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Category: Media

Publish and be Damned?

Publish and be Damned?

2 reports into events long ago: 34 and 26 years. The main protagonists are dead. Should anyone care, as the Today programme put it somewhat indelicately, about one murder so very long ago (Daniel Morgan)? Or even about an interview of a troubled Royal? The latter are two a penny these days. Police competence rather than corruption is a rather more pressing issue. We all know about the press’s dubious and sometimes illegal activities; besides the News of the World…

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Not a good Daily Mail front page tomorrow for the PM

Not a good Daily Mail front page tomorrow for the PM

Increasingly over the past week or so it has been the Mail that appears to have the most negative coverage of Mr. Johnson. Above is the latest for tomorrow’s paper. Of all the papers the Mail is probably the most significant and this run of bad front pages comes in the final build up to next week’s set of elections. The bodies piled high remark was first widely publicised by the Mail.

The dangerous first step towards the end of the World Wide Web as we know it

The dangerous first step towards the end of the World Wide Web as we know it

Richard Tyndall on the Australian government move against Facebook So one day, when this terrible virus is finally under some semblance of control, we will be able to go back to the pub. We will be able to do something that we have been unable to do for far too long – socialise face to face with our friends. Hopefully we will be able to resurrect the Political Betting pub nights and prove to each other we really are human…

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This Daily Express WH2020 “poll” is not what it seems

This Daily Express WH2020 “poll” is not what it seems

Daily Express readers give their backing to the racist pussy grabberhttps://t.co/G0SLKkOpwJ — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) October 13, 2020 Like many PBers I am following WH2020 polling very closely at the moment given millions of Americans have already voted and the election itself is three weeks today. As a result the above story from the “newspaper” the Daily Express popped up my inbox. It says that “a new UK survey has put the President way out in front in the race…

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And now what’s dividing the nation – the Beeb’s decision to play Rule Britannia without the lyrics at the Proms

And now what’s dividing the nation – the Beeb’s decision to play Rule Britannia without the lyrics at the Proms

I reproduce this poll because it is not often you get an issue that produces a political divide like this. Tories and Leavers, where there is a lot of overlap, are very much opposed to the BBC’s decision while LAB and LD backers are less sure. In my days as a BBC PR man, admittedly more than a third of a century ago, I would have been delighted at the attention this is getting. It says something about the institution….

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As we head into August the impact on holidays becomes the big pandemic story

As we head into August the impact on holidays becomes the big pandemic story

Have ministers panicked? Today’s front pages give a good representation of the main pandemic stories and what the papers think are the issues most likely to impact on their readers. Once again the Daily Star manages to produce the most striking front page and that paper is to my mind having the best pandemic. So often it is taking the most eye-catching and humorous approach which is very much in the spirit of the early days of the tabloid Sun….

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Print journalism needs a revolution to avoid a slow death: micro-payments are the way forward

Print journalism needs a revolution to avoid a slow death: micro-payments are the way forward

But it will only work with industry-wide collaboration When did you last buy a newspaper? I’ve no idea when I did. It was certainly before this year and then will have been the local weekly; I haven’t bought a national paper in years – why would you? I do subscribe to a hard-copy weekly magazine (which also brings with it online access to their articles), but that’s a different thing I’m not alone. In the last ten years, The Times…

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