Saturday, 16 October 2010

How to Respond to Media Myths

This is a cross-post on The Sun - Tabloid Lies, Express Watch and Mail Watch.

When you read the Sun, Daily Mail and the Express over a long-enough period of time, you start to notice a few things.

One thing that crops up regularly are hysterical ranting posts over a few small topics, including the following:
We've noticed that a lot of these scare stories could be stopped by a little research, which we accept that pressed-for-time tabloid journalists, for whatever reason, are unable to do.

Therefore, in the spirit of co-operation, we've decided to help them out by listing great sources of information, thereby saving them valuable time:
There are also a variety of websites which can be used for any "Bloody Foreigners! Coming over 'ere! Takin' our jobs! Takin' our wimmin!" stories*:
There are also more general fact-checking sites**:
Of course, any and all of these lists could also be used by anyone else who wants to know more about the articles which the Sun, Daily Mail and/or the Express publish.

If anyone has any other suggestions as what other sources our tabloid journalists could use, just leave them in the comments.

* Thanks to Tabloid Watch for these particular links
** Thanks to Bloggerheads for these suggestions

3 comments:

cerpintor said...

it's the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

Unknown said...

D'oh!

Thanks for that.

Post is updated.

Unknown said...

Ok mine are HIV related. This is due to the disgusting standard of HIV reporting in the UK (Which seems to fall into three distinct categories: Celebrity fundraising and isn't it all lovely that all these rich wankers give a shit, six monthly sexual health scare stories & demonising people living with HIV as either reckless monsters or immigrants.)

A report by National AIDS Trust: The Myth of HIV Health Tourism.

http://www.nat.org.uk/Media%20library/Files/PDF%20documents/Myth-of-HIV-Health-Tourism-Oct-2008.pdf

And the more general Media Reporting, again by NAT:

http://www.nat.org.uk/Information-and-Resources/Media-reporting.aspx

Great post,

BSE