As we learned from reading our textbook – or at least from reviewing the midterm in class – news media are not held in high regard by the public. Research by the University of Leeds, our text points out on page 3, shows that “while people rely heavily on the media for information, most of them distrust the media’s motives and operational methods.” They feel the news organisations are ‘just looking for a story’ and are driven primarily by circulation and audience figures. The scepticism affected all media, but mostly the press, and the tabloid press in particular. That was more than a decade ago. Are the news media more or less trusted now? Well, if a new study titled “Bias, Bullshit and Lies” is anything to judge by, public trust in the news media has likely sunk even lower in the past 10 years. It was released last week by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford and polled almost 18,000 people in nine countries (U.S., Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain, Denmark
A blogger who posts once or twice a day might be considered prolific. Manuel Delia often posts hard-hitting commentary four or five times a day. He obviously has a lot to say, and Malta needs citizen journalists like him now more than ever following the outrageous assassination of crusading blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia last month. A former full-time political operative – he served as press secretary to Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami and in total spent a decade in PN administrations – Delia has been on the sidelines since unsuccessfully contesting the general elections in 2013. That certainly hasn’t stopped him from speaking out on the issues roiling Malta. He does so, according to his Truth be told blog, by combining his inside knowledge with “some theoretical background and considerable experience in the field” to provide insights that help readers to “scratch a little bit deeper beneath the surface." Manuel Delia Delia does more than simply comment on events.