It is a sad fact widely known that much of what fills our daily newspapers is not journalism as we once knew it. Gone are the days of reporters putting in the leg work to uncover a story, check facts and harvest opinion. Now so much of what passes for journalism is re-hashed (un-verified?) copy from news agencies and, worse still, press and PR departments of other organisations.
Whether this is due to dwindling resources or dwindling talent in the industry is up to you to decide, but this particular corker from the Daily Post caught my eye this morning.
You can often tell when a news story began life as a press release – but usually it is at least disguised by adding a comment from someone with an opposing point of view. Not in this case.
Nevertheless, what is bad for journalism (and democratic accountability) is good for [Wrexham AM] Lesely Griffiths, right? Her press team must be delighted that their propaganda was transmitted freely and without scrutiny. Pity it’s such a dull story though.
And one other thing puzzles me. Why did this appear today when the government announced it more than two weeks ago?
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Surely there is a case for a Press Agency for Wales, along the line of Reutuers or AFP who would disseminate key stories from the Assembly or Welsh issues from Westminster to local papers. It seems unlikely that there is going to be a national newspaper for Wales, in either language, any time soon, but we could use such a company to proivde decent political stories to local newspspers / papurau’r fro and the like.