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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