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Belfasttelegraph

News [1]
Opinion [2]
Business [3]
Sport [4]
Life [5]
Entertainment [7]
Travel [8]
Sunday Life [9]

Menu Sections

Readers Editor

August 2016

Farewell dear readers, your knowledge and passion amazed me

All good things, as they say, come to an end. And so it is with this one.

We need to fight planned law threatening journalistic freedom

The battle for freedom of expression is never-ending, even in democratic countries like the UK.

I'm in paradise when I witness art of headline writing at its best

Back recharged after a break in Athens and the Cyclades Islands in the heart of the Aegean Sea.

July 2016

ITV’s £100m deal to buy UTV’s television assets was completed back in February

Eclipse of UTV brand sad, but that is media world we now live in

And so farewell UTV. Yes, it's true you live on, a shadow of your former self, on our screens in the form of UTV Live and UTV Life and, er, well that's more or less about it at the moment.

June 2016

Councils could help restore hope by being a little more parochial

A common theme of the Belfast Telegraph postbag is local representation - or the lack of it. By 'local', on this occasion, I mean very local; not Stormont. For on the Hill we have a surfeit of representatives.

May 2016

Make Beeb more accountable, yes, but don't let it be neutered

Things ain't half hotting up over the recent White Paper on the BBC. First we had the Beeb's well-timed "exclusive" on John Whittingdale's dominatrix lover (true), then the luvvies' panic over the impending evisceration of BBC drama (untrue) and the (entirely reasonable) contents of said paper.

South's weak Press code letting Mail off hook over Buncrana

A few weeks back I wrote about the controversy involving the Irish Mail on Sunday and a bogus interview with Derry woman Louise James, who lost almost her entire family in the Buncrana pier tragedy.

April 2016

What do you think of your new, made over Belfast Telegraph?

During the past week or so, the Belfast Telegraph has had a redesign. Not one of those heavy makeovers that have readers sputtering into their morning coffee, then penning indignant missives to the editor.

Why you can find the very soul of a newspaper in its letters page

Like most readers, I reserve a special place for the letters page. Editors and marketers may sculpt and focus group-test a newspaper to within an inch of its life, but it's the letters page that really sums up the readership.

A more hi-tech regional Press would reassure whistleblowers

Anyone who believes journalism is dead should look at the Panama Papers. Likewise, anyone who believes the mainstream media is toast should do the same.

Buncrana: Irish Mail on Sunday has questions still to answer

Last week the Irish Mail on Sunday apologised to Louise James, the Derry woman who lost her partner, mother, sister and two sons in the Buncrana pier tragedy.

March 2016

Belfast Telegraph balanced in EU debate, but papers free to be partisan

Easter is early this year, meaning there will be a long run-up to the summer. What will make it even longer, for some anyway, is the sheer amount of politics - local and national - to be endured in the meantime.

Adam Johnson: Why putting people in the picture can be risky business

A salutary lesson should have been learned this week by anyone who thinks the mere act of pixelating a photo will make it OK for publication.

FoI is safe for now, but don't crack open the bubbly just yet

This was described as a good week for transparency campaigners, with the Government not yielding to pressure for major reforms to the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

February 2016

Debating languages can be great craic, or is that crack?

You can always rely on a good old provocative piece about 'Norn Iron' culture to get Tele readers' juices flowing. Nelson McCausland did precisely that with an invective about the use of the word 'craic', not just north and south of the border, but across the water as well.

The 'our 'lawyers' warning on Robert Black funeral exclusive was tabloidy. But it was also blunt and effective.

A common question from readers is: "Where do stories come from?" The bland answer to that is, of course, from a whole range of sources. When told that one of these sources is follow-ups from other media, often the next question is: "How do we know which ones these are?"

Disdain for the public over vile killer's funeral utter disgrace

Sometimes it's difficult to understand why some politicians and civil servants are determined to keep the public in the dark about so many matters.

January 2016

Johnston Press belt-tightening puts squeeze on Northern Ireland weeklies

There are rumblings of a shake-up within Johnston Press, which owns several newspapers in Northern Ireland including the News Letter.

Censorship on the campus... from the daft to the disturbing

Readers may remember the Belfast Telegraph reporting last year how Queen's University had managed to get itself into a bit of a twist over free speech.

A week when humble pie was on the menu for our food critic

A bit of a chuckle was had by manys a Tele reader last week at the expense of two normally solid entities.

Ipso proves it can stand up to big boys with Jeremy Corbyn ruling

Ipso, the new Press watchdog, continues to make progress, despite having more enemies than Donald Trump's speechwriter.

December 2015

Have a happy Christmas and a very merry silly season

Silly season (noun): "A time of year, usually in mid-summer or during a holiday period, characterised by exaggerated news stories, frivolous entertainments, outlandish publicity stunts and so on. Example: The Shroud (of Turin) is generally lumped in with silly season subjects, such as Atlantis, yetis and UFOs." (Source: Dictionary.com).

PC footie chiefs dropped the ball by ruling kids' results offside

The following story is one of those yarns that immediately incites head-scratching and predictable rumblings of political correctness gone mad.

Papers cannot now complain if their inaction ends in caning

Some significant changes have been made to the Editors' Code of Practice, which is the cornerstone of the self-regulation system used by almost all the UK's newspapers.

November 2015

We must mind our language when it comes to evil fanatics

Readers have inquired about the use of language in reports of the horrific massacres in Paris. Not particularly just in the Belfast Telegraph, but in the media generally.

Islamophobic attacks play into hands of Isis barbarians

The sheer scale and barbarity of the Paris attacks still takes the breath away. Thankfully media and political reaction has been measured with little outright Islamophobia.

The newspaper regulator is not perfect, but it's a decent start

To the Belfast Media Festival last Friday, and in particular a debate on how newspapers like this one are regulated.