Controversial, ME? Whatever could you mean?

Of course, the thing about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is that it is such a controversial disease. Isn’t it?
I hate starting articles with direct quotes, so that little indirect observation is a very slight paraphrase of something a fellow journalist said to me a few weeks ago.
I just about resisted the temptation to respond by paraphrasing Joe [...]

Social superiority is all in the mind

I think I’ve found the research that BBC Breakfast managed to turn into a complete non-story last week.
As I suspected whilst not-so-quietly seething my way through the Beeb’s item, the research into social superiority does throw up some interesting points.
The BBC’s info-tainment approach focused on the snobbery element (it gave them a chance to put in [...]

Accent study locked in a timewarp

Wow, are we really still bothering with this kind of stuff?
Researchers at Bath Spa University have done a study of regional accents.
Yet another in-depth study into outdated stereotypes and time-warp misconceptions. I thought we’d slowly started to move on from such nonsense, but apparently not.
My criticism is not simply based on the fact that “speaking [...]

“Churnalism” has a familiar ring

A new book claims that national newspapers mainly recycle newswire copy and PR puff for their home news sections.
Describing this trend as “churnalism”, the book’s author says research shows that around 80 per cent of news stories in the quality UK national newspapers is not original copy generated by in-house journalists.
Nick Davies, a journalist with [...]