“Uxbridge residents stick by Boris Johnson despite Partygate report.”

How many doom-scrollers read this tweet from BBC Politics and didn’t bother clicking on the link? 

Me, for one.

You might reasonably conclude the BBC had commissioned some polling, particularly ahead of a crucial by-election. 

Wrong.

It turns out the link takes you to a write-up of a glorified vox pop, speaking to the grand total of…just let me get my calculator out here…6 people. (And one of those is actually “shaking with anger” at his contempt for the former PM.)

As polling expert Dr Will Jennings observes, “Vox pops are not a reliable tool for ascertaining voting intentions. Just think about the unrepresentativeness of who you might find to interview on a high street on a weekday. Pollsters were grappling with methodological challenges of where interviews are conducted 70 years ago.” 

I hate vox pops anyway. I hated them as a producer and I hate them now. But to grandly state that “Uxbridge residents stick by Boris Johnson” after speaking to the 6 people who could be bothered to stop and talk to the reporter is unforgivable.

READ MORE

It’s Monday 19th June.

Good morning. The week ahead…

Monday: David Cameron becomes the first politician to appear before the Covid-19 inquiry

Tuesday: Campsfield migrant centre planning decision due

Wednesday:  Latest inflation figures 

PM hosts the Ukraine Recovery Conference (and Thursday)

Thursday: Bank of England interest rate decision 

Friday: RCN ballot closes for nurses’ strike mandate

Seven years ago: UK held referendum on EU membership

Saturday: General election in Sierra Leone

The Reuters Digital News report for 2023 claims to reveal the 10 biggest news podcasts in the UK. 

(Note these aren’t necessarily the most-listened to. According to Reuters’ Nic Newman, “we use online survey methodologies to identify some of the most popular news podcasts.”)

Anyway, here are the runners and riders:

1. The Rest Is Politics
2. Newscast 
3. The News Agents 
4. Americast
5. Today In Focus (The Guardian) 
6. Ukrainecast 
7. The New Statesman Podcast 
8. Joe Rogan Experience
9. The Trawl 
10. Oh God, What Now? 

75% of podcast hosts of top-mentioned shows are men. 31% come from the BBC. 

READ MORE

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

H is for Heritage:

A word that has associations of Tudor piles and gothic churches for many – but not for some scientists. It can mean to researchers the background and history of investigations in a particular field. And there lies the problem. A mass media audience does not have time in the flow of an interview to work out what you mean. So healthcheck your terms – is there ambiguity? If so, explain it – or find another way of describing what matters.

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Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Footnotes:

An inquest jury decided Lord Lucan did murder the 29-year-old nanny of his three young children on this day in 1975.

Highs of 22 degrees in Liverpool today and 20 in Swansea.

And this week’s dog-pic-footnote…

Back on Monday. Have a good week.



Team Inside Edge

“Good journalism has nothing to do with sucking up to would-be authoritarians but rather it demands brave truth-telling.”

CNN Chief Chris Licht is given the boot. The always excellent Margaret Sullivan explains why…

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It’s Monday 12th June.

Good morning. The week ahead…

Monday: Legal attempts to stop asylum seeker camps being built in Wethersfield and Scampton are heard in the Court of Appeal

Tuesday: Evidence hearings begin in the Covid-19 Inquiry

Donald Trump will appear in court in Miami 

Wednesday: ITV Chief executive Carolyn McCall is quizzed by MPs on the channel’s handling of the Philip Schofield affair

Junior doctors begin three-day strike

Monthly UK GDP estimate

Thursday: 2023/24 Premier League fixtures announced

Friday: The Ashes first test begins

“I’ll tell you what’s toxic and I’ve always found it toxic. Aubergine. Do you like aubergine?”

Regular readers of the MMB will know we’ve a fairly short fuse when it comes to people playing it cute when being door-stepped by a press pack.

I’m yet to see an example of anyone adopting this tactic coming out with any credit and I’d include Gary Lineker – though there are many who disagree. However one thing on which we can surely all unite is that This Morning Editor Martin Frizell’s bizarre, smug response is a crashing new low…

Asked about the incident in front of a House of Commons committee Magnus Brooke, ITV’s director of strategy, policy and regulation said it was

“extremely ill-judged to say what he did”.

A disastrous visual at precisely the moment ITV were trying (and failing) to control the narrative. No wonder it didn’t go down well with his boss. As SNP MP John Nicolson observed:

“I wouldn’t like to be a young staffer going in talking to that editor about bullying given that that’s the way he treats the subject matter on camera in public.”

I thought it was interesting that at the PM’s immigration press conference after his photo op in Dover last week he took questions from the following:

The BBC

Channel 5

The Daily Mail

The Sun

The Times

Kent Online

ITV Meridian

Hardly a broad spectrum is it?

Cat Interrupts Interview. Example 45,763

WATCH HERE

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

G is for Gratitude:

Getting an interview request is a form of affirmation – journalists are interested in what you are doing or saying. But don’t let a warm glow cloud your judgement. As producers while we’re trying to get you signed up to the process we can be sweetness and light, but we could be jotting down at the same time the sort of challenging areas the presenter might lob at you when the camera is rolling. Accept that interviews can be robust but draw strength from effective preparation.

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Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Footnotes:

Aged just 55, Labour leader John Smith died on this day in 1994.

Highs of 25 degrees in Ipswich today and 24 in Glasgow.

And this week’s dog-pic-footnote…Stan has a new cushion:

Back on Monday. Have a good week.



Team Inside Edge

“It really gets my goat when there’s a story with a journalist talking about how they feel…”

The BBC’s International Editor Jeremy Bowen quoted at the Hay Festival expressing his irritation at reporters who insert emotions into their reports.

“I don’t give a damn about how they feel…while I myself have had some rough days, that’s not the story. If I’m miserable about it, it’s not the story. It’s not about me.”

READ MORE (paywall)

It’s Monday 5th June.

Good morning. The week ahead…

Monday: Prince Harry is back in the High Court as his battle with Mirror Group Newspapers continues – expected to take the stand Tuesday.

Tuesday: CBI members gather to vote on proposals for the organisation’s future purpose.

ITV quizzed on Phillip Schofield at Draft Media Bill committee session.

Wednesday: Mike Pence expected to launch 2024 campaign.

Thursday: Rishi Sunak makes his first official visit to Washington to meet with US President Joe Biden.

Friday: World Beard and Moustache Championship 

Here’s a question. What percentage of the UK population can remember the 52/48 split in the Brexit Referendum of 2016.

I’ll pop the answer in the footnotes, but have a read of this excellent blogpost from Mark Pack, which opens with this line:

A good rule of thumb is that the more involved you are in politics, the more you over-estimate how much everyone else knows about politics.

READ MORE

Westminster Insider’s latest podcast on the art of the political interview won’t tell you too much you didn’t already know, but it’s a cracking cast list, and Nick Robinson tells a terrific anecdote about Paddy Ashdown excelling in the dark art of unattributable briefings…

LISTEN HERE

The Sun is the least trusted newsbrand in the UK and the BBC is the most trusted, according to new research by Yougov.

READ MORE

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

F is for Fine-tuning:

Overlong preparation can be counter productive but some advance thinking and talking is essential. By saying that illustration aloud you’ll be able to gauge if you need to cut back on the background and get to the really revealing details quicker. It’s not about scripting but it is about testing important elements out conversationally. Share your ideas with a non–specialist in your field; a good indicator of how your words will land with a mainstream audience.

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Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Footnotes:

Re You The Editor from a fortnight ago – I’ve been (quite rightly) taken to task by a couple of readers for relegating the results of the Northern Ireland local elections to the lower end of the running order.

7 years on, 1 in 3 Brits can recall the 52/48 EU referendum result.

John Profumo resigned from government, admitting he lied to Parliament about his relationship with a call girl on this day in 1963.

Highs of 23 degrees in Glasgow today and 19 in Brighton.

And this week’s dog-pic-footnote…my brother’s dog Vesper. He (sibling, not canine) claims to read every word of the Briefing, so this will be an excellent test of whether that is actually the case. 

Back on Monday. Have a good week.



Team Inside Edge

“The Russians were hunting us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.”

The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism were announced earlier this month. I’d thoroughly recommend you take a few moments to read and watch the work of Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Lori Hinnant from the besieged city of Mariupol. It’s extraordinary stuff.

“We were reporting inside the hospital when gunmen began stalking the corridors. Surgeons gave us white scrubs to wear as camouflage.”

READ & WATCH

It’s Monday 22nd May.

Good morning. The week ahead…

Monday: Strikes bill vote in the House of Commons

French Open begins

Tuesday: RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Wednesday: Release of Consumer Price Index statistics

Thursday: Release of the UK’s annual net migration figures

Friday: Ofgem announces its latest change to the to the default energy tariff cap

Ofcom report on news consumption in the UK 

And the weekend…

Turkey’s presidential election goes to a runoff on Sunday

In a media training session recently I made an off-hand comment that in my opinion introverts often make better interviewees than extroverts. Someone in the room emailed me this week to ask why. Here’s what I wrote back: 

Introverts work harder to make connections with people they are talking to because that connection makes a potentially uncomfortable social setting a little easier. Translated to an interview context, I suspect it means an introvert has the knack of making a subject relevant to the audience and more rooted in their world. Extroverts don’t always try as hard to achieve that connection, because it isn’t as necessary to them. 

It’s just the beginning of a train of thought I’d be interested in exploring further. 

What do you think?

You The Editor 

A bizarre old running order on the BBC’s 10 o’clock news on Saturday night:

1. Phillip Schofield/This Morning
2. Suella Braverman/Speeding Fine 
3. Martin Amis obituary
4. Northern Ireland/Local Council Elections
5. G7/Zelensky in Hiroshima

What would have been yours? Email or tweet us your numbers.

(Mine – for what it’s worth – 2,5,3,1 4)

Radio listening figures (RAJARS) were released last week. It’s literally a bunch of people marking what they (think they) listened to in little diaries so take it with a pinch of salt, but…

1) LBC’s James O’Brien records his biggest audience ever with 1.5 million weekly listeners

2) Radio 4’s Today Programme loses 800,000 listeners in the past year

3) And despite all the ‘outrage’ at Steve Wright being replaced, Radio 2 are up on the quarter & Scott Mills actually increased numbers in that slot.

“A New York Times report was unsparing, calling Vice a “decayed digital colossus”, and noting that at one point it was thought to be worth a now-unfathomable $5.7bn.”

With Vice facing bankruptcy and Buzzfeed dead, what does it mean for the future of news? Margaret Sullivan considers…

READ MORE

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

E is for Edge:

A word that’s close to our hearts of course, and an ingredient that every good on air conversation contains. It’s the things that sharpen a guest’s contribution, that cuts through all the stuff people might be doing to reach the audience. It can be in the way you talk – that concern you bring to a troubling subject for example. In terms of content – that specific and telling example or a stonking stat are both ways to sharpen the conversational flow.

READ MORE

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideeedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Footnotes:

Thanks to Laura for following up on our CNN Trump Town Hall piece last week. She recommends this excellent article if you can stomach more. (The opening sentence is an absolute scorcher…)

READ MORE

Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, was sentenced to life imprisonment after the judge describes him as “an unusually dangerous man” on this day in 1981.

Highs of 22 degrees in Cardiff today and 20 in Derby.

And this week’s dog-pic-footnote…the shower-of-shame following an idyllic afternoon spent rolling in cow-poo:

Back on Monday, unless it’s a Bank Holiday. It’s hard to keep track.

Have a good week.



Team Inside Edge