The Outlets Aren't There And The Money's Not There Because Trust In Journalism's Not There Anymore

One morning last month, Seymour Hersh set off to buy a newspaper. The reporter walked for 30 minutes, covered six blocks of his neighbourhood, Georgetown in Washington DC, and didn’t see a single sign of life. No newsstands on street corners selling the glossies and the dailies. No self-service kiosk where you can slide in a dollar and pull out a paper. “Finally, I found a drugstore that had two copies of the New York Times in the back,” Hersh recalls. He bought one for himself. He can’t help but wonder whether anybody bought the second.

Probably not, they were all comfortably scrolling through their social media feeds instead.

Hersh has been a staff writer at the New York Times and the New Yorker. He’s broken stories on Vietnam, Watergate, Gaza and Ukraine. But the free press is in crisis, newspapers are in flux and investigative journalism may be facing a deadline of its own. “I don’t think I could do now what I did 30, 40, 50 years ago,” says the now 88-year-old. “The outlets aren’t there. The money’s not there. So I don’t know where we all are right now.”

You're up that well-known creek. And you don't appear to have a paddle... 

Editors and management might claim they want good stories, but in practice they fear them, because scoops tend to cause trouble and involve a big fight. Tellingly, the film includes an archive clip of Hersh speaking on stage in the 1970s. He says: “What we have here in America is not so much censorship as self-censorship by the press.”

That 'self-censorship' - is it in the room with you right now, Seymour?  

If that was true then, Poitras says, it’s doubly so today. She’s alarmed not just by Trump’s authoritarian push to stifle a free press but by the alacrity with which several media giants have already rolled over.

The situation is parlous, Poitras says. “What we’re seeing in the US is the preemptive capitulation of institutions to avoid a legal battle they would have won. That’s shameful. I don’t know how they explain that to themselves. It’s the worst precedent you can possibly set.”

They clearly don't have your certainty that they'd have won. 

“There are no gatekeepers on information any more,” says Obenhaus. “The so-called legacy media is so dispersed. And without that centre – that base – it’s hard for good journalism to break through, which means people are increasingly relying on unreliable sources. It troubles me tremendously that the Sy Hersh of today might be writing on Substack or some other platform – and you’d never even hear of them unless the algorithm connected you to their work.”

Times have changed, maybe you should change with them, because when I want the truth about a story in the headlines, I no longer look to the legacy media for it... 

I'll Stick To Vesta Meals, I Think!

As we age, cooking can become harder, but one brand is making eating well every day easier and more delicious than ever with their cooked meals delivered to your door – and they don’t even need to be refrigerated.

What? What sort of meals? I love ramen and Vesta paellas & chow meins as much as the next person, and always have noodles of some sort in the cupboard, but they always need to be ‘cooked’, even if it is just via the application of boiling water!

From cottage pie and beef casserole to Thai curry and vegetable hotpot (Ed: 🤢), each meal has been created to help older adults maintain a balanced diet, all made with real ingredients and without unnecessary preservatives.

If you’re storing a cooked cottage pie in your cupboard unrefrigerated, and you think it somehow isn’t full of unnecessary preservatives, would you like to buy this bridge as well as this hideous slop? 

 

If ‘More Government Propaganda!’ Is The Answer…

...then you're almost certainly asking the wrong question.

On 4 August 2024, the riots and disturbances that followed the killing of three children in Southport, on Merseyside, spread even further. That day, in the midst of a seething mess of far-right misinformation and rumour-mongering, the violence hit Rotherham – where people tried to set fire to a hotel housing asylum-seekers – as well as Middlesbrough and Bolton. Serving notice of his new interest in UK affairs, Elon Musk posted a picture of violence in Liverpool on X with a characteristically measured caption: “Civil war is inevitable.” And 24 hours later, the wave of unrest reached the city of Plymouth.

Where could the city’s 260,000 residents turn for reliable information?

Social media? Yup! 

As ever, as people’s social media feeds brimmed with untruths and provocations, more traditional outlets were an obvious choice. But if you tuned into the local BBC radio station while the riot was happening, you might easily have had no idea about any of it. BBC Radio Devon carried a report about the violence in its 6 o’clock news, but at 7pm and 9pm, Plymouth received no mention at all.

Welp, there you go. If there's a vacuum, something is bound to fill it.  

We now know all this thanks to the BBC’s response to a complaint made by David Lloyd, a radio veteran who has worked for both the corporation and commercial stations. The relevant official document, written by the corporation’s complaints director, is quite a read: it includes an admission that “there was little evidence of the BBC having a presence on the scene”, something partly connected to “several logistical problems” on the day in question, including “the availability of journalists who had the required riot training”, as well as “technical issues with broadcasting kit”.

What does all that mean? 'Journalists' who no longer go out chasing stories, perhaps, who are content to sit in a warm office, and farm social media for their 'scoops'?  

Even online, where the modern corporation insists it must focus a lot of its efforts, there was no dedicated live coverage of the Plymouth riot – nor, the report suggests, enough updates posted on the big social media platforms. On the latter score, “more would have been done, had it not been for staff leave”.

Once, journalists would have come in regardless if there was something interesting happening. It was how they made names for themselves. 

Something happens, but what do people read or hear about it? Either nothing at all, or some awful version of it plucked by a foreign billionaire from the fringes of the internet or algorithmically amplified, to the point that questions of truth or falsehood fall away, and a mendacious story creates its own shockwaves. If that is the kind of future we should all be striving to avoid, local reporting ought to be our first antidote.

And yet, no-one’s doing it. Times have changed.  

Don’t The BBC Have A Team To Combat Disinformation?

While the identities of all the victims have not been made public yet, a picture is slowly emerging of a group of mostly young people, many of whom - like Tiger - were Louisiana locals.

Eh? But didn't you start the article with this? 

Jack, 22, was in Dallas visiting family members, while Tiger, a 28-year-old former Princeton alumnus who lived in New York, was in New Orleans, getting ready to celebrate the New Year.

And also: 

Among the other victims of the attack in the early morning hours of 1 January was Matthew Tenedorio, an audio-visual technician at New Orleans' Caesars' Superdome. Tenedorio, who just turned 25 in October, had spent the earlier part of his evening at his brother's home in the town of Slidell, about 35 minutes away from New Orleans.

Closer, but still no cigar, BBC. 

At Least 'Lincolnshire Live' Is A Reputable News Organisation...

...because the others appear to have omitted a rather salient point.

An attempted shoplifter who was held face down at a branch of Sainsbury's for more than 30 minutes died of injuries sustained during his detention, an inquest heard. Mr Paskauskas was threatening and aggressive, and his behaviour was worsened because he had consumed alcohol, he was confused about what was happening and there was a language barrier.

It will be interesting to see if the police now charge anyone. Because they have in other cases, as we've seen.  

A jury which considered the evidence during the inquest last week reached a conclusion of death by misadventure.

Because they don't have a 'death by drunken criminality' verdict, I suppose. 

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We supported the police and coroner on this matter and acknowledge that this case has now concluded. Our thoughts are with Mr Paskauskas’ friends and family.”

Let's hope they are also with your traumatised staff as much as with the family of a habitual foreign criminal. 

Mysterious Weather Phenomenon...

The annual event, which is Europe’s biggest free beach festival, was due to take place on Sunday, July 3. However, due to adverse weather, the event was cancelled.

Event organisers originally pushed the start time back until 12.45pm, but later confirmed the Big Paddle event would not be taking place.

Sunday 3rd July? The weather was great! What was the concern? 

“Our water safety team have been monitoring the weather conditions all morning hoping that conditions would be okay.

“We have been hanging on in the hope we could go ahead, so our sincere apologies if you have already left home.

“Thank you for supporting our event and we hope to see you all next year.”

But nowhere do you explain what the issue was...

So we go to comments!

Seems the readers are as baffled as me!

Stranger and stranger...

Is this a clue? Who knows! It's not like we can expect journalists to ask the hard questions, is it?