Interesting Facts

According to a study run by vouchercloud.com, 79% of office workers in the UK waste 4 hours and 22 minutes every day. (On average respondents believed that they actually did 2 hours and 53 minutes of productive work. The favourite pastimes that eat up "productive" time were:- 1.       Checking social media – 47% 2.       Reading news websites – 45% 3.       Discussing out of work activities with colleagues – 38% 4.       Making hot drinks – 31% 5.       Smoking breaks – 28% 6.       Texting /instant messaging – 27% 7.       Eating snacks – 25% 8.       Making food in office – 24% 9.       Making calls to partner/ friends- 24% 10.   Searching for new jobs – 19% Average time spent on each distraction: 1.       Checking social media – 44 minutes 2.       Reading news websites – 1 hour 5 minutes ...

According to a study by YouGov, 75% of people in the UK read, watch or listen to a news story every day. (This may seem high, but in the UK we actually consume less news than people in the US and some European countries; nine out of 10 Germans access the news every day, and UK readers have less interest in politics, and more interest in celebrity news, with 21% of UK consumers expressing an interest in stories about music, film and gossip, compared with 9% in Denmark, 14% in Germany and France, and 16% in the USA. I wonder if this says something about the average person in the UK, or more about UK politics.)

Purely MHO:- Politics was a big theme in 2012. The Sunday Telegraph claimed that the Tories were launching a hunt to replace recently-departed "blue skies" thinker Steve Hilton using the format of a new reality TV show. The Observer said David Cameron had asked the Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder to come to Downing Street to advise him on issues of class. (Hubby and I fell for this one.) The Independent on Sunday reported on police stations holding "hosepipe amnesties" for the public to hand in garden hoses ahead of a hosepipe ban in south-east England (the hosepipe ban was real, just the amnesty was a joke). The Sunday Times' Style magazine hoped to catch out readers with its double-page spread on "Lemac", a new Middle-Eastern beauty treatment where customers are injected with cells from the humps of camels. Readers of The Sun on Sunday reported that Arsenal football club was releasing its own fragrance, which took its aromas from the E...

A survey by the media regulator Ofcom has found that only 7% of people in the UK trust the tabloid press to report the news truthfully. (The same report found that radio is the most trusted source of news in the UK, beating both TV and the internet. 66% of people polled said they trusted radio news most, 58% chose internet news, 54% said television. 34% said newspapers in general, but only 7% tabloid newspapers. The only problem I have with this is the Sun is still the most widely sold newspaper in the UK. I wonder why?) !Note - The tabloid newspaper format is particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where its page dimensions are roughly 430 × 280 mm (16.9 in × 11.0 in. They are often called "red tops" because they have a red masthead, and the usual ingredients are an emphasis on entertainment news, celebrities, gossip, sports and political scandals. The red tops include The Sun, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star, along with various local and regional newspapers....

According to a survey by Ofcom (The Office of Communications) in 2009, radio is the most trusted source of news in the UK. (66% of people considered news reports on the radio to be reliable compared with 58% for news websites, 54% for TV and just 34% for newspapers. If you've ever read a British newspaper, you'll understand why they rate so badly.)

The British Library is going to make 40 million pages of newspaper archives available online. (300 years of journalism will be put on the web by the publisher BrightSolid. Users at the main library at St Pancras will be able to use the material freely. That sound ominously that the rest of us will have to pay. They really don't get the point of the net, do they.)

Associated Press has a zero-tolerance policy of adding or subtracting content from an image. (They recently suspended the use of US Department of Defense photos after it emerged that a photo of a general was found to have been digitally altered. Ann Dunwoody was shown in front of the US flag but it later emerged that this background had been added. I think AP are right, it's so easy to alter photos, a news agency must draw the line. Now let's just hope model agencies follow suit.)

According to the Press Complaints Commission 4,340 complaints were received in 2007. (This is a 31% increase on 2006, which either means the quality of reporting in the UK is deteriorating, or Brits are moaning more.)

Only 36% of the world's newspapers are tabloid. (The rest are what is called broad sheet. A tabloid newspaper has pages that are half the size of a standard newspaper. Tabloid newspapers are typically dominated by headlines, photographs, and sensational stories. Broadsheet newspapers are are newspapers with a large page format and they are regarded as more serious and less sensationalist than tabloids. But let's face it, pretty soon all newspapers will be online anyway.)