It's 92 pages long but one part of the survey they conducted stands out: which news source do people trust the most?
Only 34% of people said they trusted what they see in newspapers, compared with 66% who trusted radio news and 54% TV news.
Moreover, that 34% was overshadowed by the 43% who disagreed that they could trust what they saw in newspapers. The percentages who said they didn't trust TV (24%) and radio (15%) news were significantly smaller:
The timing of this report is excellent because tomorrow sees the publication of the PCC's Annual Report. No doubt they will try and pretend that the PCC and the newspapers in this country are all wonderful - as they do every year.
For example, in 2008, the PCC had a record number of complaints - 4,698 - which was an increase of 8% on 2007.
Because so many newspapers write a lot of rubbish? Not a bit of it:
We are confident that it is not a sign of dramatically falling standards in the industry, but of increased awareness and accessibility of the PCC.
They may be 'confident' of that, but who else is?
Who really thinks an increase in complaints is a result of the PCC doing such a good job?
That's a quite bafflingly blinkered view of the current state of affairs.
When compared with TV and radio news, newspapers are - by a considerable amount - the least trusted. Sadly, the PCC's failure to act against the worst excesses of the press make this almost inevitable.
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My uncle who died in 1980 at the age of 98 used to say, " Don't believe anything you read in the newspapers and only half of what you see."
ReplyDeleteNothing changes except for the worst.... with photoshop manipulation I guess he would have to change the second part of that saying!!