Mental Health Warnings

[poliphilo]

I'm all for freedom of the press, but maybe newspapers ought to come with warnings (printed across the front page in banner headlines) like those that are now mandatory for cigarette packets.

For example:

This paper is owned by tax exiles and contains Conservative party propaganda

or

This paper is written by and for left-wing people living in Islington

or

This paper is howlingly right-wing and once supported Hitler and Oswald Mosley.

or

This paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch (nuff said)

Most of us buy our newspaper for things other than its political bias; we buy it for the footie or the women's page or the arts coverage or the pictures of celebs- but the bias comes attached- like a virus- and- unless we're extremely self-aware- it'll infect us. I think we should be alerted to the risks we run.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

At least two of our national dailies here- the Express and the Independent are on the slide and the rest don't do much better.

[matrixmann]

Here it still didn't hit one of the big ones, but several smaller newspapers which are somewhat attached to the bigger publishing houses were cut away.
Some local newspaper in the area is very aggressive with 14-days-for-free trial subscriptions (the only thing about them otherwise is, they build up a net over years by which they can send letters - and I think, already even packages? - cheaper than the regular postal service and it's very commonly used meanwhile.)