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A lot of people on here today lamenting the fact that the death figure for yesterday isn't the main headline everywhere ..... 1/11
Those making this point seem to come from 2 groups (in the main). The first are opposition politicians or their supporters. People will draw their own conclusions on motives, good or otherwise. The second group are journalists.... 2/11
There is no denying the horror of at least 1,000 people losing their lives in a day to something which didn't even exist to humans on December 31. So why isn't it the lead news story everywhere? 3/11
The reality is that it is, but it's not necessarily the headline. My speculation would be that for daily print titles, the 'number' is the best part of a day old by the time they hit the news stands. For more immediate media (digital, broadcast) 4/11
the challenge is that the number is a) what had been forecast, b) still very abstract to the vast majority of people, who don't know anyone who has caught Covid, let alone died (and to stress, that's not to under estimate the horror anyone who has lost someone goes through 5/11
And then there is whether people will read stories which have the 'number' as the headline. The data I see is that stories *around* Covid (ie the new impacts) are better read than those which are just about Covid itself 6/11
The challenge for journalism is how best to hold power to account at the moment. It's easy to say 1,000 people dying a day is a 'national scandal' on here, but for publications to say that, they need to show demonstrably what the government has got wrong 7/11
And there's a very fine line to walk between criticising the government's response and planning, and being seen by the public as criticising those on the NHS. We see this time and again with health stories, locally and nationally. 8/11
For what it's worth, I think the media will hold the government to account when the time is right - but it needs to be away from the rolling news cycle. In the meantime, journalism can do a lot by asking difficult questions 9/11
And also seeking solutions. National and local press have helped bring PPE issues to the fore, and also led on the 'stay indoors' appeals. The point of this thread? Publications shouting about numbers everyone already knows about won't change what's happening 10/11
But doing what journalists do: Asking difficult questions, seeking out answers from experts, working with readers to do the right thing and finding ways to get readers to want to read difficult stories can make a difference. That's it really. 11/11
