https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/february-2026/and-that-was-the-news/Those were the days of the landline and the telex, when local papers thrived and morning editions of London daytime papers were eagerly awaited. Journalists were methodical reporters who, for the most part, gathered information, checked facts and filed their copy. Opinions, on the other hand, were left to leader writers or the occasional columnist. Editors were courted by politicians of all parties and sometimes by industrial leaders. It all seemed to work quite well.
The world is completely changed today. Those newspapers that are left have tiny circulations in print, which are sustained by heavily discounted subscription offers. They rely on online readership to generate revenue and hold their relevance. They are surrounded, if not engulfed by, an ever-expanding social media where what is referred to as news is very often simply hearsay or malicious gossip peddled by interested parties for the sake of sensationalism. It is a colossal jungle of drivel, which is difficult to navigate without being tainted by the nature of the stories unleashed. The scale of this shift from “legacy media” is astounding. According to Ofcom’s 2025 News Consumption Survey, only a third of Britons now read a newspaper (and mostly online; only a fifth still read a physical newspaper) whilst half the population get their information from social media.
The BBC had finally got some real competition, which it did not like. It formed a ludicrous unit called BBC Verify which was set up to emphasise the broadcaster’s holier-than-thou approach to news, whilst at the same time its coverage of the war in Gaza has, with justification, been criticised for its acceptance of propaganda from Hamas and refusal to refer to it as a terrorist organisation, despite its being thus decreed by the UK and US governments. So often in recent years the BBC has sadly demonstrated that the news management of our national broadcaster can at times be both incompetent and biased.
