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Stephen Tall

Kennedy defection rumours – another reason journalists are losing the public’s trust

By Stephen Tall | Sun 22nd August 2010 - 2:28 pm

So today, at last, the news media is finally reporting the pretty unsurprising news that Charles Kennedy, leader of the Lib Dems from 1999 to 2006, is not leaving the Lib Dems in 2010.

Now it is of course the silly season, and we can easily write off this journalistic confection as mere desperation to fill some column inches / dead air-time. But actually I think it’s a symptom of a wider malaise in political journalism, its ‘tabloidisation’.

How an unsourced rumour went viral

Let’s go back to Friday afternoon, when the Kennedy defection rumours started circulating, and work out how …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , and | 54 Comments
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