Monday 3 January 2011

No-story stories

I bought a tabloid Sunday newspaper yesterday. I like contentious political remarks and I also like political comments with which I can strongly agree. I have read the political pages in this paper and my one strong resolution is not to buy this paper again. I may break this rule if they give away a DVD that I want to watch but it certainly won't be for the paper.

There were three political stories. I'll just mention one. It started with a conditional sentence and then gave no evidence that the first set of circustances could ever occur. It was a no-story story. I don't want to identify this paper so I'll make another story up. If MPs were paid nothing then would this affect our parliamentary system? Then I would write a few paragraphs and call it news.

The Daily Telegraph (it wasn't the Sunday Telegraph yesterday) tried a variation on this technique recently. They had no story so they sent undercover reporters to get ministers to say that they don't believe in every government policy. I really think you could do this with any minister but they picked on Liberal Democrats. I wonder why?

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