Tabloid update!

I blogged a couple of days ago about an Express story, 'EU PLANS TO MERGE UK AND FRANCE', suggesting that this was lies. 


Turns out I was right. More than that: the story was in the Mail (of course) two days previously and the Star, and refers to a very boring story that's fifteen years (!) old. 


Don't buy tabloids. It only encourages them and the Tories who slipped this bit of propaganda. Here's what the EU said to these papers - they declined to print it:

"We are as surprised as your readers to hear that your newspaper believes the EU wishes to merge Britain and France. The suggestion... is absurd, and of course, untrue.

There is no proposal to create a new cross-channel region. What exist (and have done for 10 years) are a number of cross-border programmes aimed at things like boosting jobs and looking after the environment."

The papers can lie and lie and lie, there's nothing the EU or anyone else can do about it. 

How Media Work… part 93

Martin Kettle (usually too rightwing for my tastes, but interesting anyway) has a fascinating column in today's Guardian on popular press coverage of the public sphere. It's no surprise, he says, that the public distrusts our elected representatives, given the hysterical and widespread presentation of them as innately venal. 

The newspapers all covered the recent survey which showed distrust of politicians increasing (26% trust MPs) - but none of them mentioned the most distrusted group of all. 90% of the population distrusts tabloid journalists - yet only 4% of tabloid readers read/access any other source of political information. So we're becoming a nation of uninformed lazy cynics prepared to accept entertainment rather than information from a bunch of idle reactionaries. The future's bright… 

Read the Committee on Standards in Public Life report here

The honourable tradition of British tabloids

Most of the newspapers, as you'd expect, are running with the US elections on the front page, though the Express concentrates on the assassination risk, the party-poopers.

Other papers (Daily Star and Daily Sport) however, aren't so impressed. The headline of the Sport (sorry, can't get a bigger image) announces 'Barack and Corrie Rosie, An Apology' - and goes on to promise that there won't be any more political coverage (or much coverage at all).