When someone comes under attack for something or other, many journalists pull out the old anti-aircraft metaphor to describe it. But here, sadly, their ignorance starts to show. “Flak” comes from a German acronym for anti aircraft fire – Fl(ieger)a(bwehr)k(anone). A “flack” is a slightly derogatory North American term for a publicity agent. So ditch […]
You have to love newspapers’ obsession with social media. Whether it’s the Twittering of Stephen Fry et al or the latest security breach involving Facebook, the news media are all over it – irrespective of whether their readers know the difference between a Tweet and a twat. This latest example from the Metro pushes a […]
My first reaction on seeing this Guardian media headline – “Literacy level of recruits now a major concern for media, report finds” – was: I know – I’ve said it myself often enough. But then I read the story. The story says absolutely nothing about general literacy. It makes the following points: The industry needs more […]
Spotted in today’s Metro – a travel piece on what looks like a delightful part of Sardinia. But I think the “gut-busting” lunch enjoyed by the writer has affected her English. …courses of muscles and clams, fat prawns and melt-in-the-mouth hoops of calamari… And I thought the Metro was supposed to be a subs’ paper…
…in a nutshell. This goes some way to explaining why I was reading headlines like this about swine flu a couple of weeks ago, and now I’m reading headlines like this about swine flu medication…
Not sure what state the UK economy is in? Better not read the papers and newswires today, then – you’ll only get more confused. Today saw the release of the UK’s second quarter GDP statistics. Hmm. How bad were they? “Bad”, says Yahoo Finance, which takes its content from news service AFP. British economy sees […]
A really nice example of an “elephant in the living room” typo, from Bill Bennett’s Knowledge Workers’ blog. As with investigative journalists, you’ll miss the sub-editors when we’re gone. Won’t stop them getting rid of us though…
The Mail on Sunday‘s Facebook/MI6 revelations are something of a digital media wet dream, combining espionage, social networking and Nazi historians in a way that is almost the highbrow version of Friday’s midget/wrestling/hooker fest. There’s a lot going on here of interest – and it’s worth coming back to. But for now, though, it’s enough […]
History is rewritten by the internet, as yesterday’s five-year-old boy survivor of the Yemeni air crash off the Cormoros islands today morphs strangely into a 14-year-old girl. I’m sure it’s nice that the incorrect official statements have been corrected. But I’ve noticed that sometimes this has happened without much acknowledgement of the change. So Google […]
Here’s a very interesting post by, of all things, a Belgian linguistic researcher, about the differences between print and online journalism. I like its academic slant (something which often puts me off), as it actually helps to illuminate the murky way that news journalism is constructed and then passed off as something whole and authoritative. […]