Tag Archives: The News Manual

Why is it so hard to ask ‘Says who?’

In the age of fake news and everywhere media, the information soup in which we all swim is made up of almost everything anyone says on almost any issue one can imagine. An awful lot of it is false and it can be poisonous. So, it is important we can tell the difference between the truth and falsehoods, either by discovering the truth for ourselves or by sharing it with people we can rely on. Thus, the critical importance of asking “Says who?” Read More

Social media are mixed blessings for journalists

It is hard to imagine life without social media – or to remember the world before it. Whether you love them or hate them, use or avoid them, social media have been enormously influential, almost as powerful as the internet itself. That is partly because even those people not directly linked, liked, shared or tweeted on social media find themselves inescapably swimming in the social media soup created by everyone else. Read More

Goodbye Mr Grass Roots

An era of sorts ended in 2011 with the death of cartoonist Bob Browne, the creator of Mr Grass Roots, perhaps Papua New Guinea’s most loved comic character, “the social conscience of PNG”. Browne’s life and work could be read as an allegory of change in the Pacific. He came as a British volunteer in 1971 and stayed through thick and thin until his death. This was one of our best-read articles, proving journalism is about people. Read More