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A lot of people on here today lamenting the fact that the death figure for yesterday isn& #39;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& #39;t even exist to humans on December 31. So why isn& #39;t it the lead news story everywhere? 3/11
The reality is that it is, but it& #39;s not necessarily the headline. My speculation would be that for daily print titles, the & #39;number& #39; 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& #39;t know anyone who has caught Covid, let alone died (and to stress, that& #39;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 & #39;number& #39; 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& #39;s easy to say 1,000 people dying a day is a & #39;national scandal& #39; on here, but for publications to say that, they need to show demonstrably what the government has got wrong 7/11
And there& #39;s a very fine line to walk between criticising the government& #39;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& #39;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 & #39;stay indoors& #39; appeals. The point of this thread? Publications shouting about numbers everyone already knows about won& #39;t change what& #39;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& #39;s it really. 11/11
