4 ms·

You aren't reading much press in the UK then. Openly anti-Brexit: the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Economist, Sky News, BBC News (e.g. their famous "desp

You aren't reading much press in the UK then. Openly anti-Brexit: the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Economist, Sky News, BBC News (e.g. their famous "despite brexit" spin on every good news story). The UK is really the only country in Europe that has a press that's willing to attack the EU and (uselessly) try to hold it to account. I've always been surprised when reading German news how flimsy so much of their broadsheet press really is. Die Zeit's "interview" with Farage being a good example of the low quality that passes for highbrow media there. Remember the Google.co.uk trending searches for the day after the referendum included 'what is the EU' You're doing what so many EU fans do, you're repeating myths whilst believing you're above believing myths. The Google graphs that people cited at that time didn't show any volume, but volume data was available via their ad planner tool. What that showed is that volume for that query is absolutely minimal, even a huge spike would still amount to virtually nobody typing in such a query. Almost certainly, given the wordy phrasing, those queries were coming from children via speech recognition. https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2016/06/28/brexit-and-the-two-faces-of-google-adwords-data/#49ac14d82ef6 https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2016/06/28/brexit... But sure, you go on and tell yourself that most people were simply repeating things they read in the press.

cirrus-clouds 8y ago
> You aren't reading much press in the UK then. Neither are you. Researchers at Loughborough University analysed Brexit coverage on TV and in the press in the lead up to the referendum. They found that coverage, when weighted by circulation, was 80% in favour of Brexit and 20% against. Source: https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage-2016-eu-referendum-report-5-6-may-22-june-2016/ https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage...
- repolfx 8y ago
  I wasn't making any claims about weighting by circulation, only refuting the point that the media is very pro Brexit. In reality it's split about 50/50. But again, trying to go from "what the media supports" to "what people voted for" is a correlation/causation fallacy. There are plenty of anti-Brexit papers to read. If people largely choose not to, that probably implies they don't think those papers are very good.
  - jimnotgym 8y ago
    > If people largely choose not to, that probably implies they don't think those papers are very good Another way to interpret that is that people read the Sun and the Mail for reasons entirely unrelated to Brexit, such as celebrity gossip (The Economist and FT are pretty lacking in those areas). However, perhaps the constant drip feed of anti-EU/Anti-immigration stories in there have given them a certain impression of the EU, alongside their daily non-political entertainment. Perhaps people would care to Google why the current UK foreign secretary was sacked by The Times, or the 'Bendy Bannanas' debacle?
    - repolfx 8y ago
      But that cuts both ways. The pro-EU press gives a misleading impression as well, usually by refusing to report on any story that makes the EU look bad, or by putting a spin on events that blames member states instead of the institutions. After all, by your argument influential people go read the Financial Times because they think it suits their station in life, or because they want financial news, and end up being exposed to a constant litany of pro-EU stories, resulting in them voting that way in the referendum (and not only voting but being quoted by other campaigners and news outlets as 'experts', a perk accorded to the sorts of people who read the Economist but not the Daily Mail). After all, the FT literally flies the EU flag above its headquarters. Not exactly a neutral source, is it.
jimnotgym 8y ago
> You aren't reading much press in the UK then. That's a pretty low-brow comment. >Openly anti-Brexit: the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Economist, Sky News, BBC I completely disagree with you about the BBC as a whole. BBC Question Time, for instance have had Nigel Farage as a guest more times than anyone else! John Humphrys on radio 4s Today programme is so biased it is embarrassing. James O'Brian claims he had to leave Newsnight over the editorial policy. On the others your 50/50 claim is to ignore completely the circulation. It seems like a very strange approach to count minority publications as having the same impact as The Daily Mail/Sun/Telegraph/Times/Express[0]. I don't recall seeing 'the man on the street' reading the FT or Economist recently? The Guardian is also split on Brexit because there are so many pro-Corbyn writers who are defending his policy on Brexit (which is broadly speaking to not-oppose the government). [0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Un... edit: > You're doing what so many EU fans do, you're repeating myths whilst believing you're above believing myths. That is rather a slur on a large group of people. A group I certainly did not belong to before the referendum, however I was rather guided towards them by my instinctive dislike for the far-right and their anti-immigration demagoguery. My instinctive dislike for people who make statements like, "we have all had enough of experts", and people who paint lies on the side of buses and tour the country with them. People who break the spending rules at elections for instance[1]. I'm not going to argue this any further, this is HN not a political forum, but your comment stinks. [1]:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/11/leaveeu-fined-70k-breaches-of-electoral-law-eu-referendum https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/11/leaveeu-fin...

cirrus-clouds 8y ago

> You aren't reading much press in the UK then. Neither are you. Researchers at Loughborough University analysed Brexit coverage on TV and in the press in the lead up to the referendum. They found that coverage, when weighted by circulation, was 80% in favour of Brexit and 20% against. Source: https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage-2016-eu-referendum-report-5-6-may-22-june-2016/ https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage...

repolfx 8y ago
I wasn't making any claims about weighting by circulation, only refuting the point that the media is very pro Brexit. In reality it's split about 50/50. But again, trying to go from "what the media supports" to "what people voted for" is a correlation/causation fallacy. There are plenty of anti-Brexit papers to read. If people largely choose not to, that probably implies they don't think those papers are very good.
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  > If people largely choose not to, that probably implies they don't think those papers are very good Another way to interpret that is that people read the Sun and the Mail for reasons entirely unrelated to Brexit, such as celebrity gossip (The Economist and FT are pretty lacking in those areas). However, perhaps the constant drip feed of anti-EU/Anti-immigration stories in there have given them a certain impression of the EU, alongside their daily non-political entertainment. Perhaps people would care to Google why the current UK foreign secretary was sacked by The Times, or the 'Bendy Bannanas' debacle?
  - repolfx 8y ago
    But that cuts both ways. The pro-EU press gives a misleading impression as well, usually by refusing to report on any story that makes the EU look bad, or by putting a spin on events that blames member states instead of the institutions. After all, by your argument influential people go read the Financial Times because they think it suits their station in life, or because they want financial news, and end up being exposed to a constant litany of pro-EU stories, resulting in them voting that way in the referendum (and not only voting but being quoted by other campaigners and news outlets as 'experts', a perk accorded to the sorts of people who read the Economist but not the Daily Mail). After all, the FT literally flies the EU flag above its headquarters. Not exactly a neutral source, is it.

jimnotgym 8y ago

> You aren't reading much press in the UK then. That's a pretty low-brow comment. >Openly anti-Brexit: the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Economist, Sky News, BBC I completely disagree with you about the BBC as a whole. BBC Question Time, for instance have had Nigel Farage as a guest more times than anyone else! John Humphrys on radio 4s Today programme is so biased it is embarrassing. James O'Brian claims he had to leave Newsnight over the editorial policy. On the others your 50/50 claim is to ignore completely the circulation. It seems like a very strange approach to count minority publications as having the same impact as The Daily Mail/Sun/Telegraph/Times/Express[0]. I don't recall seeing 'the man on the street' reading the FT or Economist recently? The Guardian is also split on Brexit because there are so many pro-Corbyn writers who are defending his policy on Brexit (which is broadly speaking to not-oppose the government). [0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Un... edit: > You're doing what so many EU fans do, you're repeating myths whilst believing you're above believing myths. That is rather a slur on a large group of people. A group I certainly did not belong to before the referendum, however I was rather guided towards them by my instinctive dislike for the far-right and their anti-immigration demagoguery. My instinctive dislike for people who make statements like, "we have all had enough of experts", and people who paint lies on the side of buses and tour the country with them. People who break the spending rules at elections for instance[1]. I'm not going to argue this any further, this is HN not a political forum, but your comment stinks. [1]:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/11/leaveeu-fined-70k-breaches-of-electoral-law-eu-referendum https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/11/leaveeu-fin...