoir. So her claim appears to be that she had simply not had time to do so.</p>
<p>Second, she deliberately chose the Telegraph for her exclusive, a paper which <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/02/even-now-nobody-wants-confront-awful-truth-britains-pandemic/">is known</a>, as is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=620878875789449">Oakeshott herself</a>, for its profound editorial hostility to – and partisan coverage of – the scale of lockdown measures. </p>
<p>It would surely have been more responsible, having decided to break an agreement of confidentiality on the grounds of public interest, to do so via a non-partisan broadcaster or to make the messages available online for everyone to make their own judgment.</p>
<p>Third, a full <a href="https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/terms-of-reference/">public inquiry</a> has been established. Led by Baroness Hallett, its remit is designed precisely to examine responses to the pandemic both by health authorities and by the government. </p>
<p>A genuine public interest response to any concerns raised by the former health secretary’s messages would surely be to hand them over to that inquiry where they could be properly contextualised and analysed, rather than allow them to be selectively quoted in pursuit of a journalistic agenda.</p>
<p>Instead, we are now seeing cherrypicked messages published piecemeal to further support the Telegraph’s own editorial position. Crucially, they are being published without any input from the scientific community about its expert advice on the urgent need for intervention.</p>
<h2>Damage done</h2>
<p>In fact, rather than serving the public interest, these revelations are more likely to cause longer-term damage both to public health and to journalism. Selective publication of Hancock’s messages has successfully raised doubts about the wisdom and effectiveness of government lockdown measures without any counterarguments from medical experts or scientists. </p>
<p>Should we be exposed to another full-scale public health crisis which requires government action on the advice of those experts, we will surely have less faith in any restrictions imposed by politicians. Such resistance would no doubt delight the libertarians, but could have dire consequences for public health and safety.</p>
<p>But the damage to journalism could be even greater. Next time someone discovers corruption or wrongdoing at the highest level and wants to blow the whistle on, say, a powerful cabinet member or a wealthy industrialist at significant personal risk to themselves, will they be quite so ready to trust a journalist’s promise of confidentiality? </p>
<p>At the very least, Oakeshott’s apparent readiness to betray her source – whatever her stated justification – is likely to generate even more cynicism about an industry that already struggles to command public confidence.</p>
<p>We can be fairly confident that any whistleblower will stay very clear of Oakeshott who – we should not forget – has <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-sunday-times-jails-its-source/">form in giving up sources</a> in the Chris Huhne-Vicky Pryce affair which ended in the pair both being jailed for perverting the course of justice.</p>
<p>But high-profile incidents like these will surely make it less likely that such public-spirited individuals will be prepared to risk their own livelihood in the public interest. The only beneficiaries will be the rich and powerful who will continue to escape proper scrutiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201104/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett is Professor of Communications at the University where he has taught journalism students for nearly 30 years. He is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the board of Hacked Off. </span></em></p>The first thing journalists learn is that confidential sources must be protected except in extraordinary circumstances.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1987142023-02-14T17:39:49Z2023-02-14T17:39:49ZLocal journalism is under threat at a time when communities need more inclusive reporting<p>The future of local newspapers is under threat, according to parliament’s <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/175585/more-support-needed-to-halt-damaging-decline-of-local-journalism-dcms-committee-warns/">digital, culture, media & sport committee (DCMS) report</a> released in early 2023. </p>
<p>This report into the sustainability of local journalism comes at a time when <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/trust-in-news-uk/">public trust</a> in the national media is falling, while <a href="https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/52789">online disinformation, polarisation and hatred</a> towards minorities continues to rise.</p>
<p>But my research shows <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/how-a-society-tells-a-story-about-itself">local journalism</a> is capable of providing an important antidote to this. And therefore it should be recognised as an essential element for nurturing our diverse, civic communities. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1748048516656305?journalCode=gazb">Research shows</a> how the media can portray Muslims in disproportionately negative ways. They are often represented as the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/discourse-analysis-and-media-attitudes/8305B860E5CCFFE9918986B21FCAD15D">problematic outsider of British society</a>, often portrayed using stereotypes or as “a menace to the west”.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/ptr/90172-univ73-islamophobia-in-the-uk-report-final.pdf">recent survey</a> on Islamophobia in Britain found Muslims were perceived as the second “least liked” group in the UK, according to polling. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2021-to-2022/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2021-to-2022">Home Office figures</a> released in October 2022 show how Muslims are much more likely to be the victims of religious hate crimes than any other religious group.</p>
<h2>Local journalists and community spirit</h2>
<p><a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/how-a-society-tells-a-story-about-itself">My research</a> has shown that the local media, in particular, has the potential to provide more inclusive ways of reporting on stories involving Muslims.</p>
<p>I conducted interviews with local journalists working for newspapers in areas with relatively large Muslim populations including London and Blackburn. The results showed there were conscious efforts to ensure their reporting did not cause harm to the Muslims within the communities they served. I found that local journalists saw Muslims as an integral part of their local community rather than outsiders.</p>
<p>Muslim celebrations and festivals were covered by local journalists. Stories about terrorist incidents were featured as well as concerns of Islamophobic attacks on local Muslims. And contributions of Muslims to civic life were reported in the same way as anyone else, as were crimes or wrongdoings.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I attempt to go the extra mile in my reporting to get a more truthful picture of where the community is and the real lives of the people within it,” one local journalist told me. “For me, it’s about pushing back against the atomised bullshit that we do see coming back at us online. The reason it’s important to tell stories truthfully and accurately is to push back against this dehumanising narrative that is out there.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, it would be an oversimplification if we took the experiences learned from these particular journalists and applied them to local media as a whole. But <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253221261/the-anthropology-of-news-and-journalism/">other studies</a> of local journalism have also highlighted their often distinctive newsroom cultures. Journalists and their readers are seen to be part of a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Local-Journalism-and-Local-Media-Making-the-Local-News/Franklin/p/book/9780415379540">single community</a> with common values and goals. This closeness to the communities they serve can often translate to a more considered approach to reporting, as well as a greater reluctance to sensationalise or demonise. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003178217-3/trust-ethics-local-journalism-julie-firmstone-john-steel-martin-conboy-charlotte-elliott-harvey-carl-fox-jane-mulderrig-joe-saunders-paul-wragg">Research</a> also points to the commitment of local journalists to create a sense of community and to defend it. </p>
<h2>Threats ahead</h2>
<p>However, as the <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/175585/more-support-needed-to-halt-damaging-decline-of-local-journalism-dcms-committee-warns/">DCMS committee report</a> highlights, the landscape of local journalism is changing and not in a good way. Between 2009 and 2019, more than 300 regional newspaper titles were shut down. During the week of February 6 2023, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-64581579">it was announced</a> that three hundred employees at publisher DC Thomson will be made redundant. The company publishes newspapers including Aberdeen’s Press & Journal and The Courier in Dundee.</p>
<p>There are serious concerns in the same report that without considerable government intervention, the decline in local journalism will have a harmful impact on civic life. Communities in the most deprived areas of the UK are most likely to be affected. </p>
<p>The DCMS report shows local publishers are struggling to keep up with larger media organisations in the move towards online news services. This is leading to losses in revenues and resources. To combat this, the DCMS committee has called on the government to help local news organisations gain charitable status while providing funding to support innovation, startups and new technology. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A selection of different newspaper brands are stacked in a display." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509138/original/file-20230209-20-dn1h0z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dolgellau-gwynedd-wales-uk-august-8-1474678949">Wozzie/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The upcoming <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/365/business-energy-and-industrial-strategy-committee/news/173840/report-consumers-at-risk-if-digital-markets-unit-not-given-teeth-say-mps/">digital markets, competition and consumer bill</a> in Westminster will be closely watched by media experts to see how it affects smaller publishers. </p>
<p>Concerns for local journalism are not just about its survival in an increasingly digital news market, however. It is more a case of recognising that nurturing a community spirit is one solution to countering wider hatred, disinformation and polarisation. </p>
<p>Research by campaigning group <a href="https://www.mediareform.org.uk/media-ownership/who-owns-the-uk-media">the Media Reform Coalition</a> shows how nearly 84% of local newspapers are now owned by just six companies. And while consolidation has been a lifeline for some newspapers, for others it risks extinguishing the close community connection that appears to be vital for the inclusive and balanced civic journalism we need.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadia Haq receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)</span></em></p>Local journalism should be recognised as an essential element for nurturing the UK’s diverse, civic communities.Nadia Haq, ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1725632021-12-14T12:59:10Z2021-12-14T12:59:10ZWe analysed a decade of media coverage of obesity – this is what we found<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437558/original/file-20211214-19-aqi8v3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C61%2C6780%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cropped-image-woman-feet-standing-on-604196735">VGstockstudio / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the new year on the way, no doubt many headlines will be urging readers to set resolutions to lose the weight they may have put on over the holidays. However, the way the British press talks about weight, obesity and health has fluctuated markedly in recent years.</p>
<p>To learn more about these changes, we <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/obesity-in-the-news/9616CE5DD0440AC76C4CA41EED1D8B25">conducted a linguistic analysis</a> of thousands of stories in UK newspapers about obesity, diets and nutrition from 2008 to 2017.</p>
<p>Between these years, the national British press collectively published 43,878 articles that mentioned the words “obese” or “obesity”, amounting to 36 million words. The number of these stories in 2016 was double that in 2011. There were also notable rises in terms like “obesity epidemic” over time, indicating increasing concern about the issue.</p>
<p>To learn more about the coverage itself, we classified words into thematic categories. These included nutrition (for example, chocolate, pies, diet), biology (genes, brain, cells), activity (exercise, PE, swimming), politics (MPs, government, budget) and social issues (discrimination, inequality, unemployment). We then tracked the collective frequencies of words in these categories over time to identify which concepts were increasing or decreasing.</p>
<h2>Personal responsibility</h2>
<p>The key trend we observed is that, over the years, the press increasingly framed obesity as something that is down to the individual -– either because you are born with a body that tends to gain weight, or because you make choices that result in weight gain. The frequency of words that framed obesity in terms of personal responsibility, having to do with lifestyle choices (what you <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/it-s-too-late-to-take-the-soft-approach-with-fat-people-it-s-a-choice-and-it-costs-the-nhs-millions-9729807.html">ate</a> and how much <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1258085/Schools-send-letters-parents-rating-childrens-fitness-using-bleep-test.html">exercise</a> you did), increased over time. </p>
<p>For example, in articles from 2008, the word “snacks” occurred 57 times per million words. In 2017, this number jumped to 143. The set of terms related to biological factors (such as your <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/dec/15/nutrition?fb=native">genes</a>, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3216579/Obese-people-t-help-brains-hard-wired-eat-way-drug-addicts-crave-fix-scientists-say.html">brain activity</a> or <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/western-surge-in-obesity-may-have-been-caused-by-a-virus-2084737.html">viruses</a>) also went up over time.</p>
<p>We know now from health research that societal factors play a role in obesity. For example, adults in the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods in England are almost <a href="https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/health-survey-for-england/2018/summary">twice as likely</a> to have obesity.</p>
<p>But over time, these social factors have played a smaller role in the press coverage about obesity. The frequency of words linked to social factors (government and town planning policies, practices of food manufacturers and advertisers and social inequality) have collectively decreased. </p>
<p>For example, in 2008, the word “government” occurred 904 times per million words, but only 418 times per million words in 2017. Even liberal newspapers like the Guardian, which tended to mention social factors the most, discussed them less over the decade.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young man in the blurred background eats a croissant while reading the newspaper. A cup of coffee and croissant are on the table in focus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Newspaper coverage about obesity has become more focused on personal responsibility over the years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/blurred-young-man-eats-his-breakfast-269555000">Tatyana Aksenova / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Changing calendar</h2>
<p>We also found that the focus on causes of obesity shifts from month to month. During Christmas and new year, there is more coverage around personal choice, like not indulging in <a href="https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/people/leading-gp-warns-santa-claus-lay-off-mince-pies-sherry-112941">mince pies</a>, along with new year resolutions to start a new diet.</p>
<p>But during the budget announcement in the spring and party conferences in the autumn, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/budget-2016-what-sugar-tax-7569240">government policy</a> relating to obesity tends to receive more media attention. </p>
<p>The time of year even affects the weight-loss advice printed in newspapers. In January, the focus is on joining a gym. But by February, the “new you” rhetoric tends to fizzle out and is replaced with stories reminding us to get enough <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1250992/Sleep-skinny-Its-leaving-shattered-ill-Experts-say-little-shut-eye-making-fat.html">sleep</a> as that will reduce our risk of obesity. </p>
<p>Around April, readers are urged to engage in outdoor activities like <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/170247/Why-gardening-is-good-for-you">gardening</a> to lose weight. In August, sports like swimming and cycling are encouraged, but the bar is lowered in November, when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/14/walking-paths-in-england-and-wales-are-a-pattern-of-feast-and-famine">walking</a> is promoted as the weight-loss activity of choice.</p>
<p>Anxiety around obesity also tends to be seasonal. The start of the good weather in May brings an increase in the number of articles about obesity, along with stories about how to look good in swimwear. While newspapers are not to blame for the climate or the timing of political events, such factors lead to inconsistent messaging around the causes of and solutions to obesity from month to month.</p>
<p>We only examined a decade of articles, and it is not wise to extrapolate beyond this point, for example, by predicting that the current direction of travel is irreversible. However, for the period we looked at, there is a clear shift in the press towards situating obesity as mostly personal rather than political. </p>
<p>This period was one of government austerity and policies aimed at reducing spending on welfare payments, housing subsidies and social services. The message that “if something bad happens, it is your own fault” in stories about obesity fits with the dominant political ideology of the time.</p>
<p>If personal factors do play a role in people developing obesity, they are only part of the story. The British press appears less keen to highlight the role that powerful social factors have played in contributing to the country’s high obesity rates. Perhaps this could help to explain why, despite the increased focus on obesity in the news, rates of obesity and overweight have stubbornly remained at <a href="http://healthsurvey.hscic.gov.uk/data-visualisation/data-visualisation/explore-the-trends/weight.aspx">61-64%</a> for the last 20 years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Brookes receives funding from ESRC. Gavin Brookes has published research with members of the registered charity Obesity UK.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Baker receives funding from ESRC.
Paul Baker has published research with members of the registered charity Obesity UK. </span></em></p>The way the press talks about obesity has changed over time.Gavin Brookes, UKRI Future Leader Fellow, Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityPaul Baker, Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1716192021-11-11T17:25:09Z2021-11-11T17:25:09ZClaims of COP26’s success have been unpicked – but political journalists have repeated the spin<p>If there is one thing that everyone needs from a UN climate summit, it is clarity. Deciphering the mass of decisions, deals, pacts, coalitions and pledges matters greatly if scientists, campaigners, policymakers and the public are to understand how the summit has advanced the goal of halting climate change and where it has fallen short.</p>
<p>For months now, political journalists in the UK <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59084086">have played up the notion</a> that summit success is intimately tied to the personage and polemic power of Boris Johnson. Created in part by supportive newspapers, the idea has a very practical consequence: the summit cannot fail. Which has had an unfortunate impact on clarity.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of an article" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431530/original/file-20211111-6892-hzu6zz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A recent story by the BBC’s political editor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59084086">BBC News</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the distinguishing features of the first week at COP26 in Glasgow was a “blizzard” of announcements on three of the UK presidency’s four priorities – coal, cash and trees. They were preceded by a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-global-methane-pledge-can-buy-time-while-the-world-drastically-reduces-fossil-fuel-use-171182">global pledge</a> on reducing methane emissions, and succeeded by three evaluations of the combined impact of these various announcements.</p>
<p>We suspect that the decision to launch this blizzard during week one of the summit had several overlapping purposes. Firstly, it distracted attention from the start of formal negotiations, which can be a distinctly dysfunctional affair. The announcements also brought real-economy stories such as the decline of coal into a COP setting. Finally, they allow the UK government to tell a story of COP “success” even if week two negotiations founders.</p>
<p>In all of these announcements, headline claims were more evident than clarity on the reality behind them. But claims can be unpicked: and unfortunately for the government spin machine, many were.</p>
<h2>Unspinning the spin</h2>
<p>Whereas US president Joe Biden claimed the methane pledge could potentially reduce global warming by around 0.2°C, <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-do-cop26-promises-keep-global-warming-below-2c">independent analyses</a> suggested the impact would be less than 0.04°C. A “<a href="https://ukcop26.org/world-leaders-kick-start-accelerated-climate-action-at-cop26/">Breakthrough Agenda</a>” to align development in areas such as green hydrogen lacked any operational details. </p>
<p>Most glaringly, <a href="https://ukcop26.org/end-of-coal-in-sight-at-cop26/">the claim</a> that 23 countries had for the first time pledged to phase out coal-fired electricity generation wilted under scrutiny. For example, ten of the nations, it emerged, <a href="https://twitter.com/patrickgaley/status/1456722673610940416">are using no coal generation</a> anyway. </p>
<p>Even as the claims were being probed, analysts Climate Resource <a href="https://data.climateresource.com.au/ndc/20211103-ClimateResource-below2C.pdf">calculated</a> that all of these pledges, plus new targets announced by a few nations including <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-59125143">India</a>, could limit temperature rise to 1.9°C. A day later the <a href="https://www.iea.org/commentaries/cop26-climate-pledges-could-help-limit-global-warming-to-1-8-c-but-implementing-them-will-be-the-key">International Energy Agency</a> said 1.8°C. </p>
<p>The day after that, the Energy Transitions Commission <a href="https://www.energy-transitions.org/speech-by-lord-adair-turner-chair-of-the-energy-transitions-commission-at-the-cop-26-destination-2030/">declared</a> the pledges had substantially closed the gap between likely emission levels in 2030 and those needed to keep global warming below 1.5°C.</p>
<p>All gave crucial caveats, the most important being the two words “if enacted”. Pledges do not cut emissions – policies do. And by common consent – now confirmed by the widely-respected <a href="https://climateactiontracker.org/documents/997/CAT_2021-11-09_Briefing_Global-Update_Glasgow2030CredibilityGap.pdf">Climate Action Tracker</a> – the sum of governments’ policies is taking us towards 2.7°C of global warming. </p>
<p>Another less-discussed set of caveats concerns double-counting. Most obviously, if enacting one of these pledges makes it easier for a country to meet its overall 2030 target, it is not necessarily obliged to achieve the emission cuts it had planned for in other areas.</p>
<p>And it is here that we return to the need for clarity.</p>
<p>In journalism, crucial caveats can go missing, especially in articles written by political journalists unfamiliar with the topic. And so it has transpired, with the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/johnsons-green-machine-gathers-steam-to-turn-cop-into-a-coup-r23bz3dn2">Sunday Times</a>, for example, stating: “The UN warned before the summit that [temperatures] are set to rise to 2.7°C. By the end of the week, experts suggested the agreements reached would lower this to 1.8°C.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of an article" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431522/original/file-20211111-27-di5iu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A recent article by the Sunday Times chief political commentator.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/johnsons-green-machine-gathers-steam-to-turn-cop-into-a-coup-r23bz3dn2">Sunday Times</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Two days later, when the Climate Action Tracker highlighted the yawning gap between countries’ headline pledges and concrete policies, we had headlines such as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/cop26-sets-course-for-disastrous-heating-of-more-than-24c-says-key-report">World on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4°C</a>”.</p>
<p>As a recipe for confusing the public, it is hard to beat.</p>
<p>In reality the COP has made progress. The draft agreement recognises the huge risks posed by climate change and the urgency of finding solutions. There has also been movement on adaptation, finance and loss and damage – and <a href="https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Overarching_decision_1-CP-26.pdf">this COP decision</a> could be the first to urge phasing out of coal and ending fossil fuel subsidies. </p>
<p>As we enter the summit’s crucial final days, when spin flies around like chaff from a combine harvester, the stakes are higher than ever. That places an onus on scientists and analysts for full clarity on the caveats, on journalists to reflect them, and on leaders not to over-claim. COP26 will neither be a total success nor a total failure, but somewhere on the spectrum between. The details matter – not least for prioritising what comes next. </p>
<hr>
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<img alt="COP26: the world's biggest climate talks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><strong>This story is part of The Conversation’s coverage on COP26, the Glasgow climate conference, by experts from around the world.</strong>
<br><em>Amid a rising tide of climate news and stories, The Conversation is here to clear the air and make sure you get information you can trust. <a href="https://page.theconversation.com/cop26-glasgow-2021-climate-change-summit/"><strong>More.</strong></a></em> </p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Piers Forster receives funding from UK and EU research councils. He sit on the UK Climate Change Committee, but is writing this in a personal capacity. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Black does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mainstream reporters not familiar with the topic may spin the summit as a huge success or devastating failure.Richard Black, Honorary Research Fellow, Grantham Institute, Imperial College LondonPiers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change; Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1514482020-12-08T15:12:06Z2020-12-08T15:12:06ZCoronavirus: people turn to their local news sites in record numbers during pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373594/original/file-20201208-13-h0hsq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=164%2C272%2C4240%2C2893&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wozzie via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Local newspapers have seen sales of their print copies <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/dizzying-decline-britain-s-local-newspapers-do-you-want-bad-news-or-good-news-9702684.html">in decline for decades</a> and, with regional newspaper groups regularly <a href="https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2020/news/redundancies-in-store-at-newsquest-as-ceo-admits-staffing-cannot-return-to-pre-covid-levels/">cutting staff</a>, it has felt like UK local news journalism might be on the way out – to be replaced by WhatsApp groups or Facebook chat.</p>
<p>But interest in news from people’s own neighbourhoods has prompted a significant digital spike this year. Hundreds of thousands of people have turned to their local newspaper websites during the pandemic for a clearer understanding of the local implications of this national crisis.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nottinghampost.com/">Nottinghamshire Live</a> site, run by Reach Plc, has just seen its highest numbers ever in a single month, 25 million page views, in October this year. The second-highest month ever was in April 2020.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1336261946350428165"}"></div></p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.bishopsstortfordindependent.co.uk/">Bishop’s Stortford Independent</a>, a weekly paper in Hertfordshire, the monthly web audience increased from 260,000 in January to 360,000 in October. The newspaper team was adding more stories to the website than previously, and also launched an app as a reaction to the demand for stories.</p>
<p>Newsquest, one of the biggest owners of regional UK media, announced in early December it is to turn its <a href="https://www.newsquest.co.uk/news/oldham-times">weekly paper in Oldham into a daily</a>, the company said one of the reasons was that “the title has seen record audience numbers online over the last six months”.</p>
<h2>Local voices</h2>
<p>With millions confined to their homes during lockdowns, where do you turn to during the pandemic if you want to find out whether the local surgeries are open or where you can buy a toilet roll? Day-to-day details about where to find a COVID testing centre or council grants were at the heart of local news over the past nine months.</p>
<p>“The restrictions are so local that the only place you can find out the information you need for where you live is from your local publisher. It is affecting peoples’ lives in an extreme way,” said Natalie Fahy, editor of Nottinghamshire Live and the Nottingham Post newspaper.</p>
<p>Alastair Machray, editor-in-chief of the <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/">Liverpool Echo</a>, told me: “We saw it very much as our responsibility to lift the clouds of confusion by writing explanatory content.”</p>
<p>Tracey Bagshaw, group editor of the <a href="http://www.justregional.co.uk/">Just Regional group</a>, which includes local news magazines in north Norfolk, said that a lot of what was published at the beginning of the pandemic was “very much in the information mode.</p>
<p>"And it just seemed important, because a lot of people were saying we don’t know, and it was an uncertain time”, she said, adding that: “people wanted news immediately. They don’t want to wait until Friday, to find out what was happening. They wanted to know, on Tuesday morning.”</p>
<p>An upside from the past few months has been more interaction with readers – which has allowed news sites to learn more about their readers wanted, who they were, and what sort of stories they were searching for. “So you’d know exactly sort of how a post was doing, what stories were – and we’re actually picking up comments from readers,” said Bagshaw.</p>
<h2>A matter of trust</h2>
<p>When it comes to the vital issue of trusting information, there is still an important point of difference between local papers and WhatsApp groups. Newspapers and sites run by trained journalists have a commitment to fact-checking, asking challenging questions of local authorities and digging into a local issue. </p>
<p>During the pandemic, most local news sites published a mix of detail about how hospitals were coping and case numbers, but also focused on how people were helping each other. The positive stories about communities started to attract significant numbers of readers, too. Said Bagshaw: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There were lots of pictures of people painting rainbows and delivering food and, you know, just helping others. Alongside the stories about how local buildings are being turned into temporary mortuaries or being turned into temporary accommodation for the homeless.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Local news companies also <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/innovation-and-sharper-focus-how-local-news-weathering-coronavirus-storm">tried out new ideas during the pandemic</a>, some offering print subscriptions as gifts, others trying out technology to record interviews without leaving home or new software to keep reporters in touch with each other.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Shetland Times newspaper sits on a pile of UK national papers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373597/original/file-20201208-15-111e4mz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Local papers: sometimes they provide all the news you need to know.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew J Shearer via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whether this rise in digital traffic signals a new era for UK local news is unclear. Certainly, it could just be a reaction to the crisis, and reader numbers could slip back to previous levels. But with more of the population likely to work <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a2fd84a8-172e-4c9d-9824-0504e86f2da1">from home in years to come</a>, interest in the local community may become increasingly important to people who no longer spend significant parts of their week on long commutes.</p>
<p>Machray believes that the audience will continue to grow. “My sense is that the reputation of the regional media has been enhanced massively through COVID due to the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar/future-local-and-regional-news">efforts and expertise</a>, they’ve expended on behalf of their readership.”</p>
<h2>Generating revenue</h2>
<p>But as well as holding on to their bigger online audiences, companies still need <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/innovation-and-sharper-focus-how-local-news-weathering-coronavirus-storm">to find new revenue streams</a> to replace levels of advertising in their print copies. For most digital advertising has not delivered this, and print sales continue to fall.</p>
<p>One inspiration is Mark Thompson, who stepped down as chief executive of the New York Times this summer after turning around the newspaper’s finances. During his time there, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/22/mark-thompson-steps-down-as-chief-executive-of-new-york-times">paying subscribers rose to five million</a> and it added more journalists, going against the industry trend.</p>
<p>Closer to home is another model, the family-owned news business <a href="https://www.iliffemedia.co.uk">Iliffe</a>, which added four new local papers to its portfolio in the last 18 months. The company’s chief executive, Edward Iliffe, said the key to their success is a focus on the <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/iliffe-media-done-expanding-focus-on-local/">“parochial”</a>.</p>
<p>His newspapers have drawn on old-style journalism with council reports, local football results – and, before the pandemic struck, were even providing a slice of cake for readers who popped into their town centre offices.</p>
<p>Finding the right balance of news may help local news teams work out what their future needs to look like.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Jolley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Local news websites have offered essential details on how to understand COVID rules and where to buy toilet rolls.Rachael Jolley, Research Fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media and Visiting Fellow in Journalism, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1512542020-12-02T16:18:09Z2020-12-02T16:18:09ZFinally there might be some good news about UK journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372319/original/file-20201201-20-13ke4w6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3461%2C2294&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can news survive the digital revolution?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Syda Productions via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been a long time coming, but the UK’s ailing news industry may finally be on the verge of structural change that could help slow, or maybe even reverse, the more than decade-long economic decline of public interest journalism. </p>
<p>Over the past year, investment in news innovation and the extension of charity status to include journalism could open routes to make news organisations more financially viable. Meanwhile the announcement of a new Digital Markets Unit to counter the dominance of big tech and the drafting of new laws to protect against online harms could together help to contain the rise of the super-platforms at the expense of news organisations.</p>
<p>Even prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, it was becoming clear that the old business model of news was breaking. News shifted first online and then onto mobile phones – but advertising failed to shift with it. First the classified ads disappeared to standalone sites such as <a href="https://www.craigslist.org/">Craigslist</a> and to companies’ own websites, then contextual ads headed to Google, and soon after to Facebook. </p>
<p>By the end of the first decade of this century it was <a href="https://archives.cjr.org/reconstruction/the_reconstruction_of_american.php">becoming obvious</a> that certain types of news would struggle to survive the transition to the web. Foremost among these were on-the-ground “beat” reporting, investigations and local news. Since 2005, <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/more-than-40-local-news-titles-closed-in-2018-with-loss-of-some-editorial-275-jobs-new-figures-show/">245 UK newspaper outlets have closed</a>, local news conglomerates including Local World and Johnston Press have been sold off or collapsed and local news staff have been cut to the bone. </p>
<p>Lots of new local and hyperlocal sites have sprung up online, among them <a href="https://cornwallreports.co.uk/">Cornwall Reports</a>, <a href="https://insidecroydon.com">Inside Croydon</a> and <a href="https://oggybloggyogwr.com/">Oggy Bloggy Ogwr</a>, but most of these are shoestring operations run out of kitchens and bedrooms, with an average annual revenue <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/2247/html/#_ftn12">of less than £25,000 a year</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the tech titans have mushroomed. The Competition and Markets Authority <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5efc57ed3a6f4023d242ed56/Final_report_1_July_2020_.pdf">has calculated</a> that of £14 billion spent on digital advertising in the UK in 2019, 80% was spent on Google and Facebook. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman in headphones watches TV monitor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372587/original/file-20201202-23-1bh2rnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whether local or global, news is an expensive business.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">FrameStockFootages via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As income flowed away from news and towards this tech duopoly, the US corporations set up schemes to provide journalism grants – the <a href="https://newsinitiative.withgoogle.com/intl/en_gb/">Google News Initiative</a> and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/journalismproject">Facebook Journalism Project</a> – but these only account for a tiny proportion of the income lost to news. In any case, most of the Google grants have been <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/how-google-woos-european-publishers-through-funding/">given to established commercial companies</a>, and – since the tech giants are under no obligation to provide them – they can be stopped whenever the platforms choose.</p>
<h2>Green shoots</h2>
<p>All this paints rather a bleak picture for the future of public interest news in the UK. Yet, in the past year, we have seen the possibility of real change. A good deal of credit for this can be put down to inquiries led by two people, Dame Frances Cairncross and Jason Furman (the former chief economist to US president Barack Obama). </p>
<p>The 2019 <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism">Cairncross Review</a> into the sustainability of journalism in the UK made it absolutely clear that what was most under threat in our brave new digital ecosystem was “investigative journalism and democracy reporting” – and that to sustain them, public intervention was necessary. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unlocking-digital-competition-report-of-the-digital-competition-expert-panel">Furman Review</a> into digital competition, also in 2019, argued that a reliance on merger and antitrust enforcement was insufficient for countering the market dominance of firms such as Google and Facebook. It proposed the establishment of a new digital markets unit which would – among other responsibilities – draw up a code of competitive conduct to which the digital “big beasts” would have to adhere.</p>
<p>Cairncross’s review sparked the launch of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism/government-response-to-the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism">a new innovation fund</a> to stimulate new methods and approaches to public interest news. The government <a href="https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/future-news-pilot-fund-end-programme-report/">gave research institute NESTA</a> £2 million to distribute among the most innovative news projects in the UK. NESTA received 178 applications, out of which it gave grants to 20 projects to do four-month prototypes in 2020. </p>
<p>Furman’s review triggered <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-competition-regime-for-tech-giants-to-give-consumers-more-choice-and-control-over-their-data-and-ensure-businesses-are-fairly-treated">the announcement on November 27</a> that the government would establish a new <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/27/digital-markets-unit-powers-new-uk-tech-regulator">Digital Markets Unit</a> to regulate the competitive behaviour of the tech platforms.</p>
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<p>Within days of this announcement, and months before this unit has been set up, Facebook sought to pre-empt some of its actions by saying that it would <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55137096#:%7E:text=Facebook%20will%20begin%20paying%20UK,launched%20in%20the%20United%20States.">start paying UK news organisations</a> for their content, and would give news a dedicated page on its platform.</p>
<h2>Charitable status</h2>
<p>And, on November 27, the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5801/ldselect/ldcomuni/176/17602.htm">endorsed the extension</a> of charitable status to include journalism. This should mean that news publishers – should they meet the criteria – can now benefit from tax relief, foundation grants and charitable donations. Small, non-profit local news outfits may finally be able to sustain themselves while performing a critical public service.</p>
<p>Still to come this year is the long-awaited and much-anticipated <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-white-paper/online-harms-white-paper">Online Harms legislation</a>. This was originally touted by the government as the first attempt in the world to address online harms “in a single and coherent way”. We are yet to see what the legislation contains, but at the very least it ought to increase the liability of technology platforms such that they will want to prioritise more trustworthy sources.</p>
<p>There is still a long way to go in the quest for new, more sustainable models for news. But these are all green shoots that could support the gradual recovery of public interest news – and, as a torrid and difficult year comes to an end, and in the spirit of festive cheer, we should celebrate some good news for news.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Moore is a Trustee of the Public Benefit Journalism Research Centre</span></em></p>Some recent positive developments are beginning to suggest that public interest journalism may once again be viable.Martin Moore, Senior Research Fellow, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472162020-10-09T14:30:43Z2020-10-09T14:30:43ZHow ‘hyperlocal’ journalism can restore trust in the media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362647/original/file-20201009-19-1x06ham.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C36%2C2333%2C1538&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/online-news-mobile-phone-close-smartphone-1204164946">Shutterstock/TeroVesalainen</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is a critical time for public interest journalism. Trust in the mainstream media is a <a href="https://www.cv-library.co.uk/recruitment-insight/10-least-trusted-professions-uk/">major problem</a> as fake news spreads unabated on social networks. </p>
<p>One of the key issues is the disappearance of local newspapers which could prove to be “<a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/uk-gov-report-finds-direct-link-between-local-newspaper-circulation-and-voter-turnout-absence-of-journalism-in-some-areas-potentially-catastrophic/">catastrophic</a>” for some areas of the UK, according to a new government report. The report warns that the decline of the local press reduces scrutiny of democratic functions and that this is “unlikely” to improve without intervention.</p>
<p>So it has never been more important to support the scores of <a href="https://www.communityjournalism.co.uk/about-icnn/">independent community publishers</a> up and down the country. They amplify the issues that are important to their readers. Their stories could help restore public trust in journalism – but only if the government puts its money where its mouth is, and helps to fund them.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.communityjournalism.co.uk/about-icnn/">Independent Community News Network (ICNN)</a> – which has more than 120 members throughout the UK – a “hyperlocal” news service is one which typically pertains to “a specific geographic area such as a town, neighbourhood, village, county or even postcode”. Among their members are titles as diverse as <a href="https://www.shetnews.co.uk/">Shetland News</a> and <a href="https://cornishstuff.com">Cornish Stuff</a>.</p>
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<p>The ICNN website states that the shift to online has resulted in an upheaval of the traditional models of journalism. Jobs have been lost, revenues are in decline as advertising dries up and public service journalism has been hit hardest as publications retreat from their traditional stomping grounds. It continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But this digital migration has also inspired individuals and communities to step up to provide an alternative source of information through social enterprises, businesses and voluntary services – delivering enormous civic value. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>At a recent <a href="https://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/about-us/research-events/2020/responsible-journalism/">conference</a> hosted by Coventry University, senior academics argued that the sustenance of this sector was vital to ensure local communities were aware of the nuances of issues like COVID-19 and Brexit. This aligned with recent evidence from the <a href="https://www.edelman.com/20yearsoftrust/">Edelman Trust</a>, which showed that there has been a resurgence in public trust in local journalism over the past decade – and an <a href="https://www.edelman.com/research/edelman-trust-covid-19-demonstrates-essential-role-of-private-sector">erosion of trust</a> in mainstream outlets. </p>
<p>In the UK, the BBC emerged as the most important news source for coronavirus information during the first few months of the pandemic. But survey data shows that only 45% of respondents rate news media as <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/most-uk-say-news-media-have-helped-them-respond-covid-19-third-say-news-coverage-has-made-crisis">trustworthy sources</a> of such information – a decrease of 12% between April and August. </p>
<h2>Cash needed</h2>
<p>To do their work in helping to restore public trust, these fledgling independent community publishers need money. A £2m government-backed <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2-million-future-news-fund-to-boost-local-public-interest-journalism">Future News Fund</a> was launched in England in 2019 to boost local public interest journalism. This was a good start. But the government has resisted the innovation fund for public interest journalism that was recommended by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism">Cairncross review</a> last year. </p>
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<p>The review <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/cairncross-review-institute-for-public-interest-news-innovation-fund-and-tax-reliefs-among-nine-proposals-to-save-uk-news-industry/">also called for</a> tax reliefs and a new Institute for Public Interest News.</p>
<p>The £35 million “<a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/soe_news/all-in-all-together-uk-government-partners-with-newspaper-industry-on-covid-19-ad-campaign/">All in, all together</a>” campaign, set up by the government during the pandemic, was spent on advertising in national and regional newspapers – but no cash was allocated to independent publishers. </p>
<p>Matthew Abbott, the ICNN community project officer, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unfortunately, 95% of ICNN members haven’t been able to access any of the government’s 11 support measures, including furloughing staff, VAT exemption on e-publications and the £35m that was allocated to save the newspaper industry via a public health advertising campaign. If the UK government continues to do nothing to address this imbalance, media plurality in the UK will disappear altogether, along with many hundreds of jobs and vital community resources.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>ICNN did, however, secure funding for independent community publishers from the Welsh government and Public Health Scotland, which have set the benchmark for Westminster to follow. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/nuj-launches-news-recovery-plan/">News Recovery Plan</a> set out by the National Union of Journalists has called for “strategic investment in government advertising, including the hyperlocal sector”. Tech giants, including Google and Facebook, as well as philanthropists and charitable trusts <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/facebook-pledges-4-5m-to-fund-80-new-uk-community-journalists-in-global-first-for-social-network/">are intervening</a> with increasing frequency to support local journalism.</p>
<p>But in the era of fake news – when it is so important for the public to understand the issues around COVID-19 and Brexit – the government needs to do more to help these independent community publishers spread the truth and to keep their readers informed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147216/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Una Murphy, a lecturer in journalism at Coventry University, is co-founder of VIEWdigital independent community publisher which specialises in social affairs journalism in VIEW magazine and on the VIEWdigital.org website. VIEWdigital has received funding from public bodies, tech companies, charitable trusts and philanthropists. VIEWdigital is a member of the Independent Community News Network. Una is a member of the National Union of Journalists. </span></em></p>Independent community publishers are helping to restore trust in journalism - but they need support.Una Murphy, Lecturer in Journalism, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1468682020-09-24T14:10:48Z2020-09-24T14:10:48ZHarold Evans was a titan among the greats of British journalism<p>Among the select band of truly great editors who have led British newspapers with sovereign authority, Harold Evans – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54275941">who has passed away, aged 92</a> – stood out as a titan. The working-class boy who left his local state school at the age of 16 to learn his trade on the Ashton-under-Lyne Weekly Reporter first occupied an editor’s chair as an undergraduate at Durham University. </p>
<p>While studying politics, Evans edited <a href="https://www.palatinate.org.uk/">Palatinate</a>, the independent student newspaper, at a time before television challenged the authority of printed news. Subsequent experience on the Manchester Evening News and <a href="https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/opinion/letters/18140645.harold-evans---man-put-fuel-northern-echos-rocket/">Northern Echo</a> gave him a taste of the power and responsibility exercised by newspapers in an era when British national dailies achieved their peak circulations. </p>
<p>The achievements that earned him national attention came during his editorship of The Sunday Times between 1967 and 1980. His determination to investigate, expose and explain <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/sep/01/thalidomide-scandal-timeline">the Thalidomide scandal</a> set a courageous example of a newspaper speaking truth to power in the public interest and in the teeth of ferocious opposition. For this achievement, Evans deserves as much credit as a less well-known but equally brave predecessor.</p>
<p><a href="https://kar.kent.ac.uk/57595/">Arthur Mann</a>, who was editor of the Yorkshire Post between 1919 and 1940, had the courage to oppose appeasement consistently and boldly despite leading a newspaper owned and financed by Conservative interests. For this, Mann was heartily despised by then prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who made no secret of his contempt. Despite huge pressure from his proprietors, Mann maintained intelligent <a href="http://communicationethics.net/sub-journals/abstract.php?id=00108">opposition to appeasement</a> throughout Chamberlain’s premiership.</p>
<h2>Things they don’t want you to read</h2>
<p>Evans faced at least as much pressure when he took on the legal and political power of The Distillers Company, the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54275941">makers of thalidomide in the UK</a> and his newspaper’s most lucrative advertiser. Standing by the work of the Insight investigative team he had founded – and showing no sign of faltering despite colossal financial and reputational risks – Evans fought for his story all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. When, in 1979, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/27/archives/european-court-rules-britain-violated-press-freedom-editor-halls.html">the court ruled</a> that the Sunday Times could publish without restraint, the British government was obliged to change the law of contempt of court.</p>
<p>That victory was celebrated as a triumph of truth established through investigative reporting. It was also evidence of Evans’ strength as an inspiring leader. Dennis Griffiths, the leading historian of Fleet Street, <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/Century-Journalism-1900-2000-Dennis-Griffiths/9780957223202">recognises</a> that among Evans’ great skills was his ability to bring together excellent reporters and coordinate their efforts to superb effect. </p>
<p>He led his team’s efforts to <a href="https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974LONDON04783_b.html">expose sanctions-busting</a> by supporters of the apartheid regime in Rhodesia. Evans also <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/top-scoops-british-journalism-all-time-philby-i-spied-russia-1933-sunday-times-1967/">indentified Kim Philby</a> as a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, which passed information to the Soviet Union during the second world war and at the beginning of the cold war. </p>
<p>In a campaign to <a href="https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/opinion/leader/4650878.righting-wrongs/">prove the innocence of Timothy Evans</a> (1924-1950, no relation), wrongfully convicted and hanged for the murder of his wife and infant daughter, Harold Evans demanded an official inquiry while editor of the Northern Echo. At the Sunday Times, his persistent focus on this egregious miscarriage of justice helped to bring about abolition of the death penalty. </p>
<h2>Giant of the craft</h2>
<p>Evans deserves our respect because he never wavered from the view that a newspaper is much more than a commercial product designed to generate profits by selling a commodity called news. He treated the newspapers he led as flawed but valuable agents of democracy, using them to achieve the outcomes the leading media academic <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/582">Professor Michael Schudson</a>, in his widely respected 2008 study: Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press, calls “things news can do for democracy”.</p>
<p>Throughout his career, Evans proved through his deeds that painstaking, accurate reporting can expose wrongdoing and help to correct the balance of power between citizens and those who govern in their name.</p>
<p>There have been few like him. For this author, Mann came closest, followed by <a href="https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/bio.php">WT Stead</a> who, as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in July 1885, published “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” a pungent expose of child prostitution in London and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13507486.2010.497306">first true example of investigative journalism</a>. Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail showed courage by <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/paul-dacre-says-there-was-deathly-silence-on-daily-mail-back-bench-as-they-laid-out-stephen-lawrence-murderers-splash-just-before-deadline/">identifying in 1997</a> the men he believed to be guilty of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.</p>
<p>However, one other British editor, <a href="https://www.arusbridger.com/">Alan Rusbridger</a>, who was editor-in-chief of The Guardian between 1995 and 2015, deserves mention. Rusbridger displayed real courage and skill when in August 2013 he published information <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24466802">leaked to the Guardian by Edward Snowden</a>, the American whistleblower who copied highly classified information from the National Security Agency. </p>
<p>It is telling that Rusbridger <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/24/harold-evans-journalism-news-editor-death-facts">paid tribute to Evans</a>, writing that he “invariably turned to Harry for advice”, because Evans had “been there, done it” and “got the campaign medals”.</p>
<p>True greats recognise their peers. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-journalist-author-and-thalidomide-campaigner-harold-evans-48322">In Conversation with journalist, author and thalidomide campaigner, Harold Evans</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146868/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Luckhurst has received research funding from News UK and Ireland Ltd. He is a member of the Society of Editors and the Free Speech Union. His current work in progress, is a book for Bloomsbury Academic under the provisional title Reporting the Second World War: Newspapers and the Public in Wartime Britain.</span></em></p>Evans is admired for his fearless leadership and tireless campaigning journalism.Tim Luckhurst, Principal of South College, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1395682020-05-28T13:58:38Z2020-05-28T13:58:38ZPeople have been switching off from coronavirus news – but the Dominic Cummings story cut through<p>The turmoil about whether Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, broke the UK’s lockdown rules has fuelled public anger about the government. This is despite <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-a-growing-number-of-people-are-avoiding-news-139246">many people experiencing “news fatigue”</a> that led them to either start avoiding news altogether or pay less attention to news coverage, our new research has found.</p>
<p>Our ongoing study of the public’s opinions about media coverage of COVID-19 found many people wanted journalists to hold Cummings to account with some suggesting his actions may have influenced other people to break the UK’s lockdown rules. The research is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-trust-tv-journalists-and-want-them-to-scrutinise-government-coronavirus-policy-new-research-137620">qualitative study conducted since mid-April</a> with 200 participants made up from a representative mix of people from the UK.</p>
<p>According to polls taken at the start of the UK’s lockdown in March, most people <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0031/193747/covid-19-news-consumption-week-one-findings.pdf">closely</a> followed the news for the latest information and analysis about COVID-19, while a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/03/27/covid-19-support-government-reaction-swells">clear majority</a> were broadly supportive of the UK government’s handling of the pandemic.</p>
<p>But by the end of May our study showed close to half of participants did not follow news closely or at all. This was not an expression of apathy about the crisis. Our research revealed many of our participants have become more critical of the government’s decisions and wanted media coverage to reflect their more critical stance. The Cummings affair appears to have exacerbated anger towards the government – something that even some Conservative loyalists are acknowledging.</p>
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<h2>Holding Cummings accountable</h2>
<p>We asked our study participants between May 25 and 27 to select three stories over the past few days they would include in a TV news bulletin. Our respondents overwhelmingly named Cummings in their responses, expressing anger and dismay that his actions have gone unpunished.</p>
<p>Participants chose the Cummings’ story for a number of reasons, but principally because they wanted to make sure that he does not escape scrutiny. As one respondent put it: “It is necessary to keep the government and politicians accountable”, while another said the story was “a good example of how the government aren’t even holding themselves to account”.</p>
<p>Some participants suggested the story had influenced people’s behaviour in their local community. One revealed: “The beach was incredibly busy with absolutely no social distancing and I think that the revelations about Dominic Cummings and one rule for them and another for everyone else mixed with the hot weather is causing it.”</p>
<p>Even those who thought coverage about the prime minister’s adviser had been excessive thought it was justified given his behaviour.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think news media hounding of Dominic Cummings is distasteful but they are correct in putting pressure on him to resign as a lot of people are appalled at the hypocrisy and think why should they bother observing lockdown if it is one rule for him and another for everyone else.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>More critical of UK government</h2>
<p>In mid-April we <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/04/28/research-suggests-uk-public-can-spot-fake-news-about-covid-19-but-dont-realise-the-uks-death-toll-is-far-higher-than-in-many-other-countries/">found</a> that a large majority of people were voracious news consumers. But when we asked how much news they consumed just under a month later, for many people it was no longer a daily activity.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-a-growing-number-of-people-are-avoiding-news-139246">Coronavirus: a growing number of people are avoiding news</a>
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<p>By the end of May just over one in ten of our participants said they followed the news very closely. But while many people said they were consuming less news, a majority of participants signalled that they had become more critical of the government, and almost half thought the media’s coverage should be more critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic. </p>
<p>This is in sync with <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/public-opinion-hardens-against-dominic-cummings-fjz8jrxph">polls showing falling government support</a> and public disapproval with the prime minister.</p>
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<p>Above all, respondents who wanted more critical coverage called for greater scrutiny of government decisions, including challenging the prime minister about new lockdown measures in England. Many respondents acknowledged that their opinions had changed. One commented: “At the start of the pandemic, it was right that the media took a pragmatic approach to reporting. Now, after the multiple failing by the UK government, it should be much more critical.” </p>
<p>Another observed: “The news media should be asking tougher questions about the government’s plans going forward as everything is very vague at the moment.”</p>
<h2>Cummings a distraction?</h2>
<p>Over the course of our study since mid-April, participants have made many references to some of the salient issues facing the UK’s management of the crisis, such as testing and tracing COVID-19 cases, protecting critical workers, and policing social distancing measures.</p>
<p>But if people become less attentive to the news it could more dramatically affect their understanding of relevant health guidance and how far the UK government is held accountable for its handling of the pandemic. Our research has previously shown that much of the public is already <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/05/22/different-lockdown-rules-in-the-four-nations-are-confusing-the-public/">confused</a> about the different lockdown measures across the UK. There is also a lack of understanding about the severity of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-public-confused-and-suspicious-over-governments-death-toll-information-138966">death toll in the UK</a> compared to other countries.</p>
<p>While the Cummings affair has attracted a lot of public interest, given the level of interest from our participants in the study it could also prove a distraction from many other important issues. The challenge for journalists will be to keep the public interested in news while holding the government to account on a wide range of decisions that will impact on people’s lives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139568/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, AHRC, BA and ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Kyriakidou receives funding from the AHRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marina Morani receives funding from AHRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nikki Soo receives funding from AHRC. </span></em></p>COVID-19 ‘news fatigue’ had set in with the UK public, but then the prime minister’s chief advisor changed all that.Stephen Cushion, Chair professor, Cardiff UniversityMaria Kyriakidou, Lecturer, School of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityMarina Morani, Postdoctoral research associate, Cardiff UniversityNikki Soo, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1389662020-05-19T13:37:07Z2020-05-19T13:37:07ZCoronavirus: public confused and suspicious over government’s death toll information<p>The decision by the UK government to stop publishing the international comparative death rate in its daily briefings from May 12 attracted widespread criticism. Many people <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/12/government-shamelessly-abandons-global-comparison-coronavirus-deaths-12692983/">saw this</a> as an attempt to cover up just how badly the UK has handled the pandemic. </p>
<p>Even David Spiegelhalter, a participant in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), who originally appeared to question the simplistic use of international comparisons in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/30/coronavirus-deaths-how-does-britain-compare-with-other-countries">an article in The Guardian dated April 30</a>, also believes it is important to analyse international data. He subsequently clarified his position.</p>
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<p>Our research with just under 200 participants drawn from a representative mix of the UK population, who we are regularly asking to reflect on media reports of the pandemic, suggests that, by the middle of May, most people were far more aware of the UK’s high COVID-19 death rate when compared to other nations than they were <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/04/28/research-suggests-uk-public-can-spot-fake-news-about-covid-19-but-dont-realise-the-uks-death-toll-is-far-higher-than-in-many-other-countries/">in April</a>. </p>
<p>But, crucially, many people did not realise the UK was the worst-hit country in the world, according to the excess death rate <a href="https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1258031311366901761/photo/1">figure</a>. This measures additional deaths in a time period compared to the number usually expected. While all measures comparing countries are problematic, the excess death measure is viewed by many <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-helpful-are-coronavirus-excess-deaths-figures">statistical experts</a> as being the most credible. </p>
<h2>Knowledge but confusion</h2>
<p>When we <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/04/28/research-suggests-uk-public-can-spot-fake-news-about-covid-19-but-dont-realise-the-uks-death-toll-is-far-higher-than-in-many-other-countries/">asked participants</a> in mid-April to rank the UK’s death rate compared to other countries – including Iran, South Korea, France and China but not the US, which we excluded as it had received a lot of media attention as the worst-hit country – many did not realise the UK had one of the highest death rates around the world.</p>
<p>We put the same questions to our participants between May 11-13, asking them to rank from the highest to lowest the countries which had the most deaths due to coronavirus – including the UK, Spain, France, US, Iran and China. We found most correctly named the US first, while two-thirds rightly said the UK was second.</p>
<p>When comparing excess death rates, which the Financial Times’ data journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1259960529688330240?s=20">John Burn-Murdoch</a>, describes as the “gold-standard for international comparisons of COVID-19 deaths”, the UK had the highest excess death rate in the world. The UK’s 42,000 excess fatalities in March and April 2020 were far higher than the numbers recorded by the US.</p>
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<p>Yet when we asked which country had the highest excess death rate out of the US, UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Belgium, an overwhelming majority of our respondents thought the US had the highest excess death rate. Just over one in ten correctly said the UK had the highest excess death figure, while almost four in ten thought the UK had a relatively low excess death compared to other countries (ranking it as either their fourth, fifth and sixth choice).</p>
<h2>Public response</h2>
<p>We also asked respondents how they thought the media has generally covered the numbers of deaths related to COVID-19 and UK with other countries.</p>
<p>Overall, we found widespread public confusion and mistrust in how the death rate was reported. While some respondents acknowledged the challenges involving in accurately reporting complex figures from different countries, many felt they could have been communicated with greater clarity and precision.</p>
<p>Many participants were suspicious about how the UK death rate had been reported as well as in comparison with other countries. One observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think originally when they started to announce the deaths on TV, they were only counting people that had died in hospitals which made it very unreliable and unfair. People had started to think the number was lower but these were only what was being accounted for. Then when they introduced deaths that had come from care homes also it hit home as to how real and how high the deaths were!</p>
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<p>Other participants more explicitly conveyed their mistrust in the use of statistics. One said: “I do believe that the actual figures are much higher than what have been reported. I think this could be because of the false data provided to the media from the government.” Another respondent suggested: “Parts of TV media have just blindly followed the government and have tried to play down the number of UK deaths.”</p>
<p>Despite the complexity involved in comparing death rates, many respondents saw the value in reporting them. As one respondent put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it is fair for TV news bulletins to compare the UK death rate to that of other countries. It enables us to gauge the effect lockdown measures are having in different countries as they have all implemented lockdown differently and to varying degrees.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Impact of coronavirus statistics</h2>
<p>Although many people have become more aware that the UK has a high death rate, our study suggested there is widespread confusion and suspicion about the figures and comparisons with other countries. This has important consequences for how the public responds to political decisions made in the UK as it may affect how they think the government has handled the health crisis. Outside the UK, for example, the international media have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/uk-takes-a-pasting-from-worlds-press-over-coronavirus">extremely critical</a> of how the UK has manged the pandemic.</p>
<p>Rather than follow the government’s decision not to compare the UK’s death rate with other countries in its press briefing, our study showed most people want the media to report these figures. But they also want journalists to more regularly explain the complexity behind them so they can be interpreted accurately and fairly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, AHRC, BA and ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Kyriakidou receives funding from the AHRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marina Morani receives funding from AHRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nikki Soo receives funding from AHRC.</span></em></p>Most people believe the government was wrong to stop publishing international comparisons of COVID-19 death tolls.Stephen Cushion, Chair professor, Cardiff UniversityMaria Kyriakidou, Lecturer, School of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityMarina Morani, Postdoctoral research associate, Cardiff UniversityNikki Soo, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1386272020-05-14T14:31:10Z2020-05-14T14:31:10ZCoronavirus is killing quality journalism – here’s one possible lifeline<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/335015/original/file-20200514-77259-1bklye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C2658&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">High-quality reporting is in demand, but how is it going to be supported?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexsey t17 via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buzzfeed’s decision <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/13/buzzfeed-pulls-plug-on-uk-and-australian-news-operations">to shut down its coverage</a> of Britain and Australia is a terrible reminder of the crushing financial pressures now bearing down on news media. </p>
<p>When COVID-19 crept undetected across the world at the start of 2020, journalists were already grappling with three interconnected crises. Populist politicians on every continent were <a href="http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/publications/2020/journalism-under-fire/">attacking journalists</a>. Newspaper newsrooms, which <a href="https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/09/local-newspapers-are-suffering-but-theyre-still-by-far-the-most-significant-journalism-producers-in-their-communities/">still generate the majority of original reporting</a>, had seen their advertising revenue drain away while online communication created new routes and platforms for information. And trust in journalists, never high, was <a href="https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/reuters-digital-news-report-finds-that-trust-in-the-media-continues-to-fall/s2/a740147/">falling further</a>.</p>
<p>The pandemic accelerated and aggravated a bad situation, twisting it into a new shape. <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/17/21182770/news-consumption-coronavirus-traffic-views">Demand for high-quality news</a> has grown suddenly, bringing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-subscriptions-coronavirus.html">new readers and subscribers</a>. But advertising revenue, still a significant income for most mainstream news publishers, has collapsed. A matter for serious concern in 2019 has become an emergency in 2020.</p>
<p>The coronavirus crash should impel us as never before to look for new models – both editorial and commercial – and to drive innovation and imagination up a gear. Never, as the saying goes, let a really good crisis go to waste. There is no single solution or magic fix. As one of America’s online journalism pioneers, Jim Brady – former executive editor of the Washington Post – <a href="https://archives.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/q_a_jim_brady.php">told the Columbia Journalism Review in 2009</a> when asked for his answer to journalism’s economic crisis: “There’s no silver bullet – it’s just shrapnel … there isn’t one stream [of revenue] that’s going to be successful.”</p>
<p>This makes reinvention and experiment essential. Journalists must not simply beg for financial sticking plasters for bleeding businesses, but invest in what we might call the infrastructure of public benefit news. We must make sure that the conditions are as good as possible for start-ups and for the re-engineering of news – and for local news above all. Dame Frances Cairncross, in <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/779882/021919_DCMS_Cairncross_Review_.pdf">her 2019 inquiry report</a> on a “sustainable future for journalism” argued that public funds might be needed: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Given the scale of the challenge, there is a strong case for public intervention to support publishers to develop solutions fit for the digital age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cairncross also mentioned another change which would cost nothing. She recommended that the government give priority “to exploring the development of a form of tax relief, ideally under the Charities Act … to support public interest journalism”. Neither the government nor the Charity Commission took the hint.</p>
<h2>Charity (faith and hope)</h2>
<p>Tax relief for charities may sound unglamorously administrative, but it matters to high-quality journalism now. Sameer Padania, an expert on philanthropic funding for journalism, <a href="https://www.ariadne-network.eu/introduction-funding-journalism-media/">says that there is “pent-up demand” among donors</a> who would like to meet journalism’s urgent needs. How charity law is applied is one part of ensuring its survival. Good journalism is rarely perfect and often controversial, but it delivers many varied benefits to every society, community and democracy in which it happens. Charity law more imaginatively applied could help to define and entrench high-quality standards in journalism. The Conversation, for example, has been better able to meet hugely increased demand for its evidence-based articles during this pandemic because of its charitable status.</p>
<p>To be eligible for the reputational status of a charity and its financial advantages, an organisation must be “registered” with the Charity Commission. The Charity Commission <a href="https://charitycommission.blog.gov.uk/2020/01/27/read-all-about-it-when-can-journalism-be-charitable/">says that it is open to applications</a> to register journalistic organisations, but in practice very few succeed. The independent fact-checking organisation <a href="https://fullfact.org/">Full Fact</a> was twice rejected by the commission (including an unsuccessful tribunal case) before <a href="https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/full-fact-gets-charity-status-after-being-rejected-twice.html">succeeding at the third attempt</a>. The <a href="https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/">Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ)</a> was also rejected twice before <a href="https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2019/02/14/the-bureau-investigative-journalism-shows-the-way-funding-public-interest-news">changing its structure</a> so that some of its output could be registered as charitable. These are the kinds of delays and costs which small local news start-ups cannot contemplate.</p>
<p>But when Full Fact did win registration, the effects on its fortunes was an immediate game changer. It receives gift aid of 25% on donations, it can use online fundraising tools and it can raise money from donors who will only give to legally recognised charities. </p>
<p>Rachel Oldroyd, managing editor of the BIJ, says that charitable status is <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/2219/pdf/">potentially vital for community newsrooms</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would argue that particularly at a local level it is low level giving from the wider public that could potentially be a valuable contribution to sustainability. Charitable status would make it much easier to immediately gain the public’s trust.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Public Benefit Journalism Research Centre (PBJRC) – of which I am chair – was set up by a group of lawyers, journalists and academics to look into the issue, and has also applied for charitable status (Oldroyd is also a trustee of the PBJRC). We recently <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/2219/pdf/">sent evidence</a> to the House of Lords inquiry into the future of journalism which looks at why so few journalism organisations ever succeed in registering as charities. Our research shows that applicants from news face hurdles which do not seem to be placed in front of other bodies which are similar, such as think tanks. </p>
<p>The Charity Commission is rigidly sceptical of claims that high-quality journalism actually benefits communities large and small. But as the PBJRC says: “Journalistic reporting often delivers content whose educational value is not immediately apparent (and some of the beneficial effect … might take years to become apparent).”</p>
<h2>Public benefits</h2>
<p>Solving this problem does not need a change in the Charities Act. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/recognising-new-charitable-purposes-rr1a">law and past judgements make clear</a> that the criteria for allowing the registration of a charity must evolve as society and its priorities change. The PBJRC submission argues that there can be no better time than now to make the application of charity law to journalism more constructive and farsighted.</p>
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<p>Journalism is varied, noisy, political and often controversial. Not all journalism will pass Charity Commission tests, even if those are made easier to pass. Politically partisan journalism and celebrity gossip will not qualify. The PBJRC document also lays out in detail a draft set of rules which a newsroom would have to follow to keep enjoying the benefits of being a charity. These include provisions for independence, objectivity, accountability, transparency and codes of editorial conduct.</p>
<p>It seems unlikely to me that the Charity Commission will shift its position unless nudged to do so by politicians. That is why the PBJRC has sent a detailed plan to the House of Lords committee. Making it easier for news organisations to reach charity funds won’t on its own solve journalism’s crisis – no single change will do that. But it would be profoundly important and possible transformative for the small, inventive start-ups on whose work journalism’s future may well depend.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138627/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Brock is chair of the Public Benefit Journalism Research Centre, a Visiting Professor in Journalism at City, University of London and worked formerly for The Times and The Observer.</span></em></p>Public service journalism is more vital now than ever and should be given charitable status.George Brock, Visiting Professor of Practice (Journalism), City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1344712020-03-25T10:22:08Z2020-03-25T10:22:08ZCoronavirus: as the UK faces more restrictions, the public needs clearer government information<p>The UK government’s decision to introduce strict new measures to limit social contact comes after many people continued to ignore official advice not to mix in large groups. The health secretary branded people “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/03/23/people-failing-self-isolate-selfish-health-secretary-says/">selfish</a>” for not heeding its initial guidance. But the goverment’s own communication strategy should also be held responsible for failing to adequately inform the public about the actions needed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. </p>
<p>Last year the government <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50181485">set aside £100m</a> for an advertising blitz about getting ready for Brexit, despite the topic being intensely debated over the previous three years. Today, there is a far stronger case for investing significantly more money into a high-profile public health campaign that will prompt immediate behavioural change. </p>
<p>While a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-we-can-all-play-our-part-government-campaign-offers-advice-to-stop-the-spread-11924298">limited government campaign</a> was launched in early February – to “Catch it, Bin it, Kill it” – the messaging was clearly not stark enough to alert people about the dangers of spreading the coronavirus. More public health warnings have been produced since then, but given the government’s fast-changing official guidance, adverts have not always remained up to date.</p>
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<p>In public speeches, media appearances and press briefings, the government’s own communication about the risks of coronavirus and the guidance people should follow has been patchy, <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-uk-response-boris-johnson">with often evasive, ambiguous and confusing messaging</a>. </p>
<p>Take, for example, the government’s daily press briefings. Just a few days ago the prime minister, Boris Johnson, was clearly not two metres away from other speakers, breaching the government’s own advice to the public. Now, with more restrictive measures in place, the importance of visually communicating the government’s guidance has been recognised. </p>
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<h2>Reporting the science</h2>
<p>The government has consistently claimed its decision making has been in response to “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51915302">the science changing</a>” – a line echoed in many news headlines, including across BBC output. </p>
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<p>Broadcasters, of course, have to carefully navigate how they impartially report the scientific evidence. The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/impartiality">BBC’s editorial guidelines</a>, for example, state: “In applying due impartiality to news, we give due weight to events, opinion and the main strands of argument”. But in the case of reporting a global pandemic, interpreting the “due weight” of the “main strands of argument” means making difficult editorial judgements about which political actors and scientific experts to include and exclude.</p>
<p>After all, many countries implemented tougher restrictions on its citizens’ movements before the UK. In doing so, should broadcasters have broken free from a reliance on state information and led with scientific perspectives that advocated a different approach to countering the spread of the disease than the UK?</p>
<p>At the same time, would routinely counterbalancing the goverment’s judgements – informed by its scientific advisers – with the actions of other national governments and leading experts in fields such as epidemiology and virology add more confusion than clarity about the UK’s response? </p>
<p>To help people understand how the scientific evidence informs government decisions, broadcasters could more prominently feature the goverment’s own medical and health experts. For example, in one <a href="https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FStephen_Cushion%2Fstatus%2F1240636895589093377&widget=Tweet">live press briefing</a> – without the government present – they transparently explained many of the factors that the scientific advisory group for emergencies (SAGE) is grappling with when it recommends what action to take and when.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-to-counter-misinformation-journalists-need-to-embrace-a-public-service-mission-133829">COVID-19: to counter misinformation, journalists need to embrace a public service mission</a>
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<p>While journalists have asked the government tough questions about its response to the pandemic in press briefings, most people don’t tune in live to the daily Downing Street conferences but – as recent <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/174088/bbc-news-review-deck.pdf">Ofcom research</a> has confirmed – they rely on the framing of news media stories, such as scanning headlines about the science changing. Of course, given the unprecedented health crisis, people may be reading the news more carefully.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help that professional controversialists such as Brendan O'Neill, the editor of Spiked magazine, and Peter Hitchens <a href="https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2020/03/23/a-plague-of-hot-takes-lazy-contrarians-are-putting-everyone">have been ignoring</a> much of the scientific advice, undermining government guidance and giving cover to people who still want to congregate for parties.</p>
<h2>Responsible scrutiny</h2>
<p>Broadcasters, by contrast, have taken a more <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-to-counter-misinformation-journalists-need-to-embrace-a-public-service-mission-133829">responsible public service role</a>, carefully informing people about the latest government advice. But, rather than just conveying government statements could they have questioned the government’s policy more robustly? After all, the public needs rigorous independent analysis of the expertise informing the government’s scientific judgements.</p>
<p>As news bulletins have often focused on the prime minister’s press briefings, the government’s official health guidance has not always been clear or consistent. While its previous advice had been people are still free to go to public parks, for example, it was left to Sky News reporter Sam Coates to highlight the flaw in this plan.</p>
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<p>As the country looks to unite and collectively respond to what the government has called a “national emergency”, it’s understandable why broadcasters turn to the prime minister for guidance and leadership. After all, <a href="https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FJake_Kanter%2Fstatus%2F1242384602313961478&widget=Tweet">approximately 25m people</a> watched Boris Johnson speaking to the nation about the UK’s lockdown, making it “one of the most watched broadcasts in British TV history” according to the <a href="https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fjimwaterson%2Fstatus%2F1242386966769029121&widget=Tweet">Media Guardian’s editor</a>. </p>
<p>But while the focus of media coverage is often on the prime minister’s statements, journalists covering the pandemic – judged by the government itself as <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/government-gives-key-worker-status-to-all-journalists-reporting-on-coronavirus-pandemic/">key workers</a> – have a duty to explain whether the government’s finer judgements are justified on scientific grounds.</p>
<p>When there is ambiguity in the government’s approach, we need journalists prominently holding them to account. Not long after the lockdown was announced, for example, ITV’s Good Morning Britain presenter, Susanna Reid, <a href="https://publish.twitter.com/?query=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fsusannareid100%2Fstatus%2F1242359499517833218&widget=Tweet">exposed</a> the government’s confused messaging about whether children with separated parents could move between households. </p>
<p>Now more than ever the government’s strategy needs to be articulated clearly and without ambiguity. But we also need journalists to continue questioning the official guidance and the scientific evidence that informs it. </p>
<p><em>This article was amended on March 26 to correct an error in which Peter Oborne was named instead of Peter Hitchens, as was originally intended. We unreservedly apologise to Peter Oborne.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, The British Academy, ESRC and AHRC </span></em></p>It’s not enough to say the science has changed – now, more than ever, we need clear accountability and transparency about the government’s decisionsStephen Cushion, Chair professor, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1258892019-10-25T11:51:15Z2019-10-25T11:51:15ZBrexit: democracy needs journalists to be transparent about their political sources<p>If the UK is heading for a general election, or a second Brexit referendum, journalists had better brace themselves – not just for the long hours on the campaign trail but for all the blame and vitriol that is likely to be heaped on their heads. It’s been more than three years since the United Kingdom narrowly voted to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/brexit-9976">leave the European Union</a> and the shock of the result and the bad temper of the subsequent negotiations has <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-06/DNR_2019_FINAL_0.pdf">shaken trust in journalism</a> like never before.</p>
<p>At a recent <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/multimedia/brexit-and-the-media-conference-tortoise-media-thinkin/">conference on Brexit and the Media</a>, Sky News’s Adam Boulton – who hardly shies away from a fight – spoke about how the levels of abuse he receives online has spiked in the past three years. Personal attacks, mud slinging, threats have all become the norm, he said.</p>
<p>The backdrop to all this is a deep-seated fear that the media somehow swung the result – or has muddied the ensuing chaotic attempts to find a way to actually leave the European Union. Then there’s the issue of whether the news media is <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2017-11/Nic%20Newman%20and%20Richard%20Fletcher%20-%20Bias%2C%20Bullshit%20and%20Lies%20-%20Report.pdf">structurally biased</a> towards a particular worldview, or whether people’s understanding of the EU has been shaped by decades of news coverage? The scope and magnitude of these questions can be daunting – especially given that we lack basic facts about how those on different sides access news.</p>
<h2>Media in the dock</h2>
<p>At the <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/">Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism</a> we <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/how-brexit-referendum-voters-use-news">compared the current media habits</a> of those who voted to remain with those who voted to leave the EU and it is clear that despite all the hype around social media, more people actually say their main source of news is offline. This is especially true among Leavers, where 71% said they get their news offline, mainly from television.</p>
<p>This is partly linked to age, given that older people are both more likely to have voted leave and less likely to get news online – but nonetheless important to keep in mind when trying to understand the impact of social media on the leave vote. Remainers are a bit more evenly split – 55% mainly get their news offline and 45% online.</p>
<p>Crucially, both Leavers and Remainers trust TV news more than other news – Remainers tend to trust the BBC and Leavers put their faith in ITV – but either way, national, mainstream broadcasters are still the biggest players in town and are speaking to both sides.</p>
<p>The recent Brexit debates in parliament, and the way they have been reported by journalists as a series of wins and losses for different politicians, with <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-journalists-have-become-part-of-johnsons-fake-news-machine/">uncritical reporting of anonymous sources</a>, have not helped. They’ve done precious little to explain just what Brexit means – and will continue to mean for Britain.</p>
<p>Britain’s disengagement from the European Union will be a slow, messy, complicated process with no clear winners and losers and if journalists don’t find better ways to tell this story, people will switch off, at precisely the moment they need to make informed political decisions.</p>
<h2>Polarised and divided</h2>
<p>People avoid the news if it negatively affects their mood or makes them feel powerless, and in the UK, 35% of people say they avoid the news, predominantly because Brexit does both these things – brings them down and offers no solutions.</p>
<p>When Britain’s next election is called, all eyes will be on the companies that run the various news platforms. Many people, including <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/biographies/commons/damian-collins/3986">Damian Collins</a>, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport committee believe strongly that a combination of a partisan media, algorithms that serve people news based on their social media profiles, and “fake news” are a <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2017/05/22/tackling-fake-news-towards-a-new-approach-to-digital-literacy/">threat to democracy</a>.</p>
<p>But it really is important to not overstate just how much news that most people consume. Our data shows 26% of Remainers and 29% of Leavers use Facebook for news. Twitter is more popular among Remainers – 18% of them get their news via 280 characters, as opposed to 10% of Leave voters. But, for other social networks, the differences are smaller and not statistically significant in most cases.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298721/original/file-20191025-173562-q4ci5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">What can you trust these days?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Dark Knight/Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The problems of polarisation – and of silos – are created by journalists and politicians themselves. We heard at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2JIfGHzORk">our conference</a> that – at a time when the British government is involved in negotiations of national importance with European countries – there are hardly any London-based correspondents for European outlets with a lobby pass (access to parliament and Westminster politicians). Meanwhile government briefings to foreign correspondents are rare and erratic.</p>
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<p>The intensifying culture of anonymous briefings where select journalists are given unsourced lines on government policy, and “dark lobbies” where the same journalists are given extra information after official briefings, has created even more of a “them-and-us” culture around political reporting.</p>
<p>The platforms, Facebook, Google and Twitter, are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/06/will-fake-news-wreck-next-british-general-election">under fire</a> for allowing misinformation to spread on their platforms, for not giving the public enough information on how their algorithms and rankings work.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalists-must-not-allow-themselves-to-be-used-by-unscrupulous-politicians-125883">Journalists must not allow themselves to be used by unscrupulous politicians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>But media still matters. Journalists can help improve the political process too by being transparent about the sourcing of stories and by having an honest conversation with readers and viewers about what Brexit will mean for their communities and lives. Democracy needs the free flow of accurate, impartial information, that journalists can still provide, if they choose to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meera Selva is affiliated with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The underlying research was published with the support of Google and the Digital News Initiative.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Fletcher is affiliated with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. The underlying research was published with the support of Google and the Digital News Initiative. </span></em></p>Research suggests that people still depend on the mainstream media for their news. It’s more important than ever that journalists earn that trust.Meera Selva, Director, Journalism Fellowship Programme, RISJ, University of OxfordRichard Fletcher, Research Fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1222482019-08-23T08:52:44Z2019-08-23T08:52:44ZWhat exactly do journalists like John Humphrys have against Media Studies?<p>Veteran BBC Radio presenter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/john-humphrys">John Humphrys</a> has spent decades exposing the weaknesses inherent in the rhetorical pronouncements made by the UK’s political “elite”. All the evasions, grinding shifts in gear, and downright falsehoods that appear when executive power presents its secretive decisions as a public debate – something Tony Blair was fond of doing – were grist to Humphrys’ mill. </p>
<p>At one point, during the Iraq war, his clinical interrogation of government ministers seemed to represent the rational and humane attitudes that exemplified the beliefs of all those who marched against that disastrous venture. </p>
<p>But in recent years, as the adversarial mode of interviewing has fallen out of favour, Humphrys’ continued adherence to a provocative style has produced some unfortunate gaffes. Perhaps one of the most notable was a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/john-humphrys-suggests-jo-cox-murder-not-terrorism-bbc-radio-4-today_uk_58bd1db6e4b0b99894186e58">comment he made in 2017</a>, when he asked Mark Rowley, a senior police officer, whether Thomas Mair (who murdered the MP Jo Cox) should really be described as a “terrorist” since he was “mentally ill”. This argument (known as the use of “mutually exclusive” categories) seemed to suggest that Humphrys was downplaying the political motives which lay behind the attack. </p>
<p>On August 13, Humphrys’ tendency to go “off piste” <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/john-humphry-radio-4-today_uk_5d53be5ce4b05fa9df06e4aa">ignited another controversy</a>. On this occasion, the subject was the delivery of university degrees, and his guest was the shadow secretary of state for education, Angela Rayner. Discussing the prospect of two-year undergraduate courses, Humphrys questioned the value of a media studies qualification. While, he thought, the medical profession might well need a three-year period of training, students of the media might require rather less time to complete their degrees. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/289194/original/file-20190823-170927-1kha69h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Learning the craft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/nottingham-uk-april-28-2011-young-214483717?src=08XKXF9iUmxOmNhnnarXBA-1-3">Lucian Milasan / Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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<p>How long, then, might students of media actually need? According to Humphrys, “about five minutes” – arguably suggesting that the whole discipline is utterly worthless. While not perhaps his most outrageous intervention, it seemed to me the kind of facile utterance that his profession is meant to challenge. </p>
<p>His whole attitude is a throwback to an earlier period, when casting doubt on the value of media studies was a simple way of defending the supposed integrity of traditional subjects.</p>
<p>My point, however, is not to plead that we “leave the kids alone”, nor to reproduce the usual point about the <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/subjects/what-can-you-do-media-and-communications-degree">high employability of media students</a>, but to ask why some commentators continue to denigrate the subject. Is this because, from its inception in the 1970s and 1980s, it mounted a serious critique of power, which included those elements of the media industry that remained a closed shop to many potential entrants? </p>
<h2>A ‘watchdog’ for democracy?</h2>
<p>To understand just how outdated and contentious Humphrys’ remark has become, we could think for a moment about the roles that “the media” (in their various forms) play in maintaining that exalted commodity known as democracy. </p>
<p>When, for instance, a prime minister can be brought into office by a tiny fraction of the population, or when a government can decide to rescue an economy by using austerity to reduce a much more substantial proportion of the electorate to abject poverty, then the existence of an independent public “watchdog” is essential. </p>
<p>I’m not referring here just to the BBC, but to all media forms and outlets that have the potential to contribute to a healthy public culture.</p>
<p>If the media in general can provide the space and opportunity for informed debate to take place, then the critical distance provided by academic research (produced over many decades and devoted to the relationship between our notions of democracy and media activity) helps distinguish between reliable information and the endless fantasies generated by state and corporate power.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1161584216301297664"}"></div></p>
<p>Media and Communication courses encompass studies of propaganda, voting allegiance, party political communication, the news industry, representations of gender and identity, advertising, PR, new media, public discourse, popular music, protest movements, social media exchange and a host of other topics. </p>
<p>Academic research into the media has produced a coherent body of knowledge and practical skills that are of use to journalists, activists, academics, politicians – and people in general. Ultimately, all forms of public activity are bound to be studied and assessed, and it would be unrealistic to expect that the media should be protected from scrutiny. </p>
<h2>Why the contempt?</h2>
<p>The question must be: what does an experienced practitioner such as Humphrys find objectionable about this kind of enquiry, and the fact that it has been made available to students across the UK? If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that he does not really want to understand the topic, because this would undermine his belief in the absolute separation of authentic, hard-won experience (his own, presumably) and what he sees as a privileged mode of existence devoted to the study of trivia.</p>
<p>If the latter is really the case then, judging by Humphrys’ recent form, some elements of the Today programme would also fall into the category of the frivolous and inconsequential, making them eminently suitable for critical analysis. In the meantime, students of Media and Communication should continue to pursue their studies in the knowledge that they are making an essential contribution to public debate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Price does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>BBC presenter John Humphrys seems to think the school of hard knocks is superior to academe. He’s wrong.Stuart Price, Professor of Media and Political Discourse, De Montfort UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174272019-05-21T14:28:53Z2019-05-21T14:28:53ZGrenfell Tower: warnings might have been heard if not for the collapse of local journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275417/original/file-20190520-69178-1dbzsz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C23%2C5218%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Lauren Hurley</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48313472">delay to the publication of the report</a> into the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which claimed 72 lives in a disastrous – and possibly preventable – fire at the London tower block, has been greeted with dismay and anger by survivors and their supporters.</p>
<p>Inquiry solicitor Caroline Featherstone said, in a letter to survivors and people who lost family in the fire, that writing the first phase of the report proved to be “far more complex and time-consuming” than anticipated. Its release has been pushed back to October.</p>
<p>The big question that needs to be answered is whether Grenfell should have have happened at all – and why nobody picked up on the very public warnings from tower residents that just such a tragedy was likely to happen. A growing chorus of voices from local and national journalism has pinpointed the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/02/grenfell-tower-local-newspapers-authority-journalism">absence of dedicated local media around Grenfell</a>, saying nobody was looking.</p>
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<p>Six months before the fire struck, Grenfell Tower residents had flagged their serious concerns about the tower in a post on their well-established <a href="https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/kctmo-playing-with-fire">community blog</a> which specifically highlight the very real risk of “a serious fire”.</p>
<p>Why were these warnings not heeded? The tenants’ blog had repeatedly flagged serious safety concerns which would ordinarily be a rich source of local news for on-the-beat reporters.</p>
<h2>Desperate times</h2>
<p>Dominic Ponsford, the editor of the UK’s Press Gazette, told me in a telephone interview in August 2017 that the number of local journalists has fallen by at least a half in the past decade. He also described regional print media to be in “fairly desperate times” facing a year-on-year, 10% decline in print presence. </p>
<p>Ponsford has chronicled the issue of the lack of local media coverage about Grenfell. He <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/journalists-missed-concerns-raised-by-grenfell-residents-blog-but-specialist-mag-raised-alarm-on-tower-block-fire-safety">highlighted that</a> despite the openly available warnings from Grenfell residents on their blog site, which should have been essential reading for local journalists, no journalists picked up the November 2016 prediction about the catastrophe to come.</p>
<p>Geoff Baker was news editor for the Kensington and Chelsea News from its relaunch in 2014, until he was made redundant through cuts in April 2017. His only reporter left the company a few months earlier. He also covered four other west London titles in his role. Baker <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/grenfell-tower-fire-disaster-suggests-more-journalism-is-needed-in-london-not-less/">told the Press Gazette</a> in September 2018:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If someone had phoned me or sent me a release I would have done it, but it just didn’t come on the radar, simple as that. Just because there’s so much else to do if you are doing it on your tod. To my huge regret I wish that I had … Whether that would have made the council change their minds I very much doubt it… It was simply that I didn’t have the time to pull out all the stops because all the stops were already pulled out on other things.</p>
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<p>Grant Feller is a journalist and corporate media consultant. He began his career on the Kensington News and Chelsea News, the two titles had an editorial team of ten and faced competition for stories from the Kensington and Chelsea Times and the Evening Standard (which then devoted more resources to local borough stories).</p>
<p>Asked whether he thought the concerns of residents would have been picked up by the Kensington News in 1990, Feller <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/former-kensington-reporter-says-local-press-would-have-picked-up-on-grenfell-fire-safety-concerns-in-pre-internet-era">told the Press Gazette</a>: “One hundred per cent yes, we would have picked up on that.” </p>
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<p>If we hadn’t found that story ourselves we would have been bollocked by the editor. Any local newspaper journalist worth his or her salt would have been all over that story because of that blog. We would have known about that local group’s concerns because we were very much in the local community. We would have pored over the council meeting agendas and asked questions of the councillors and the officers. But today there is no-one there. Those people can do what they like because there’s no journalists looking at what they are doing. That’s why local journalism is so important.</p>
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<h2>Democratic deficit</h2>
<p>In the past decade, <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/cmcp/local-news.pdf">hundreds of local UK newspapers have closed</a> and each week brings news of more. Thousands of jobs have gone. Media owners have taken to trying to retrieve revenue from online content. As a result the journalists’ “nose for news” has been downgraded with journalists’ editorial priority now to chase stories designed to drive an audience online.</p>
<p>Candyfloss videos of squirrels chasing puppies and crime coverage from cheap CCTV footage is popular with online readers but, as Liverpool City Council’s chief executive, Ged Fitzgerald, told me in March 2017, it risks ghettoising cities with crime heavy stories that can scare off people planning to move into or invest in the area.</p>
<p>More and more media commentators are warning of the “democratic deficit” created by the decline of local journalism. Matt Chorley, in his <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/closing-local-papers-is-good-news-for-lazy-mps-and-corrupt-councils-ktvqvt2zx">“Red Box” column in The Times</a>, said: “Every time a paper closes, lazy MPs, corrupt councilors, dodgy police chiefs, rip off businesses and anyone in the dock can relax a little. This isn’t just nostalgia. The great and the good didn’t stop behaving badly because we all got Snapchat and iPlayer. Grenfell Tower tells us what happens when poorer areas lose their voice in the local media. Blogs aren’t enough.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A new book called Local democracy, Journalism and Public Relations by Carmel O'Toole and co-authored by her fellow Sheffield Hallam University academic Adrian Roxan, published is published on May 21, 2019.</span></em></p>Residents were blogging about the tower block’s safety issues well before the fire, but there were few reporters around to pick up on the story.Carmel O'Toole, Senior Lecturer in Media and Public Relations, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1170472019-05-16T09:01:16Z2019-05-16T09:01:16ZHow to make health news interesting — without overselling the claims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274878/original/file-20190516-69209-ny5h9i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/adult-adorable-woman-lady-boss-putting-1131606356?src=aBUUwMMZ2-WnMpgxmhpbwQ-3-4">Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Health stories are prolific in the news. Each year, thousands of articles are published claiming to have the latest compelling evidence on how we should eat, drink, exercise, sleep, and which medications we should or shouldn’t be taking – among a host of other things.</p>
<p>Not only is there a deluge of information, it is also often conflicting. Reports on statin use, for example, have stated there are associations between taking them and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/338741/Statins-key-to-a-longer-life">living longer</a>, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/608210/statins-age-you-faster-new-research-suggests-long-term-use-warning">ageing faster</a>, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/578174/Statins-stroke-experts">reduced stroke risk</a> and <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1036177/diabtetes-risk-statins-health-concerns">increased diabetes risk</a>. </p>
<p>Every day, these reports are read and shared by millions, potentially influencing our decisions and behaviour – but how do we know that the evidence we’re relying on is strong enough? Writers need easy ways to communicate the strength of evidence without reducing interest or readability. But that can sometimes mean the public is over or undersold its relevance.</p>
<p>For <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1324-7">our latest research</a>, we wanted to find a way to help writers accurately communicate research evidence, without diminishing reader interest in the claims. To do this, we teamed up with nine UK press offices, from journals, universities and funders, to run a randomised trial with health-related press releases. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-the-daily-express-it-takes-a-lot-more-than-carrots-to-beat-cancer-28357">Don't believe the Daily Express, it takes a lot more than carrots to beat cancer</a>
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<p>We focused on press releases because they play a crucial role in science news. When the latest research is published, a press release is used to summarise the study’s most “newsworthy” results. The press release is then sent to journalists who use the material to write the news.</p>
<p>Previous research <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7015">has shown</a> that there is a close correspondence between the content of the press release and the news articles that follow – journalists have little time and tight word limits, so aren’t always able to build a more in-depth piece.</p>
<h2>Mays and mights</h2>
<p>The first aim of our work was to improve the alignment of news claims with the underlying evidence by focusing on the wording of press releases. In the intervention arm of the study, we reserved strong language, such as “causes”, “affects” and “boosts”, for strong causal evidence from trials and experiments.</p>
<p>In observational research, cause and effect is difficult to determine due to uncontrolled variables. For example, an association may exist between ice cream sales and water consumption – not because one causes the other, but because they both increase in sunny weather. So for this type of research we opted for weaker language, such as “may cause”, and “could affect”, in the releases. This distinction is not only easily understood by those who know the convention, but crucially <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27808530">also meaningful</a> to all readers whether or not they have heard of correlations or clinical trials. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274880/original/file-20190516-69169-1bukaar.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Journalists use press releases for their stories on a daily basis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/male-journalist-eyeglasses-checking-written-article-644329909?src=GBDGdvHBTeiqP7G2kSswCw-1-51">GaudiLab/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that the strength with which claims are made in press releases generally carries through into the news. Importantly, there was no detrimental effect on the likelihood of a story making it into the news if the language was softer. Whether or not a press release was picked up did not depend on the strength of the causal claims. When headlines and claims were softer in press releases, they were generally softer in news – despite the received wisdom that news is not interested in “mays” and “mights”. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-medical-treatment-to-diet-and-lifestyle-choice-how-to-spot-unreliable-health-research-63572">From medical treatment to diet and lifestyle choice: how to spot unreliable health research</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The second aim of our research was to make sure that stories included explicit caveats – such as “this research was observational and cannot show cause and effect” – when needed. Our results showed that these caveats were more likely to appear in the news when they were present in the press release.</p>
<p>A story on liver health and smoking <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3701603/How-quitting-smoking-good-LIVER-given-cigarettes-drink-alcohol-too.html">published on MailOnline</a>, for example, used a quote from the press release to state, “Dr Brown stressed this was an observational study and cannot say whether giving up smoking led to a reduction in drinking or vice versa”. The caveats did not appear to reduce news uptake, and were even associated with more news coverage – a result that matches <a href="http://orca.cf.ac.uk/121559/">parallel research</a> showing that caveats do not reduce reader interest.</p>
<p>Most of these findings are based on observational analyses, and although we cannot show the direct effect of press release content on the news, we do know that journalists read press releases before writing the news. We also cannot show how such news content would affect public health. But our findings suggest that there could be a simple way to communicate the strength of evidence to the public without affecting uptake.</p>
<p>Causal inference is just one element of evidence strength, but there are many others that could, and should, be communicated to readers. For example, findings from larger studies repeated over a long period of time are more robust than those from small, single studies. Although the reporting of evidence strength in the media is only one factor in how people make health-related decisions, we believe that providing more easily decoded news is a step in the right direction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117047/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Petroc Sumner receives funding from the ESRC and Wellcome Trust</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Adams receives funding from the European Research Council, and has received funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p>Journalists have to communicate research without reducing interest or readability — but the public needs accuracy.Petroc Sumner, Professor and Head of School, School of Psychology, Cardiff UniversityRachel Adams, Research Associate in Cognition and Neurostimulation, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1149382019-04-24T11:29:00Z2019-04-24T11:29:00ZHow UK journalists compare with their German counterparts – new research<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270680/original/file-20190424-19303-17t67jq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C1%2C995%2C488&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">P Gregory via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The British press is regarded by the rest of the world as notoriously raucous. If you need an example of how raucous, the way British newspapers have reported Brexit is only one recent, if much-discussed, example. Headlines such as <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3430870/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-speak-England.html">“Who will speak for England?”</a>, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/daily-mail-nazi-propaganda-front-page-ipso-complaints-brexit-eu-enemies-of-the-people-a7409836.html">“Enemies of the people”</a> or <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/12/18/sun-front-page_n_4464376.html">“Draw a red line on immigration or else”</a> stirred up controversy and put the media’s role in political and democratic debate into sharp focus. </p>
<p>Some journalists and editors exercise considerable political influence. When, for instance, Paul Dacre stepped down from the editorship of the Daily Mail in June 2018, more than one commentator expected, as The Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson put it: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/07/new-daily-mail-editor-to-be-geordie-greig">“substantial implications for the government”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268790/original/file-20190411-44785-1aut6w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daily Mail: Campaigning journalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But how do British journalists themselves see their role in society? Do they consider themselves aggressive opponents of those in power? Do they aim to influence politics? Do the attitudes British journalists hold about their profession confirm what the ex-journalist-turned-spin-doctor Tom Baldwin wrote in his <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/ctrl-alt-del/">recently published book</a>, Ctrl Alt Delete, that journalism is “no longer a ‘trade’ for some people but an attractive career for the kind of person who might otherwise have wanted to run the country”?</p>
<h2>A German juxtaposition</h2>
<p>To find out, we <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1551067?tokenDomain=eprints&tokenAccess=KwuTIzqp4NJMX4kcDwZc&forwardService=showFullText&doi=10.1080%2F1461670X.2018.1551067&doi=10.1080%2F1461670X.2018.1551067&journalCode=rjos20">compared British journalists’ professional attitudes</a> to those of journalists in another country with a similar media landscape but a more muted press: Germany. German media tend to be noticeably more restrained in their coverage of controversial issues than British papers. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268764/original/file-20190411-44805-1tibame.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Germany’s Der Spiegel’s 2017 election coverage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, during the 2017 general election the Sun warned voters not to “<a href="https://twitter.com/skynews/status/872553034689236993">chuck Britain in the Cor-Bin</a>”, adding a photomontage of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in a rubbish bin for clarity. In the same year, ahead of their country’s general election, German newspapers were offering a <a href="http://www.turi2.de/aktuell/anzeige-spiegel-382017-klueger-waehlen/">“manual” for “better voting”</a>, carefully avoiding taking sides. Are these apparent differences reflected in how journalists in both countries see their role in society?</p>
<p>We used two representative surveys of British and German journalists to analyse the professional attitudes of both groups. Both surveys were part of the <a href="http://www.worldsofjournalism.org/">Worlds of Journalism Study</a>, which brings together researchers from 67 countries, including the UK and Germany. Between 2012 and 2016 over 27,500 journalists across the world were interviewed, using a common methodological framework. The survey of <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/journalists-uk">British journalists</a> was conducted online in December 2015. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11616-017-0378-9">German survey</a> was conducted by telephone and online between November 2014 and August 2015. The final samples consisted of 700 British and 775 German journalists. Professional journalists across all media types: newspapers, TV, radio, magazines, news agencies and online media were included.</p>
<h2>Probing positions and practices</h2>
<p>To find out how British and German journalists perceive their role in society, we analysed six groups of questions. The first explored how much journalists believe they should intervene in politics and society. Journalists were asked how important they consider setting the political agenda, influencing public opinion, advocating for social change, and promoting tolerance and cultural diversity.</p>
<p>The second group of questions investigated journalists’ relationship to those in power. We asked respondents how important they feel it is to monitor and scrutinise political leaders and business, to be an adversary of the government or to support government policy, and to convey a positive image of political leadership.</p>
<p>Then we asked about journalists’ relationship to their audiences. We examined how much they focus on providing entertainment and relaxation, providing the kind of news that attracts the largest audience, providing information people need to make political decisions, and motivating people to participate in political activity.</p>
<p>Our fourth group of questions centred on how journalists report facts. The survey asked whether journalists thought it was important to be a detached observer and to report things as they are, or whether they preferred to provide analysis of current affairs.</p>
<p>Lastly, we examined ethical attitudes among British and German journalists, asking whether journalists considered it essential to adhere to general ethical rules such as codes of professional ethics, and also about their attitudes towards specific practices such as publishing unverified content.</p>
<h2>Confrontation, contextualisation, conformity</h2>
<p>Our statistical analysis revealed several significant differences between journalists in Britain and Germany. Most importantly, we found that British journalists believe it more important than their German colleagues to confront those in power and hold them to account. But – contrary to expectations – we found no difference between British and German journalists’ eagerness to set the political agenda or influence public opinion. The second significant difference we found concerned how they thought they should report reality. Whereas British journalists tend towards objective, factual reporting as detached observers, German journalists see their role as more analytical.</p>
<p>We also detected differences between British and German journalists in regard to their ethical ideologies: German journalists proved to be significantly more rigid in their general ethical stance whereas their British colleagues felt freer to follow their own personal judgements. Interestingly, though, this difference in ideology was not reflected in what journalists thought about specific ethical practices. Here we could not detect any significant differences between both countries. We also found no significant differences in how journalists in Britain and Germany relate to their audiences.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268837/original/file-20190411-44781-c9hm78.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British journalists consider it significantly more important than German journalists to confront those in power and hold them to account.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Foreign and Commonwealth Office</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What we found was that – despite an eye-catchingly partisan press in Britain – the country’s journalists are not more determined than their German colleagues to set the political agenda or influence public opinion. But they do consider it significantly more important than German journalists to confront those in power and hold them to account. </p>
<p>Individual journalists, such as Dacre, who have exerted a considerable influence on British politics, are not reflective of the attitudes of British journalists as a whole. Instead, journalists such as Amelia Gentleman, who unearthed the Windrush scandal, or Carole Cadwalladr, who doggedly investigated the role Cambridge Analytica played in the Brexit vote, appear to be more typical of what British journalists think they should do: scrutinising and standing up to those in power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114938/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil Thurman receives funding from VolkswagenStiftung.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Imke Henkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study highlights the significant differences in attitudes between UK and German journalists.Neil Thurman, Reader, Department of Journalism, City, University of LondonImke Henkel, Senior Lecturer School of English & Journalism, University of LincolnLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1116582019-02-13T15:36:18Z2019-02-13T15:36:18ZCairncross review: two cheers and two fears for the future of UK journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258778/original/file-20190213-181609-1hjbk2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Willy Barton via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the then culture secretary, Matt Hancock, first announced a government review of the future of “high-quality” journalism, there was widespread <a href="https://inforrm.org/2018/09/21/what-high-quality-journalism-a-response-to-the-cairncross-reviews-call-for-evidence-julian-petley/">scepticism</a> about his motives. Having just surrendered to a powerful press lobby in <a href="https://inforrm.org/2018/03/01/news-government-abandons-leveson-part-two-sir-brian-leveson-fundamentally-disagrees/">abandoning the Leveson recommendations</a> on self-regulation, was this government making an honest attempt to resolve the growing and serious problem of journalism’s broken business model?</p>
<p>Certainly Dame Frances Cairncross, entrusted with the task, had a reputation for being fiercely independent and forensic – but the “<a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/media/dame-frances-cairncross-ubveiled-as-chair-of-high-quality-journalism-review/">expert panel</a>” appointed to advise her contained a disproportionate number of old school press types who were accustomed to winning concessions.</p>
<p>In fact, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism">Cairncross Review</a> has produced some innovative and potentially exciting ideas which – if properly and independently implemented – could genuinely deliver more diverse, high-quality public interest journalism, particularly at the local level where it is desperately needed. But it will require political will to resist a powerful print lobby motivated by corporate self interest, and avoidance of at least two dangerous bear traps. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vital exercise for the future of British democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps surprisingly, Dame Frances resisted calls for a tough regulatory framework for the online tech companies that are mostly responsible for the collapse of journalism’s advertising-funded business model. She advocates only “regulatory supervision” to ensure that online distribution platforms monitor reliability of news sources, alongside a media literacy strategy to help users navigate their way around content origination and news sources (some of us call it “media studies”). Beyond that, two proposals stand out: for funding and for distribution of funds.</p>
<h2>Public interest</h2>
<p>First, Cairncross recommends a new “innovation” fund of £10m per year which should “work closely” with Google and Facebook on sustainable business approaches. She also proposes two forms of tax relief to promote public interest journalism: removing VAT on digital subscriptions – a no-brainer, since hard copy publications are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-services">already exempt</a> – and finding ways of extending charitable status to non-profit publishers, who could then enjoy the significant tax advantages. This was originally canvassed by the <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldcomuni/256/25602.htm">Lords Communications Committee</a> in 2012 and has since been <a href="https://theconversation.com/reform-charity-law-to-allow-funding-of-public-interest-journalism-102422">promoted</a> by many academics and civil society groups.</p>
<p>Second, and at the heart of this review, is the proposal for a new Institute for Public Interest News which would forge partnerships with publishers and platforms, distribute revenue, commission research and presumably – though this is not made explicit – monitor output to ensure compliance with public interest objectives and accountability for public money. </p>
<p>Cairncross stresses the fundamental importance of a governance structure that should be “carefully designed to ensure complete freedom from any obligations, political or commercial”. Anyone familiar with the Leveson structure of press self-regulation will appreciate the emphasis on complete freedom from industry and government influence for any organisation tasked with monitoring journalism, let alone defining “public interest news”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/open-access-and-academic-journals-the-publishers-respond-2804">Open access and academic journals: the publishers respond</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The Press Recognition Panel (PRP) which was set up in the wake of Leveson to audit press self-regulators was established on precisely that premise. In fact, Cairncross cites the carefully constructed PRP appointments process as a potential model for her institute, and there is no reason why the PRP itself could not be reengineered as her institute.</p>
<h2>Potential pitfalls</h2>
<p>So what are the bear traps? Inevitably, given the press industry’s eternal whinge about the BBC “crowding out” commercial news providers, Cairncross finds it necessary to acknowledge those complaints while making it clear she actually thinks the BBC is providing precisely the kind of high-quality news across platforms that democracy (and the public) demands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Cairncross Review has made it clear that the BBC provides a high-quality news service which must be protected.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jarretera via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She felt compelled, however, to recommend that Ofcom should assess BBC online content and confirm “appropriate boundaries for [its] future direction”. We can therefore expect an Ofcom review, and a systematic lobbying campaign by the News Media Association (NMA) – the powerful press lobbying group – echoing The Sun’s self-serving <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8407498/british-media-under-siege-bbc-web-giants/">editorial</a> this week: “The BBC’s ever-expanding online news empire has been calamitous for local papers in particular … [and] must not be allowed to crowd out and destroy commercial rivals with coverage far beyond its remit.” We will be relying on Ofcom to stand up to newspaper bullies and defend the public interest.</p>
<p>Second, Cairncross recommends an expansion of the BBC-funded Local Democracy Service which currently pays for 144 reporter contracts with local publishers. Because the scheme was dreamt up in conjunction with the NMA, the big three regional groups – Newsquest, JPIMedia (formerly Johnston Press) and Reach plc (formerly Trinity Mirror) – have hoovered up the vast majority of those <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/full-breakdown-of-bbc-local-democracy-reporter-allocations-by-title-and-council/">contracts</a>, leaving just a handful for the smaller independent and hyperlocal sectors. Thus, £8m of licence payers’ money is effectively subsidising three very large regional publishing groups without any oversight or accountability, while those publishers are simultaneously making their own journalists <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/newsquest-cumbria-journalists-walk-out-over-job-cuts-and-poor-pay-but-publisher-says-staff-more-secure-than-before-takeover/">redundant</a>.</p>
<p>From the beginning, the LDS scheme has been a seriously flawed exercise, and it’s clear that Cairncross understands both the deliberate marginalisation of smaller publishers and the risk of expanding the scheme without major changes. She describes the BBC’s own evaluation as “fairly light touch” (a euphemism for barely existent) and recommends “a careful independent review.” </p>
<p>In the longer term, she sees the whole LDS scheme being handed to the new institute, which would ensure both transparency and genuinely independent scrutiny. It could also generate additional funding from platforms, foundations and even government, and would alleviate the risk of further money being appropriated from a cash-strapped BBC.</p>
<h2>Risk and reward</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The mainstream commercial news media has consistently resisted reform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lenscap Photography via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, the usefulness of this review will stand or fall on whether the government is willing to face down a press lobby which is accustomed to flexing its muscles and – as the Leveson enquiry graphically demonstrated – has successfully bullied successive UK governments for decades. Cairncross fully understands the fundamental importance not only of public interest news, but of a wholly independent scrutiny body responsible for interpreting the remit, distributing funds and monitoring output. </p>
<p>Whether it is her institute, a beefed-up PRP, or some other incarnation is less important than its insulation from any political interference and – crucially – independence from an industry which will be intent on wrenching back control.</p>
<p>It won’t be easy, but the public benefit rewards for getting it right will be incalculable.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Conversation’s deputy editor Jo Adetunji was a member of the Carincross Review Advisory Panel.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The review contains some great ideas. It remains to be seen whether these will ever see the light of day.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1105412019-01-25T16:22:32Z2019-01-25T16:22:32ZHugh McIlvanney: sportswriter who went beyond the game to seek a higher truth of the human condition<p>Among all the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/25/hugh-mcilvanney-veteran-sports-reporter-dies-aged-84?CMP=share_btn_tw">tributes</a> to the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hugh-mcilvanney-2wlkc9h6t">celebrated</a> sports journalist <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/47002301">Hugh McIlvanney</a>, who has died aged 84, you will find one recurring theme: that in his work, the Scots-born reporter, writer and broadcaster transcended his genre. Greater by far than his renowned and extensive contact book, his insights based on a decades-long love of sport or his ability to get close to the sporting greats, was his ability – when writing about one sport or another – to impart some greater truth about the human condition.</p>
<p>In 1991, McIlvanney attempted to reflect on the role of the sports journalist in the documentary Sportswriter as part of the BBC’s Arena series. His opening narrative revealed some inner conflicts he himself felt on the role of the “fan with a typewriter”, a moniker often thrown at a very insular job. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After more than 30 years of writing on sport it is still possible to be assailed by doubts about whether it really is a proper job for a grown person. But I console myself with the thought that it is easier to find a kind of truth in sport than it is, for example, in the activities covered by political or economic journalists. Sports truth may be simplistic but it’s not negligible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In spite of the self-mocking concern about his chosen profession, McIlvanney’s point about “sports truth” is suggestive of the value of investigating sport. Not least to find some deeper meanings about people and society. Whether or not we believe there is a “truth” to be found, there is at the very least a sense that meaning and value can be found in sport which are unique to the human experience.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1088700027562790912"}"></div></p>
<p>In all his writings on sport McIlvanney kept this sense of deeper “sports truth” at the heart of his reporting and commentary pieces. This was none more the case than in his writing on boxing, for which he carried a particular fascination throughout his career which included the rise of its most preeminent pugilist Muhammad Ali. “It gave me the time and freedom to seek him out in private settings and eavesdrop on his life”, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2016/dec/04/hugh-mcilvanney-my-observer-sports-reporter">he once wrote</a>, “rather than having to settle for the public turn – that performance was wonderfully entertaining, but there was richer ore to be mined.”</p>
<p>That deeper knowledge and understanding and having the time to explore the richness of sporting personalities and their human foibles is the luxury contemporary sport journalists do not have. Access to sport stars is now heavily guarded, and unlike Ali, their suspicion of the media and the closeted world they live in often makes for sterile and replicated copy from journalists feeding off titbits.</p>
<h2>Literary style</h2>
<p>McIlvanney’s writing also stood out among his contemporaries because of his prose: inflected with literary references, rich in metaphor and simile, often self-reflective of the meaning that sport gave to him and the wider world. Take for example <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/05/hugh-mcilvanney-muhammad-ali-rumble-in-the-jungle">this excerpt</a> from The Observer in 1974 following the famous “Rumble in the Jungle” where McIlvanney evokes Ali’s satisfaction of a job well done:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lying back on the thick cushions of an armchair in his villa, with the windows curtained against an angry sun that was threatening to evaporate the Zaire River as it slid like a grassy ocean past his front door, he talked with the quiet contentment of a man whose thoughts were acting on him as comfortingly as the hands of a good masseur.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is no ordinary sports writing. McIlvanney was no ordinary sports writer. His work was more akin to a mid-20th century tradition of literary commentators and critics than jobbing sports reporters. His contemporaries in sports writing were American – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/obituaries/george-plimpton-urbane-and-witty-writer-dies-at-76.html">George Plimpton</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/norman-mailer-sportswriter/282115/">Norman Mailer</a>, <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2009/03/05/a-j-liebling-a-master-at-long-form-journalism/">AJ Leibling</a> – with only a few in British sports journalism that came close, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/mar/05/pressandpublishing3">Ian Wooldridge</a> perhaps. Sure, he had to travel and drink like the rest of the press pack that followed the teams and major events across the country and the globe. But he fashioned a position for himself in sport journalism, first at The Observer and then at the Sunday Times, that transcended mere reportage to more deep thinking on sport and sporting heroes.</p>
<p>He socialised with writers and critics beyond sport (his younger <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/why-william-mcilvanney-should-be-world-famous-pete-martin-1-4839247">brother William</a> was one of Scotland’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/goodbye-william-mcilvanney-socialist-and-literary-genius-52325">most celebrated novelists</a>) which brought him in to wider literary circles and friendships. This arguably inspired his approach and thought processes in writing about sport. Perhaps because of it, he is the only sport journalist to be voted <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/hugh-mcilvenney-retires-call-him-great-writer-describing-muhammad-ali-useful-heavyweight/">British Journalist of the Year</a>.</p>
<p>There is much more that could be said about his writing, but for me some of his best work came in the medium of television, delivering his erudite words in a deep yet becalming Ayrshire voice.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5bsgXVO7Gq8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/33205762">His treatise</a> on the influence of the west of Scotland coal-mining area on three legendary Scottish football managers Matt Busby, Jock Stein and Bill Shankly remains one of the greatest sport documentary series ever produced in the UK.</p>
<p>In his passing, one can only hope the BBC revive his documentaries from their vaults and allow us all to get lost in McIlvanney’s thoughts and interpretations which told us so much about the meaning of sport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Haynes received funding from the AHRC, British Academy, the Scottish Government, and the Carnegie Trust. </span></em></p>No ordinary sports writer: Hugh McIlvanney was one of the greats of 20th century journalism.Richard Haynes, Professor of Media Sport, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1054592018-11-13T12:56:19Z2018-11-13T12:56:19ZHow new media recycles the mainstream press<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241845/original/file-20181023-169831-1otz2tz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Horoscope via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What are we to make of the hashtag #BoycottTheGuardian which was recently trending on Twitter? Whether we agree with the sentiment or not, the intention behind it is pretty clear. The hashtag is – like its predecessor, #StopFundingHate, which was aimed at getting people to stop buying or advertising in the Daily Mail – an attempt by social media activists to curtail the power of newspapers through a campaign of an organised shaming. It is the new media taking on the old. </p>
<p>The latest offensive began in early September with supporters of Jeremy Corbyn becoming increasingly miffed with the Guardian’s failure to fully embrace the Labour leader. For a few days the organised “twitterstorm” failed to break until, suddenly, the campaign burst into life with the <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/10/guardian-vs-canary-tribune-rises-dead-and-sitting-out-people-s-march">endorsement of Kerry-Anne Mendoza</a>, the editor-in-chief of the Canary, the hard-left, pro-Corbyn blog. Rather inconveniently, Mendoza had also been <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/the-londoner-canary-boss-breaks-guardian-blockade-a3948296.html">invited to speak at the Guardian’s building</a> that very same week.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1045393068806017024"}"></div></p>
<p>Since its launch in 2015, the Canary has positioned itself as an independent outlet, free of proprietorial influence and in opposition to many of the values of the mainstream media (or “MSM” as it likes to call it). The Canary is, moreover, guided by an aspiration to “<a href="https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/how-news-outlet-the-canary-aims-to-diversify-media-/s2/a576960/">disrupt the status quo of journalism</a>” and – while the ongoing boycott of a 197-year-old liberal institution might be evidence of this intention – a deeper analysis of the Canary reveals something more awkward. </p>
<p>In June 2018 we conducted an in-depth quantitative analysis of the Canary and its journalistic sources. The study – tracking every article published over a ten-day period – revealed that in ostracising the Guardian, the Canary is, in effect, amputating a vital organ. Our study found that more than half of the Canary’s stories (55.2%) contained material that had actually originated in the Guardian. This can range from a link back to an earlier Guardian article, to provide background or context: to more substantial references that reuses statistics, facts and full quotes from previous Guardian articles. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thecanary.co/opinion/2018/06/14/a-year-on-from-the-grenfell-tower-fire-the-inaction-from-the-council-and-the-government-is-a-disgrace/">This article</a> about Grenfell Tower is a classic example. It makes 12 references to Guardian material, reusing background information about the disaster, facts about the inquiry and the political context of the situation from the Guardian, as well as material from the BBC, Evening Standard and the Independent. The article also uses two quotes, filleted from different articles by Guardian journalist Harriet Sherwood. And although the site links back to the Guardian in each instance – crucially – the actual words “the Guardian” do not appear anywhere in or near the quotes – or indeed in the entirety of the piece. The casual reader, scanning the Canary on their phone, would be none the wiser to the origin of the material.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242025/original/file-20181024-48727-17ddt0i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than half the stories in the Canary contain material sourced from the Guardian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sean Dodson, Leeds Beckett</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Regular readers of the Canary might be surprised that the blog supported the boycott. It is meant to be – broadly speaking– on the same side as the Guardian. The titles share a great many values – especially around issues of identity and social justice – and more than half of the Guardian’s “core readership” (51%) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/03/analysing-the-balance-of-our-jeremy-corbyn-coverage">nominated Corbyn</a> as their preferred Labour leader, according to research conducted in 2015 by the Guardian’s consumer insight team.</p>
<p>But the issue goes deeper. Despite the Canary’s well-publicised mistrust of the “MSM”, our study reveals that the blog routinely recycles its content from across the media. The study revealed that of the 1,471 sources of information that we identified, just 18 (1.2%) were primary sources (that is, material gathered exclusively by journalists working for the Canary). When statements from unnamed sources (typically spokespeople in written statements and press releases) were further stripped out – just 0.6% of the Canary’s material came from actual interviews. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242062/original/file-20181024-71026-rr8rb2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canary’s information is overwhelmingly sourced from the mainstream media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sean Dodson, Leeds Beckett University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It isn’t just the Canary that is addicted to recycled news. A follow up study – to be published later this year – of its “alt-right” opposite, Breitbart London, demonstrates that the two sites are remarkably parallel, as are countless other blogs that similarly echo the mainstream media. Like the Canary, Breitbart uses few primary sources, relying instead on recycling “MSM” material and secondhand embedded tweets, while all the time moaning about the power of “big media”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242027/original/file-20181024-48727-1u6kh9m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Media sources recycled by the Canary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sean Dodson, Leeds Beckett University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Frankenstein news</h2>
<p>Although the decline of independent reporting is most established in the “alt-media”, the MSM has long had problems of its own. In a longitudinal study spanning 20 years <a href="https://orca.cf.ac.uk/18439/1/Quality%20%26%20Independence%20of%20British%20Journalism.pdf">Cardiff University reported in 2008</a> that pressure for mainstream journalists to produce ever more copy has also increased their reliance on recycled material. Indeed, news “aggregation” – the practice of taking information from other published sources and displayed in a “<a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/32174?show=full">single abbreviated space</a>” such as a live blog or a listicle – has become a habit that all media outlets practice widely.</p>
<p>The Mail Online, the third most popular news source on the internet in the UK, according to the <a href="https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/GB">Alexa Traffic Rank</a>, is a routine recycler. The paper’s “sidebar of shame” (the column on the right-hand side of the website that reports celebrity news and photos) borrows liberally from celebrity magazines, primetime chat and other newspapers. The Guardian’s Politics Live blog also sources a great deal of content from elsewhere – especially Twitter. But there is a difference – Politics Live also includes source material from many of the Guardian’s reports: firsthand attributable quotes gathered and tested by trained reporters. </p>
<p>Some have begun to call this the phenomena of habitual recycling “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1313884">Frankenstein news</a>”.
The <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew_Duffy2">ethnographist Andrew Duffy</a>, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has observed at firsthand how journalists are more reliant on secondhand news. Techniques of <a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/32174">“curation” and “aggregation”</a> are in the ascendancy at the expense of independent reporting. But while journalists have always borrowed and copied – it’s not called the “press pack” for nothing – our research indicates that the newer “alt-media” titles are abandoning independent reporting in favour of critiquing material that has been gathered by others. All perfectly legal, of course, under the long established concept of “fair dealing.”</p>
<h2>Political-media complex</h2>
<p>Kerry-Ann Mendoza declined the opportunity to comment for this article – but, to be fair, the Canary’s content is at times very good. The blog has given voice to many unrepresented elements of society. It has championed the <a href="https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/05/31/judges-just-forced-the-dwp-to-review-the-benefit-claims-of-countless-disabled-people/">cause of the disabled with some skill</a>, harried the Department of Work and Pensions over <a href="https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2018/06/20/the-dwp-would-probably-prefer-you-didnt-see-these-eye-watering-figures/">its problematic policy of universal credit</a> and has been successful in investigating the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jun/01/channel-4-leads-the-way-on-tory-election-claims">claims of electoral fraud by the Conservative Party</a></p>
<p>But our research indicates that, like much of internet journalism, the Canary and Breitbart are not quite so independent from the political-media complex as they like to boast. Their failure to gather much of their own source material, in the form of on-the-record interviews, makes them dependent on others to do so. By avoiding the interview, as our analysis indicates, they are denying themselves a chief tool of journalism and are dependent on the very MSM they profess to <a href="https://twitter.com/themendozawoman/status/825072918002544641">hate</a> . </p>
<p>The Canary might have been cutting its beak off to spite its face in continuing to boycott the Guardian. But without The old newspaper’s stories to source from, perhaps it will finally resort to gathering a few more scoops of its own.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Dodson is the co-author of a new book: Anti-Social Media? The Impact on Journalism and Society which is published by Abramis on October 26.</span></em></p>Despite their derision, media outlets such as the Canary and Breitbart, still source much of their information from the mainstream press.Sean Dodson, Postgraduate leader, Journalism, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1060152018-10-31T13:32:25Z2018-10-31T13:32:25ZVegans: why they inspire fear and loathing among meat eaters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243218/original/file-20181031-76416-1cqrumk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pinkyone via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Food critic William Sitwell has resigned as editor of Waitrose’s in-house magazine following a row over his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46024087">astonishingly hostile response</a> to a freelance journalist who proposed a series of articles on veganism.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://waitrosecare.secure.force.com/waitroseCARE/articles/FAQs/Waitrose-Partners-Food-Magazine-Statement/?l=en_US&c=External_Support_Articles:Trading_Policy_Statements&fs=Search&pn=1">statement</a> from the food retailer said that John Brown Media – which produces the Waitrose & Partners Food Magazine – had announced Sitwell would step down as editor of Waitrose & Partners Food magazine with immediate effect. The statement added: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the light of William’s recent email remarks, we’ve told John Brown Media that we believe this is the right and proper move - we will be working with them to appoint a new editor for the magazine. We have had a relationship with William for almost 20 years and are grateful for his contribution to our business over that time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The row erupted after freelance journalist Selene Nelson pitched a series on “plant-based recipes” to the magazine, given the <a href="https://www.vegansociety.com/news/media/statistics">rise in popularity</a> of vegan products in recent years. Waitrose, like many UK supermarkets, has <a href="https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/waitrose-to-launch-new-vegan-section-and-products">recently expanded</a> its vegan product range and, as <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dumplings-and-vegan-double-acts-the-foodie-trends-of-2018-d6bdmrxgj">Sitwell’s own article</a> in The Times in January 2018 noted – in less than welcoming terms – the number of vegan cookbooks available has also grown considerably.</p>
<p>So Nelson’s proposal seemed pitch-perfect. Sitwell’s response, however, was decidedly off-key: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>How about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As veganism is ever more routinely encountered in daily life, hackneyed media stereotypes of vegans no longer resonate as they once did. Anti-vegan media hostility isn’t anything new. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21361905">Sociological research published in 2011</a> documented how UK newspapers discredit veganism through ridicule, with vegans variously stereotyped as angry, militant, self-denying, sentimental, faddy, or joyless. As <a href="https://veganuary.com/blog/a-record-breaking-veganuary-2018/">more people try veganism</a>, meet vegans and encounter vegan-friendly products and practices in daily life, the more tone deaf these stereotypes sound.</p>
<p>Sitwell’s vitriol contrasts markedly with the polite restraint of Nelson’s rejoinder, in which she ironically expressed interest “in exploring why just the mention of veganism seems to make some people so hostile”. The exchange is arguably emblematic of the contemporary plague of entitled anger that toxifies public discourse whenever entitlement is challenged, however politely.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243209/original/file-20181031-76399-14awru8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William Sitwell (c) and his fellow judges Grace Dent (l) and Tracey Macleod (r) on Masterchef the Professionals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Shine TV Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guilty conscience?</h2>
<p>One aspect of threatened entitlement in a non-vegan society is the presumed right to consume the bodies of other animals. In that context, <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/living-among-meat-eaters-9780826415530/">research has suggested</a> that vegans prompt defensiveness among non-vegans by implying a failure to act on a moral issue. Unresolved guilt plays out along a continuum ranging from framing one’s non-vegan practices as “moderate” (“I don’t eat much meat”) to anger and hostility towards vegans (rhetorically shooting the messenger, the way Sitwell appears to have done). The range, style and tone of these <a href="https://seanbonner.tumblr.com/post/252364222/defensive-omnivore-bingo">defensive responses</a> are wearyingly familiar to vegans.</p>
<p>Food practices are socially powerful markers of social and cultural identity, making actual or implied criticism of them personally and hurtfully felt. Meat-eating in particular has been closely implicated in the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666315003025">construction of masculine identity</a>. Challenging the dominance of non-vegan practices threatens those social and cultural identities that are most closely dependent upon them.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1057029351403913218"}"></div></p>
<h2>Poor taste</h2>
<p>Criticism of Sitwell’s email led to the wheeling out of a stereotype of vegan <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/29/waitrose-magazine-editor-causes-outrage-joking-killing-vegans/">humourlessness</a>. We have written <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isle/article/24/4/767/4795356">elsewhere</a> about how humour is used in popular culture to retrench oppressive power relations. Framing the expression of oppressive power relations as “humour” attempts to insulate it against critique, but we should remain alert to the potency and power dynamics of such “jokes”.</p>
<p>Sitwell’s own initial apology denied the ethical basis of veganism itself: “I love and respect people of all appetites, be they vegan, vegetarian or meat eaters – which I show week in week out through my writing, editing and broadcasting.” Veganism here is reduced to a taste preference, or consumer disposition – just one dietary option among several – rather than an ethical imperative directed towards eliminating the human exploitation of other animals.</p>
<p>In his initial response, Sitwell says his previous “good behaviour” is evidence that this recent episode is not representative of his attitude and he apologises for offence taken by others, rather than his offensive action. But in doing this, he refuses to take responsibility for his own behaviour. Moreover, it provides a textbook example of a victim-blaming non-apology, in this case by using yet another anti-vegan stereotype – over-sensitivity: “I apologise profusely to anyone who has been offended or upset by this.” Vegans (the unspecified “anyone”) are implicitly primed to take offence, while Sitwell’s own actions are rhetorically positioned as intrinsically innocent (as “innocent” as a “joke”).</p>
<p>The joke has cost Sitwell his editing job. But his outburst has at least opened up the opportunity for some more honest discussion about why veganism, like many other progressive social movements, stimulates such aggressive responses. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>More articles about <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/veganism-25812?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Diet">vegetarianism and veganism</a>, written by academic experts:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/vegan-diet-how-your-body-changes-from-day-one-100413?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Diet">Vegan diet: how your body changes from day one</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-arent-more-people-vegetarian-58367?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Diet">Why aren’t more people vegetarian?</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/eating-less-meat-is-a-climate-priority-whatever-the-sceptics-say-105884?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Diet">Eating less meat is a climate priority, whatever the sceptics say</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>For more evidence-based articles by academics, subscribe to our <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/6F561B763B91E4C7?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=Diet">newsletter</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Stewart is affiliated with The Vegan Society as a life member.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Cole is affiliated with The Vegan Society as a life member and volunteer. </span></em></p>No matter the time of the year, it’s always open season on veganism.Kate Stewart, Principal Lecturer in Sociology, Nottingham Trent UniversityMatthew Cole, Associate Lecturer, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1055302018-10-24T13:08:41Z2018-10-24T13:08:41ZJamal Khashoggi: why stating the truth is getting a lot of journalists killed<p>It took a while for <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/jamal-khashoggi-obituary-xjpkf0hgs">obituaries to start appearing</a> for murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – and there is still some uncertainty over the manner of his death. Turkish authorities are so far declining to release either sound or video of the assassination – both of which they are <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/17/turkey-has-not-yet-shared-khashoggi-audio-video-evidence-with-us.html">alleged to possess</a>.</p>
<p>But as the wrangling continues, it is worth stepping back for a longer view of why this state murder of a journalist is important. More than 230 media workers <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed">have been killed</a> around the world over the past three years and, according to press freedom organisations, in many cases there was <a href="https://rsf.org/en/barometer">clear state involvement</a>. </p>
<p>Interestingly, given its strident calls for justice in Khashoggi’s case, one of the worst regimes in terms of freedom of the press at the moment is Turkey – which Reporters without Borders labels the “<a href="https://rsf.org/en/turkey">world’s biggest prison for professional journalists</a>”.</p>
<p>Some are saying that Khashoggi’s murder <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/10/jamal-khashoggi-disappearance-trend-fight">marks</a> the end of rules-based global order. Maybe that’s because it suggests authoritarian leaders can silence their critics with impunity. And when the US president quite clearly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/opinion/khashoggi-saudi-trump-arms-sales.html?fbclid=IwAR0cDkhFeZeirLr7ui64jSoocqaXCkDUtY3Ezx5YKAg0reid8NQRvbsTQOo">privileges trade over human rights</a> – as he appeared to do initially with Khashoggi – it should be deeply worrying for anyone concerned about press freedom and political accountability.</p>
<p>According to the latest reports, Trump now <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/23/jamal-khashoggi-trump-cover-up-sanctions-visas">seems to accept</a> the involvement of the Saudi leadership. But there is little evidence of concern for free expression. Instead, he has complained about the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/khashoggi-cover-up-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage">quality of the cover-up</a>, and expressed disappointment at the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/us/politics/trump-khashoggi-dead.html">publicity rather than the killing</a>, saying: “This one has caught the imagination of the world, unfortunately.” </p>
<p>At around the same time that the Khashoggi story was gathering pace, the US president showed what he thinks of journalists with whom he doesn’t see eye to eye, when he took time out during a rally in Montana to praise the local Republican senator, Greg Gianforte – who is up for re-election in November – for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/18/trump-greg-gianforte-assault-guardian-ben-jacobs">assaulting Guardian journalist</a> Ben Jacobs in 2017.</p>
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<p>Both Khashoggi and Jacobs remind us that the problem of suppressing free expression through violence toward the media is widespread and increasing – and certain nations who pay lip service to the <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/united-states">notion of press freedom</a> have enabled an environment of state impunity for attacks on media workers.</p>
<h2>Death in Belgrade</h2>
<p>In April 2019 a momentous 20-year anniversary will pass with little notice – an anniversary which, to my mind, marks the more realistic start of the end of global order. It marked the moment that the US, supposedly the dominant defender of global press freedom, switched – in an explosive instant – to become a press predator. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242024/original/file-20181024-48703-1jmmcm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ruins of the RTS in Belgrade which was bombed by NATO aircraft in 1999.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WhiteWriter via Flickr.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was the destruction in 1999, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/sept99/airwar20.htm">by US-led NATO forces</a>, of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02p66lg">Serbian public broadcaster</a> in Belgrade, resulting in the murder of 16 civilian media workers who shared the misfortune of being on the wrong night shift. A <a href="https://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990423l.htm">NATO spokesman said</a> the next day they had be bombed because the US and its NATO partners did not approve of “their version of the news”.</p>
<p>It was the first shot in a decade-long US campaign of violence against media workers resulting in at least 46 media deaths, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan between 1999 and 2007 – a period documented <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745334172/war-reporters-under-threat/">in my 2014 book</a> War Reporters Under Threat: The United States and Media Freedom. The US is culpable of further injuries and detentions of journalists and other media workers in this period along with increasing harassment and surveillance of journalists since, at home and abroad.</p>
<p>My research analysed 12 cases of US military attacks on media facilities resulting in 20 deaths and 26 further media worker deaths linked to US government employees (but not part of an attack on a specific media facility). Most of those were shootings of journalists as they reported, and many received little public attention. As with the 2003 shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad where international journalists were staying, in which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/apr/09/pressandpublishing.Iraqandthemedia">three media workers were killed</a>, there may not have been a deliberate plan to target media workers. But I believe there was certainly negligence by the US government – and likely violations of international law in every case. </p>
<p>And, despite determined efforts by the <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/1/us_pressured_spain_to_drop_case">relatives of murdered journalists</a>, <a href="https://www.ifex.org/iraq/2005/11/24/ifj_calls_for_re_opening_of_investigation/">press freedom advocates</a> and, occasionally, from the governments of other states – including Italy and Spain – whose citizens had been killed, the US has enjoyed utter impunity for those deaths. This has effectively provided a blank cheque to governments everywhere by making clear that attacks on the press will not be challenged or punished if the US has anything to do with it. </p>
<p>Only once has the murder of a journalist by a close ally of the US in the Middle East been investigated and declared unlawful, when an inquest into the death of British journalist James Miller <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/apr/06/israel.television">concluded he had been murdered</a>. To date, <a href="https://cpj.org/data/people/james-miller/">nobody has faced prosecution</a> for the murder.</p>
<h2>War on reporters</h2>
<p>Holding states to account for violence against media workers depends on robust international legal structures – and Britain’s <a href="https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/news/blog/brexit-begun-and-so-has-fight-keep-our-rights">withdrawal from the EU</a> and recent US attacks on the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-un-general-assembly-1.4837265">mission of the United Nations</a> and the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45474864">International Criminal Court</a> will certainly undermine these.</p>
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<p>Journalists reporting on the US president’s unusual political rallies have been penned in and his supporters have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/02/donald-trump-un-media-press-freedom-journalist-danger">encouraged to taunt and threaten them</a>). Trump’s populist condemnation of proper and necessary watchdog journalism by media organisations has set the stage for longstanding US hostility to journalism to become a new wave of state-tolerated or sanctioned anti-press violence. </p>
<p>As someone whose job involves preparing students for a career in journalism, I have to live with the knowledge that we’re in a new era of news, where reporters can be targeted with impunity – even with the encouragement of world leaders – for simply doing their jobs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Paterson receives funding from AHRC, British Academy.
(neither funded research project is related to this essay).</span></em></p>The death of the Saudi columnist shows the hazards faced by journalists – especially if the US doesn’t like what they do.Chris Paterson, Senior Lecturer in International Communication, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.