A new season starts soon, bringing with it a fresh school year. New classes, new schools, new friends. After a long hot summer, with protests across the country, increased restrictions on social media, and the narrative around migrants and the Middle East almost constantly across the front pages, can we expect a new narrative to emerge over the autumn?
My hunch is that we cannot. As more and more news becomes available across all kinds of online mediums, our newspaper (and wider media) industry comes under ever-increasing pressure to showcase what sells.
Weaponisation of the media
Sadly, what sells is rarely positive stories (this august publication being a notable counter-cultural exception!) Moreover, as temperatures increase and points of view get more extreme, accusations of the weaponisation of the media tend to fly about. How is a piece framed, what has been selectively omitted, how have heartstrings been pulled? Being completely objective is perhaps impossible (especially when attempting to craft a piece designed to generate comment!) but as the think tank Theos reminds us ‘nobody stands nowhere’.
Lessons from a three-hour church service
It's sometimes said that culture is like a river. To fully appreciate its flow, you need to get in it. …