Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

But generally I'm better off consuming less news. It just winds me up.

Can't agree on the Times but I do agree with this. I worry that I'm becoming like my Dad, watching loads of TV news and slowly getting wound up by it until he starts shouting at the telly.

I'm sure in the 1990s we just didn't consume so much news and were happier for it.

I probably agree on this too but I was 10 in 1990 so possibly I was just younger and less miserable.

blimey - I thought you were quite a bit younger than me. turns just a little bit.
what's more worrying is my dad agreeing with all the TV news he watches...

thought you were quite a bit younger than me. turns just a little bit.

He does look it doesn’t he? Appear younger than me and I was 5 in 1990!

but it's editorially evil, running misguided campaigns against vulnerable groups and fuck me does it bear grudges.

Interesting you say this, this is basically the impression I have from occasionally dipping into it. I think the difference is all the more stark to me because it was what my Dad read when I was a kid so I used to read it with my breakfast every morning in the 90s. As you say, the quality and intent of editorial writing has changed a lot.

The UK Gov have maintained info on this lineage since early 2020.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/avian-influenza-ah5n6-risk-assessment/avian-influenza-ah5n6-risk-assessment

Why not provide a link?

Yet.

I am very old :)

Can't hold it off forever @edscoble - even with the picture in the attic I'm starting to get wrinkles around my eyes which are a bit of a giveaway! :/

There are examples I'd like to give but can't publically, but generally it used to be a lot less editorially driven. Their long running campaign against trans people and their rights is a corker though.

Which is why @user119690 I don't think this is quite true...

Funnily enough the reasons you've said you dislike The Times are the same reasons why I dislike The Guardian.

You can say what you like about the Guardian but it doesn't have any vicious, long-running campaigns against vulnerable, oppressed groups of people. Unless you count Blairites.

Yeah, these viruses are to be taken seriously. Which is why the press spending so much time and effort disparaging the UK government's response to swine flu was so wide off the mark. The big fear is something as transmissible as Covid but as deadly as SARS. It doesn't take too many mutations to get there.

And even if it ends up being an overreaction, it's really important to have experience of responding under the belt.

It has to be said that these days the Guardian is often just sloppy. Well meaning, but sloppy, with some often super crap journalism.

I’d disagree but am interested to hear why you think that. Can you give examples

The best example for me was when Megan Markle was in the news and they were running multiple articles every day on the subject. FFS give it a rest its hardly worth one article.

A guardian journalist exposed the Windrush scandal.

Well these are not ideal times, nasty virus, climate change... Not so strange to be anxious. Take care and all that, the depression threat on this forum may be helpful to vent?

I do read it, though I avoid newspapers that boil my piss as I regular turn the air blue walking past the newspaper stand in the spar.

Last time I watched the news Cameron was on and my poor TV got a rage of expletives so that was that ;)

You can say what you like about the Guardian but it doesn't have any
vicious, long-running campaigns against vulnerable, oppressed groups
of people. Unless you count Blairites.

Pretty sure trans people might make an objection here.

Can be hard sometimes to get back into cycling after so long, anybody that will go with you or encourage?

Even leaving the houses with COVID being with us then lockdowns easing can cause anxiety (People!! Traffic!!! Noise!!!) so it's all pretty normal.

Not cycling for a bit actually helped my anxiety weirdly enough as near misses always bum me out for ages. When I went back all the nervousness around those faded.

I've dealt on multiple occasions with Guardian journalists with a sloppy approach. They make mistakes (then it's almost impossible to get them corrected), they do things like leave a voicemail on a clearly unattended phone line then tell you they've asked you for comment (any decent news organisation persists in asking for comment if they don't initially get a response, asking twice is an absolute minimum, and I'm talking about when press officer's details are a quick google away), they misspell names, get job titles and facts wrong...

Honestly I can't remember many specifics as I try to do as little PR as possible these days and manage people who do instead because I got sick of it and I've tried to block a lot of it out! But is your disagreeing based on working in the media? Because there are a lot of people who read the Guardian and think it's great but unless you've been involved behind the scenes the mediocrity of their journalism isn't as apparent.

I now work for a (left wing) university and so many academics want to be in the Guardian. They're a nightmare to pitch to as well, they run so much stuff based on personal contacts which is ironic because surely that lack of meritocracy goes against everything they stand for?!

I don't want to speak for trans people and the Observer ran a pretty nasty piece not long ago which was part of the wider campaign that the Times is involved in. I don't think any newspapers have been innocent on that one but the Times/Mail etc. are way worse than the Gruniad.

surely that lack of meritocracy goes against everything they stand for

Has the left wing socialist version of the Guardian that exists in RW heads ever existed? It certainly hasn’t in my lifetime.

It’s always been a newspaper by and for comfortable middle class people.

Honestly I don't know, I don't read it cos I like my news impartial ;)

Getting this thread back on track, I got a text for my flu jab this morning. Called up the doctors to make an appointment and said when's the soonest you can do, they said Saturday or Sunday in London Fields (doctors is in Homerton). OK weird but went for Saturday afternoon.

As soon as I got off the phone got a text from the surgery offering my booster jab at the same time, so now I'm getting both.

Is this how it works now? Seems weirdly unproactive compared to first two jabs.

But is this how they're doing it? Relying on people to call up their GP?

It's only from some things the world of twitter points out to me. My initial thought was "Dawn Foster".

Interesting -are you saying that the Guardian journalists are less exact than others ? You don’t really provide anything other than personal anecdote . Were you working in PR or as a Journalist?
Thanks by the way for the faintly patrician suggestion that only those who’ve worked for the Guardian are able to gauge the quality of the journalism. There is so much wrong with that and I don’t like to be rude. In the spirit of this friendly forum I’m happy to discuss civilly via PM if you wish and if not we can agree to disagree.

I'm saying that their standards of journalism are sometimes lower, certainly lower than a lot of their readers imagine, and just because we personally prefer the politics of the Guardian it doesn't mean their journalists are more thorough or work to a higher standard.

I've worked in PR for 20 years and I worked (also in PR) for the world's largest news agency (who pride themselves on the quality of their journalism - with good reason) for 7 of those - sorry for any confusion. Working in PR for a media organisation is a strange meta sort of job but my access to the inner workings of said organisation, editors and the workings of other news org's (who were also clients) was incredible. So I didn't just see my own personal interactions with journalists, I saw when clients messed up using our content too...

I wasn't suggesting that only those who've worked for the Guardian are able to gauge the quality of the journalism (and I agree that would be wrong): I've been exposed to Guardian journalists enough professionally to get a pretty good idea though and when a news organisation takes an interest in where you work you know a lot more about the facts and what went into the piece than the average reader. Including, for example, when they have completely misrepresented a situation to suit their own editorial ends (n.b. very much not just the Guardian).

It's a difficult conversation to have frankly on a public forum because I still have a mortgage to pay, I could be a lot more open over a beer!

frank

i thought your name was Steve?

#inb4schick

Hi Joel Golby!

Yes I take the point that assuming that someones right just because I agree with them is a slippery slope ! I seem to be having regular depressing conversations these days with various relatives/inlaws about the reliability of news outlets and I'm grown increasingly protective of both the BBC & The Guardian as a result.

'It's a difficult conversation to have frankly on a public forum because I still have a mortgage to pay, I could be a lot more open over a beer!' - If they ever let me out I'll take you up on that one