Not to be taken seriously as I just made them up before breakfast, but for budding journalists, here are the seven rules of the mass media story –
- Avoid insights
- Be entertaining
- Stroke existing biases
- Promote establishment biases
- Promote anxiety and fear
- Attack stereotyped enemies
- Keep it simple
I would imagine that this sort of advice isn't too far from what is actually taught to aspiring journalists. As so often happens, we have a surplus of supply here. Young people think it looks like a desirable career; people take advantage of their need by setting up courses; loads of identikit second-rate writers are unleashed upon the population.
ReplyDeleteIf the same happened in engineering and building, we would have to keep away from structures.
Oh, and following yesterday's post about Barclay and the ambulance strikes, here's the BBC headlines today:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64053080
It appears that the crisis is happening today, when the dire emergencies who would have died had they not attended yesterday are being attended to. No reports of hundreds of people dying by the roadside or on their kitchen floor.
Sam - we certainly seem to have a surplus of supply. Young people who think of it as a desirable career should take a look at what is being done by AI.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the BBC link - it has to be worth a blog post as an example of BBC bias and evasiveness.
Always make seven new rules before breakfast.
ReplyDeleteJames - I don't see it becoming a habit though.
ReplyDelete