News consumption in the UK

I worked for the Daily Mail & General Trust in the 90s, helping create ‘the internet’ with scores of other young people who had no idea how this infant industry would take shape in the future. Walking into the newspaper headquarters, the web team were often made to feel like we were crossing some sort of picket line and little did we fully understand how disruptive the newspaper websites we were recreating online would be for the traditional newspaper industry. Fast forward a couple of decades and the landscape has shifted beyond what we could’ve imagined back then. Social media has carved a niche for itself as a primary news source for key events where civilians are trapped in places journalists can’t reach. It’s also become a place where kangaroo courts can be held and sways public opinion on the basis that if it’s repeated enough by enough people then that opinion becomes the truth. There is still a place for the craft of journalism to exist, but a mistrust in the impartiality of media outlets is what is driving the continued demise of independent journalism. The fact that IPSO is self regulated by the very publications it sets out to preside over does not do anything to help with that trust. Journalism should hold itself to higher standards of impartiality, but the machinations of that profession costs money which the general public are becoming less and less interested in paying for. Reform is needed to tilt the balance back in favour of trustworthy sources.