Is the press still the guardian of democracy?

There’s a worrying, if unsurprising revelation in this Guardian article:-

Capital and LBC owner Global Radio advised stations to drop HSBC story.

When the directive was given out, staff were told that the story was being dropped for “editorial reasons”, which can mean anything. OFCOM reckon everything is above board, but reading between the lines, it looks like Global Radio didn’t want to upset HSBC.

It’s not even the first time HSBC have been accused of trying to influence the media. The Telegraph’s chief political editor Peter Oborne resigned in disgust, claiming that the paper had deliberately and repeatedly suppressed stories about HSBC, and had committed a “fraud on its readers”.

All of which begs the question. Is the press still performing the function that we have historically venerated it for? Is it still the guardian of democracy?

They’re prob right that listeners to i.e. Capital and i.e. Heart FM are not interested in Swiss banking scandals, they would prefer to hear bout guess what year Prince had his first UK number one hit and win £100 iTunes voucher, and talking bout Tulisa’s latest sex-tape scandal, here is a hit you may remember by Duran Duran… girls on film, smashing tune.

Well, that’s a fair point, until you realise that their talk show LBC stands for “Leading Britain’s Conversation”. In this instance, all of their radio stations decided to lead the conversation elsewhere.

i did not know that! i always assumed it meant London Broadcast Cunts or something like that.

Historically close. Used to be the London Broadcasting Corporation, but they’ve obviously rebranded to something snappier.

Didn’t it used to be London’s biggest conversation until they tried to push up the figures with the bumkins and northerners?

Talksport the other day were asking some Australian cricker about the England cricket team the other day. After 3 questions they ran out of cricket questions (it is boring to be fair) and asked him about the Villa Arsenal cup final. The guy didn’t have a clue, it was just funny to hear him flounder. He practically said “why the f*ck have you asked me on to talk about that?”

On sure if this is on topic as just read the last few posts. Hopefully it is and helps.

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woah are you suggesting HSBC asked talksport not to talk about cricket?

I’m not sure. Would it fit if I did?

dunno. when you listen to talksport, are you hoping for them to protect democracy?

Nah, it’s cause there are adverts on LBC and bad tunes on XFM.

Who are the guardians of the galaxy then? BBC? This is why we are supposed to pay the licence fee isn’t it? So that we get impatial news and repeats of Top Gear sold to Dave right?

yeah good point can you mark this one as solved pls pap

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Originally posted by @Tokyo-Saint

Nah, it’s cause there are adverts on LBC and bad tunes on XFM.

Who are the guardians of the galaxy then? BBC? This is why we are supposed to pay the licence fee isn’t it? So that we get impatial news and repeats of Top Gear sold to Dave right?

It’s supposed to be the collective press that keep us informed, and I suppose that in a time of loads of independent operators, that kind of worked. If one missed some malfeasance, there’s a good chance another might have stumbled onto it. We don’t really have as many independent operators in ownership of the media anymore. The Wild Wild Web is the closest thing we’ve got to independent media, and while it’s certainly independent, it’s hard work establishing the facts of anything.

Here is another rather worrying case, involving “I’m too busy to be an MP” Louise Mensch, who has apparently been targeting a 17 year old activist through the #milifandom hashtag.

Questions remain over how the 17 year old activist was outed.

https://www.byline.com/column/2/article/52

What happened to UJ? I feel like this forum is missing a good old Pap v UJ ding dong…

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Union Jay are still going strong Lou.

She is right though Pap, what is your marking strategy for Papsweb?

How can we bring some people in for you to argue with?

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Originally posted by @Tokyo-Saint

She is right though Pap, what is your marking strategy for Papsweb?

How can we bring some people in for you to argue with?

Marketing strategy for Papsweb

Objectives:

  1. Get more people Pap can argue with

  2. Get more people who can agree with him, when people argue with him

Tactics:

  1. Improve level of existing serious debate by training up existing posters

  2. Create ‘invite a friend functionality’ so you can encourage people to join

  3. Advertise via the Pap tribute thread on TSW without pissing off Steve Grant. Post like ‘yes I can see your point of view on that, funnily enough we were have a similarly intense debate on Papsweb <link> about this that has many new revelations I hadn’t considered before’.

  4. Bring a celebrity ITK on board. Someone like K,billy.

I’ve done 2 by inviting bear.

I like 3 esp annoying Steve ‘Fiver mountian’ G.

I might invite Turks and MLG - any objections?

Originally posted by @Tokyo-Saint

I’ve done 2 by inviting bear.

I like 3 esp annoying Steve ‘Fiver mountian’ G.

I might invite Turks and MLG - any objections

3 is about not annoying him!

No objections to Turks or MLG, just not Hypo…please!

my no1 target would prob be hypochondriac, he is a v.good poster + talks a lot of gr8 sense, I rarely find myself disagree with i.e. hypochondria bout things i think of him as “our kind of people”

Reported.

is there a way to inform authorities that a poster may be seriously unwell? This post suggest bears mental state has taken a serious downturn.

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