Your information appears to be remarkably out of date. The requirement to register a newspaper ended in 1865 and it had more to do with qualifying for discounted postal charges when mail was a primary means of distribution. There was a requirement for the publisher to give their name but the ending of registration did not change publishers responsibilities regarding the libel laws. All online news providers and you and I remain subject to them. I'm not sure how you can reach a judgement on John's efforts whilst admitting you have never visited his site. He may not produce much that is original but the way he curates the information available makes it an invaluable resource for living in the area. You are also guilty of a very rose tinted view of media as it used to be. Maybe in the post war period their may have been a golden age of local news coverage in this part of London but, even 25 years ago, it was never particularly impressive. I've been around long enough to remember the local Times Series when it was run by the Dimbleby family and these papers were uninspiring with unmotivated poorly paid staff rarely providing any interesting coverage of local matters. BrentfordTW8.com does a good job of basic reporting of the area with obviously much more limited resources and there seems to me to have been no slippage in journalistic standards. The only shortfall between the media we have now and 25 years ago is the lack of decent sports coverage of local teams. I also disagree with you strongly regarding the BBC. There are dozens of world class journalists working for the organisation both domestically and abroad. Obviously with such a broad range of output, sometimes deficiencies will become apparent, but they are more noticeable because of the generally high standards. Similarly, our national print media, while much smaller than it used to be, still manages to consistently provide stories of the highest interest and quality. If you are missing all this, you are looking in the wrong place. We live in a misinformation age and proper journalists are a bastion against the rising tide of populism. It is very dangerous to conjure up an misremembered past and claim that things used to be much better. Yes, fewer people are in the profession than before but that is not a good reason to denigrate those that remain.

Entire Thread

Topic	Date Posted	Posted By
John Dale suspension and Meta	05/06/25 14:28:00	Jeremy Parkinson
Reply	05/06/25 17:27:00	Ben Halloren
Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	05/06/25 21:39:00	Anne England
Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	06/06/25 10:33:00	Raymond Havelock
Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	06/06/25 14:56:00	Jeremy Parkinson
Re:Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	06/06/25 18:22:00	Guy Lambert
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	10/06/25 10:42:00	Keith Iddon
Re:Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	12/06/25 09:39:00	Raymond Havelock
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	13/06/25 09:14:00	Jeremy Parkinson
Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	10/06/25 09:16:00	Anne England
Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	10/06/25 11:11:00	Steve Bullman
Re:Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	10/06/25 12:05:00	Paul Fisher
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:John Dale suspension and Meta	10/06/25 12:12:00	Steve Bullman
Brentford Today and TV	12/06/25 18:02:00	Joan Adamson
Re:Brentford Today and TV	12/06/25 18:12:00	Joan Adamson
Now who would do that?	13/06/25 12:26:00	Anne England
Re:Now who would do that?	13/06/25 17:25:00	Eric Baker
Re:Re:Now who would do that?	13/06/25 22:55:00	Guy Lambert

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