Already, with precious little currently to report, the newspapers (and, I presume, the broadcast media) are doing a Proverb 26:11, revisting its stories of the past year, and with it their distorted world view.

That view is the cumulative effect of their output. Some of those stories are pure invention. A few are reported accurately but all reflect the inbuilt selection bias of a media which leaves far more information unused than is ever reported. Nevertheless, this is a media that finds space (and time) for acres of trivia and tat - and multiple pages for saturation coverage of single stories - thus completely distorting the news agenda and our perception of it.

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The British public may well wake up this year when they really start to hurt for at the moment most are still unaware of the hardships that lie ahead.

Of course the other thing that would help promote 'our truth' is for someone with the same understanding of what is wrong as us, with loads of dosh like a Jimmy Goldsmith, starts to broadcast the way the world really is.

I live in hope that the publics will get their heads out their bottoms any time soon and smell the coffee!

I recalled recently that the wartime (1940) Observer carried 35 news stories on one page, compared with an average of 3.5 stories per page in the current edition of the Sunday Telegraph. You had more news on one page then than in the entire newspaper of today.

This is our problem. We have the media focusing on a tiny amount of news, then often giving several full pages to one story, excluding so much else. We are not thus given the opportunity to evaluate the truth ... the detail is absent. But unless the public developing a degree of scepticism and then deciding to widen its own breadth (which it can using the internet), I don't see anything changing.

I remember in the 1980s journalists reporting from communist countries that people didn't believe official propaganda. Yet now journalists repeat almost word for word press releases from the government and political parties and follow up leads "leaked" by professional spinners. The British are indeed far too trusting.

Peter Hitchens is fond of saying that government propaganda is more to remind people that they are subservient than it is actually to persuade anybody.

It has been said many times on this blog that unfortunately there are large swathes of the population that do not bother, even in this day and age, to go an look for news that is out there on the internet. They will stop and have a look at the MSM websites and they completely ignore the rest, such as this blog and other great independent blogs that are available. One thing that gets me is the complete and utter nonsense regarding "slebs". On the Wail website, even on the main page, the right hand side is loaded with "sleb" tat, most of whom I have never heard of and care even less about. I stopped buying any newspaper almost 3 years. I work with people who truly believe that people who write blogs like this are written by sad middle-aged men who still live with their mums. That is why the global warming scam was able to escalate until the Climategate emails appeared and it was TOO big a story for the MSM to ignore.

To be fair, it is difficult to engage in the issues at the start. It is like joining a conversation half way through where everybody else knows what is being discussed. It is a very steep learning curve if you have never really taken any interest in politics before. You get bombarded with information and you have to make a real, long term effort to understand it all.

Because of this I think there is a huge gap in the market for media that breaches the gap between the simpletons in the mainstream media and the more "hardcore" material on the internet. I could have really done with that in the early days (2006/2007) when I was struggling to understand Iain Dale's Diary and ConservativeHome.

You have detailed the main reasons why I gave up buying a daily newspaper - most were more interested in big-brother than the financial crisis, and foreign news, short of a tragedy like an earthquake was virtually non existent.
Internet news from reliable sources covers the world, and comment from bloggers enables you to read different viewpoints. I just wonder how much longer newspapers will continue to exist.

I think we might see the end of the Grauniad some time very soon, and one wonders how long The Times can go on losing money before it goes under. The Failygraph is surviving on the internet advertising bubble, but it won't be that long before the advertisers realise they are being had, and go elsewhere.

Something back in the papers is the whole fox hunting law, or lack of it. The fact that you are a scientist Doc and a right wing person, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on FH.

I have just received Heather Brooke's book "The Silent State, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy". I looked at the reviews on Amazon and one of the reviewers of the book wrote this:

"This book is by the American (I think) lady journalist who blew open the UK Parliament's expenses scandal and one had to wonder where were all those highly-paid "political experts" on BBC, press etc, who seemed to be willing to cooncur with the freeloading and outright fraud of our so-called "democratic representatives". Heather Brooke is heroic and deserves more recognition."

An Ian Millard wrote this and it is true really isn't it? Where are all the highly-paid "political experts"?

Take a few minutes to listen to Michael Buerk talking about the media, government and AGW.

http://ak-media.soundcloud.com/dEzJKX4w ... 6529bd659d

It was linked from here:

http://www.thefifthcolumn.co.uk/the-agitator/

In one, with that observation there Richard.

I stare at the Torygraph content and despair but as you say, nowadays the DT is a meld of the graun + Daily Star without the tits [but tits abound all over the copy]. Since the Barclay takeover, objectivity and reasoned reportage has gone - cub reporters with nothing between the ears dominate the columns, even the [book and music] reviews are not worth the effort of reading. The owners have turned the Telegraph into a comic.

On occasion, I take the Times but only for light relief, the crossword and I quite enjoy reading Kaletsky tripping himself up but gleaning the good stuff from the chaff is an effort and the bumptiousness of Aaronovitch is an awesome thing to behold.

I am bereft, the control of the media is by design [censorship/bread and circuses] - or do I read too much into it - I'd say with the current journalistic standards that, that was an impossibility.

nowadays it is as though, every story has to be turned into a short and snappy headline, as though the public cannot handle too many words and cannot cope with the detail (for some people its true). Cameron's fantasy 'veto' is a case in point, (put briefly) most people I have spoken to about it actually believe Cameron has been some sort of patriot and that he actually stopped a treaty. For the simple minds you can only ask them what he stopped and explain, even then some don't want to listen. it is true people tend to listen only to what the msm and politicians say and their unqualified authority means that people will take what they say as fact. unless the public is somehow made to look behind the headlines and what they are told they will remain oblivious.

More likely it's the hacks themselves that can't handle more than the most superficial concepts. They excuse it by saying it's their readers, but their readers are leaving in droves because they can't stand the shallow, brainless twaddle fed to them by shallow, brainless twats.

I think that very closely approximates my view on this subject. Although much in the comments is often dross, as often they demonstrate that the readers know far more than the journalists.