The response of the established media to reports that the majority of stories shared on facebook during the US election were stonking great lies has been the predictable bellow of I told you so. According to the holier-than-thou op-eds this is clearly the fault of the news gathering public for shunning proper paywalled journalism. Yet…
Ask a reasonably clever ten year old what a journalist is and she will say someone who reports what is happening. While this impression may become more nuanced as we develop a greater understanding of how news is broken and spun this basic understanding still underpins our view of what the media is. How is…
As I write this from Los Angeles, the news ticker is awash with the minutiae of the horrific bombing that took place in Boston today as marathon runners crossed the finishing line. Doctors are telling stories of innumerable injuries and amputations; eye witnesses are giving accounts of terror and confusion; the President is offering platitudes…
There was a great post by Kevin Bakhurst on the BBC editors’ blog the other day explaining the changes to the nature of the newsroom in the post-social media age. Bakhurst gives a pretty considered rundown of the challenges posed by social media, not least the fact it almost always has someone else be first…
Why in God’s name is the media giving this bloody Pentecostal minister in Florida so much press? Pastor Terry Jones is simply a dangerous and deranged attention seeker. Look, I understand it’s a news story, but if the media had ignored him the frenzy could have been easily abated. Jones has succeeded in projecting his…
Today’s edition of the Sun features an exposé of Wayne Rooney’s recent night on the tiles as his team-mates “completed rigorous pre-season fitness tours”. It is a typically irked and excitable article, chipping away at the veneer of sporting heroism that has been liberally applied to Rooney and his sporting colleagues in the past. The…
It may be stating the bleeding obvious, but we all know the media is changing rapidly – every few months, something comes along that fractures the old order more and more. The latest is the iPad, one more thing in a long line of technological advances that are making it easier for brand and public…
“Shoe-throwing man is now his brand–He should be sent all over the world to throw shoes at people we don’t like.” — Mark Borkowski on how the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush can create tongue-in-cheek commercial gain from his fleeting fame Listen to show