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Political ignorance and the trial of wits
Seamus McCauley has been discussing political ignorance, and in timely fashion US research centre Pew has a report out called What Americans Know: 1989-2007. The clue’s in the subtitle: Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions. It tells us that people are a little less able to answer a few…
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Anything new under the sun?
We’re often berating ourselves in the media for overlooking important social and historical developments. Take the rise of Wahabism in Islam, for example. It appeared by stealth, you might imagine. And now read American journalist Charles Dudley Warner from 1881, on the impact of the wires on newspapers. …consider how much space is taken up…
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A little bit of money…
“What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global — a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online…
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Facts and opinion
The famous line of C.P.Scott, editor and the proprietor of the Guardian – “comment is free, but facts are sacred” – is immortalised not just in the Guardian‘s op-ed, but also in SacredFacts, Richard Sambrook‘s blog. Scott was in his seventies when he wrote the essay from which the line is taken, back in 1921.…