The State Of Welsh Media

The sun is shining, Covid-19 is thankfully receding and the pubs are open again!  But, alas, the Welsh (and British) media is still churning out negativity…

Welsh Media Crisis

When I was growing up we had a few daily newspapers and one or two TV channels. That’s where we got our official news. Establishment bias yes, small ‘c’ conservative maybe but at least we had the pub. We had our work place, our neighbours, school and the street. We took what ‘they’ told us with a pinch of salt, realised ‘they’ were out of touch and rarely spoke for us. But, there was a difference. The media at least tried to inform, misguided though they often were. Investigative journalists found out stuff by talking to real people and then writing about it. The press also exposed corruption, even though they often kept other scandals hidden from us (just think the Royal Family and Jimmy Saville).

Today the press seems to have turned full circle. They are now firmly on the left (TV anyway) and now hide a different form of crime from us. But let’s ignore that for a bit and look at Wales.

So what are our choices when it comes to being kept informed in Wales today? Well, we have a newspaper / website — ‘Wales Online’, and we have the ‘regional’ news from BBC Wales. Yep, that’s about it – an English(?) multimedia brand (Reach PLC) and the BBC treating Wales like lesser Yorkshire.

Some would argue that the Western Mail stopped pretending to be a news source after overpaid journalists drinking in a famous city centre pub revealed that the last cat found up a tree in Aberdare was in 1972.

‘Aye mun, Tibbles was a great story. We strung that one out for years. We did features, spinoffs and vox pops for ages. Those were the halcyon days alright. We recycled that heart-wrenching news from St Davids Day until Christmas,’ said Arthur Testicle, science reporter.

Official figures for the newspaper show that it has an average circulation of 13,419, down from over 40,000 in 2007. This will only get worse of course (until the paper eventually folds) as more people find their news in the only place you can get the truth these days — the pubs the journalists don’t drink in anymore.

Many backward-thinking commentators and news organisations still mistakenly think that the future of news is online. They have invested heavily in this area, but to be honest they have no idea what real people think (living in their metropolitan bubbles as they do) and very soon that medium will fade too.

Online Policy

‘Our new, specially designed website shows the direction Wales’ premier media outlet will be taking from now on,’ reported chief editor Mrs Gladys Bouquet.

She continued, ‘We now have so many adverts, popups and affiliate links to dodgy US conglomerates posing as quirky news articles when really all they are is email harvesters and generic Viagra sellers that it is almost impossible for any viewer to actually end up on our own pages. Just as well really as we don’t bother to write anything important there anymore.

‘Of course there was a time when journalists actually investigated stories, tried to uncover the truth, read press releases and acted upon them but nowadays we just think what the hell, let’s just feed them any old shit — no-one cares about anything anymore anyway and even if they did they certainly wouldn’t believe a word we said!

‘With more and more teachers leaving the profession most people can’t read anymore or are too busy liking fake news or cat pictures on Facebook to actually give a flying f*@k about what’s happening to their sad little third world country,’ she added.

Different Approach

Across the road from the self-styled ‘voice of Wales’, at their new Orwellian HQ, BBC Wales has revealed that their approach is very different however.

‘We are desperate not to lose the license fee which pays for our jollies, foreign travel, plush hotels and sexy Christmas parties so we take a different view. We try to bombard the reader with so much information that they just get overwhelmed and only read the headlines,’ said Mohammed Khan, Head of the Ministry for Information.

‘We also use the ‘repeat, repeat, repeat’ mantra. If we say a thing enough times, no matter how crazy, false, unevidenced or just plain lies people start to believe it. Then we take that assumption and debate from there. Well, when I say debate, what I actually mean is we get a so-called expert to reinforce our narrow view until you have no choice but to fall for it. Take the following:

‘housing crisis’, (there are more empty properties than homeless people)
‘Britain is racist’ (the Race Relations Act was in 1965)
‘second wave’ (SARS and MERS never had one…)

‘This way we can brainwash everyone with our left-wing, politically correct ideology and make you feel it is OK to ‘hug a hoodie’, ‘cuddle a Qaeda’ or bomb Israel. We censor so much news now that we have even started to believe the crap we put out ourselves,’ he/she/it added.

Possible Conflict

Some people have argued that there is a possible clash ahead when the Western Mail (a rag that has always been a big rugby paper, albeit with correspondents that know nothing about rugby) goes head to head with BBC Wales because they are fast becoming so diverse that soon everyone will be so diverse that diversity will cease to exist as everyone is or wants to be or is perceived to be or is addressed on Twitter as diverse. (The BBC is due to spend £100 million on making the organisation ‘more diverse‘ even though they only spend on £76 million on S4C!).

‘I have a dream,’ said Spike Susan Thornberg, Head of Gay Nicaraguan Whales for Theatre Splott.

‘Soon football will be a thing of the past and trans vegan Muslims will come together everywhere (apart from Tylorstown obviously) and join flippers in solidarity for our sisters in the Bristol Channel.’

Oh bugger, why do I bother. I’m emigrating to Hungary — nice fruity reds there…


You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *