This is definitely true. I remember when being so aggressively anti-intellectual was only the preserve of the tabloid press. But the rest of the political media (other papers/broadcast etc) have been creeping down to that norm in the last few years.

I have no solutions. But it's worth bearing in my mind that a well run NHS should have spare capacity (i.e. thumb twiddling in places) otherwise patient safety is compromised, especially in emergencies

Fair enough. They probably have to do both - i.e. make their own cases for what they're doing and why (which they don't do nearly strongly enough in my view) AND rebut criticisms wherever they come from. They do need to get much better and more confident in their comms, I think we can all agree.

Thanks for replying. I get that, but to my mind the debate on immigration is informed by so much that isn't actually that relevant. And thus 'concerns' that might be sorted by e.g. housing or health outcomes, are narrated as 'concerns about immigration.' Can't blame gov for pushing back with this.

How can you please people whose concerns you think are based on false premises?

This isn't what happened. But then, wouldn't want the truth to get in the way of your narrative would you?

Oh sure, they overpaid which isn't the film's fault. Mind you, I didn't actually think the film was very good either but that's not relevant here.

That's true, it's never going to be a blockbuster. But nevertheless, it's probably worth noting because it does have a big star in the lead and - the bit that maybe justifies its inclusion here - Mubi seemed to have paid $24m for it. Which is quite a lot.

I thought this cap is actually popular, no? Obviously it should be scrapped, but the fact that it's going under the radar is presumably a good thing for labour if, as the polls suggest, it would be more popular to keep it.

God that countdown clock was one of the creepiest things ever, even at the time it was disgusting. I bet the editors of some of the papers that reported that are on the airwaves as we speak, decrying the bbc....

Thanks for your good wishes. Always nice to be patronised for pointing out the facts. Of course, you may be right - along with most of the lobby it seems - but I still think it's misleading to give your own speculation, however widely it's shared in westminster, the same status as historical fact.

Hold up. They still have this majority. Starmer is still PM. 'It has been wasted' to me seems premature indeed.

Finally, a bit of a reality check from our 2024 election book (out soon!) for everyone hyperventilating about collapsing public trust in the BBC - free to air TV (mostly the BBC) is still the most widely consumed and widely trusted source of news - blows print, online & social media out of the water

Yes but this just begs the question - if you did that to 'suggest a meaning that isn't there' then there's no issue, you'd be a bad historian. But what if you thought the meaning was there? Then someone comes along and says 'no it's not', would you then hold your hand up to 'malpractice'?

Yeah, and they were almost certainly getting a lot of shit for giving away for 'free' stuff paid for by the license fee. So thanks for pointing out that the BBC will get shit from both sides on pretty much every binary decision there is.

If you saw all of Trump's speeh and interpreted it as 'he's inciting the crowd to attack the Capitol.' And you wrote a piece about it, wouldn't good practice be to quote from the speech to illustrate? Short of reproducing the speech in full, wouldn't any such process be open the same criticism?

Thank you for replying. To me, it's clearly a mistake (in the sense that even if you were very anti-trump, such an edit is not a good thing to do) but whether it was intended to be deliberately misleading is unclear. I mean, we see 'edits' of every political speeches every day.

How can you be sure 'they loathed trump' and that was the reason for the edit? Seems like you're guessing at the motivations of an unidentified person. And when is a mistake malpractice? This is a genuine question, as I'm not sure - but you seem sure, so can you tell me?