BBC 6 Minute English 2018 How do you read your news

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hello and welcome to six minute English

I’m Sophie and I’m Neal what are you

reading

a news blog it says here that the fossil

of a two-headed dinosaur has been

discovered in Greece look look at this

picture Oh honestly Neil you shouldn’t

believe everything you read on the

Internet this story is from one of those

fake news websites that float about on

social media and you aren’t the only one

to get taken in even serious news

channels report these types of stories

as if they were true taken in means

fooled by something well I must admit I

did believe it and I didn’t know that

fake or pretend new science existed how

am I supposed to know what’s fake and

what’s real so many extraordinary things

happen that’s a good question and

actually digital news and its effect on

traditional newspapers is the subject of

today’s show the thing is if you read a

traditional print newspaper like I do

you’d find stories that are more

reliable once you can trust well enjoy

your traditional print newspaper while

you can Sophie because they’re going to

disappear pretty soon the same way as

the dinosaurs it is true that print

newspapers are feeling the pinch these

days and that means not making enough

money but I will miss them if they go

which brings me on to today’s quiz

question Neil how many national print

newspapers are currently sold in the UK

a day is it a seventy thousand be seven

hundred thousand or see seven million oh

well I’ll go for a seventy thousand it

can’t be much more than that surely well

we’ll find out whether you got the

answer right or not later in the show

but moving on now we’ve discussed one

disadvantage of digital news that it can

be hard to distinguish a real story from

a fake one given the mass of information

available on the web so maybe you should

tell us about the advantages Neil well

you can access news 24/7 and search for

it on your phone or

but without having to flip through pages

of stuff you aren’t interested in it

isn’t all in black and white and it

isn’t all about reading you can watch

and listen to and make comments of your

own okay well let’s listen to Tim Luc

Hurst professor of journalism at Kent

University to see what he thinks is

important in journalism nowadays it

doesn’t matter whether your local

journalist produces news on a tablet on

a mobile phone in print online on

television or on radio what matters is

that there should be a diversity of

journalism available and that it should

be provided by professional reporters

whose job is to do an honest objective

job impartially in the public interest

not simply to rant or express opinions

Tim not cursed there he says that news

will be successful or any platform

digital or traditional so long as

reporters are honest and objective in

their pursuit of a good story if your

objective it means you aren’t influenced

by personal feelings or opinions if you

rant you speak in an angry opinionated

way about something now newspapers need

to make money in order to pay their

journalists and with circulation falling

dramatically they need to find other

ways to make newspapers pay a newspaper

circulation is the number of copies it

distributes per day well selling more

advertising spaces one way isn’t it yes

but many advertisers are choosing to use

digital platforms because they reach a

wider and more targeted audience and

this is one reason why digital news is

taking over it can pay for itself

through advertising

I wouldn’t mind paying more for a

newspaper if I knew the quality of the

journalism is good but increasingly

people are expecting good quality

journalism for free newspapers have been

around since the invention of the

printing press and as chronicles or

written accounts of people’s lives are

an important historical resource let’s

listen to Alex Cox researcher at

genealogy website find my pass code UK

talking more about

this join the First World War local

papers always printed in memoriam

columns where they’d list local dead

what a lot of them also did was they

allowed relatives to submit short poems

about that deceased loved ones and some

of them are five or six lines not very

long but they’re really really quite

powerful and the paper dedicated page

space to print not just one of these but

multiple and I don’t know whether a

modern paper would even consider doing

that today deceased is another word for

dead in this case it refers to the

British soldiers who died in the First

World War

local papers at the time printed poems

written by the families of the dead men

those poems captured in print are an

important historical record of the time

indeed now remember Neil I asked him how

many national print newspapers are

currently sold in the UK a day is it a

seventy thousand be seven hundred

thousand or see seven million yes I

remember and I said seventy thousand

well I’m sorry Neil but you are wrong

the answer is actually C seven million

but the numbers are falling well that’s

still a few million more than I thought

now I think it must be time to hear the

words we learned today they are taken in

fake reliable feeling the pinch

objective rant circulation chronicles

deceased well that’s the end of today 6

minute English please join us again soon

goodbye

goodbye

six weeks English from the BBC

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