Know what you're buying. Reporting is now so contaminated by bias and campaigning, and general mischief, that no reader can hope to get a picture of what is happening without first knowing who owns a paper and who it is being published for...
Follow the names. If you find a reporter who seems to know the score, particularly in an area you know about, cherish him or her...
Register bias. Even when you read the same paper every day, be aware that reporters are now less embarrassed to let the bias show...
Read the second paragraph, and look for quote marks. Surprisingly often, the key fact is not in the first paragraph, which is general and designed to grab attention...
If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is this the true face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No, or you wouldn't have put a question mark in.)...
And watch out for quotation marks in the headlines, too. If you read 'Marr "Stole" Book Idea' then the story says nothing of the kind...
Read small stories and attend to page two. Just because something is reported in a single paragraph does not mean it is insignificant...
Suspect 'research'. Hundreds of dodgy academic departments put out bogus or trivial pieces of research purely designed to impress busy newspaper people and win themselves some cheap publicity...
Check the calendar... Not simply for April Fool's, but for the predictable round of hardy annuals that bulk up thin news lists...
Suspect financial superlatives... Even if the underlying rate of inflation is modest, then in the ordinary way of things, prices for many limited goods - Pre-Raphaelite painitings, or seaside huts, or football shirts, are going to be "the highest ever"...
Remember the news is cruel. Reading the awful things that people apparentely say about each other, or newspapers say about them, can be depressing...
Finally, believe nothing you read about newspaper sales - nothing. Newspaper sales have been falling in Britain for a long time...'
Andrew Marr, My Trade, p.252-255.
