It's going to lead to a bigger decline in the media as trust in them fades, and it's already happening with younger generations and their increasing reliance on a huge variety of alternative sources.

We deserve better media!
Can we please have a return to the days where real newsworthy events were reported instead of as it is now where hacks can just make things up on a whim?

Swimmy, this particular heap of poop was started by Peston.
He has history of similar false claims which forced apologies out of him.
If there was any truth in the matter there would be some evidence but there is none.
None whatsoever.
After a few days now in which - if there were such a thing - it would surely have come to light.
It's a smear campaign and nothing more than that.

Rather depends how one interprets it.

The NATION needs him.

and who in this case is Petronella in your mind?

While I agree with you, I do think those days are gone now, and we are heading the way of America, where money and power dictate what the media say. There is no unbiased reporting now. Real news doesn't sell anymore - drama sells, swaying public opinion sells. But I wish it were different.

It is a well-worn tale in Westminster that Boris Johnson used to joke that his political hero was the mayor in the film Jaws, who defied advice and kept the beaches open, despite a shark attack and the risk of further attacks.

Over the summer he likened a second national lockdown to the nuclear deterrent – something it might be necessary to threaten but never use – and ramped up warnings about tighter restrictions as cases climbed in September after a summer of “eat out to help out.”

In September, he was warning the UK was at a “perilous turning point” as he announced new restrictions on gatherings, a 10pm curfew, tougher mask mandates and bans on activities such as indoor sports.

Accounts have emerged from this time that suggest it was the prime minister himself who was ultimately the biggest obstacle to the “circuit breaker”, a pattern that repeated itself in the days of chaos before the cancellation of Christmas relaxations of restrictions and before the third lockdown and schools reopening.

Many weeks earlier there were also signs that the prime minister was trying to find a way out of imposing a lockdown. In late September, he invited scientists with different views to give a presentation to him and Sunak.

They were Prof Sunetra Gupta and her Oxford University colleague Prof Carl Heneghan, both of whom have been sceptical of lockdowns, as well as Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s leading epidemiologist, whose country had not chosen to lock down. The other scientist present was Prof John Edmunds, who presented the view of Sage that a circuit breaker should be implemented.

Johnson sided with Sunak and the other three scientists, believing regional measures and weaker restrictions could contain the virus.

Others strongly convinced of the need for a second lockdown included Michael Gove and Matt Hancock. Gove is said to have been the one to finally convince the prime minister to call a four-week lockdown in November, according to the Mail, telling him that spiralling cases would mean troops stationed outside hospitals.

The fact that the prime minister apparently agreed so begrudgingly to the lockdown and was urged by so many advisers and ministers to change course makes the job of the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, quite tricky.

Case is charged with finding out who leaked news of the impending lockdown to newspapers in October. The leak is thought to have been designed to ensure that the prime minister did not change his mind and there are many with the motivation to have done it.

The NATION needs him.

Hi

I have to disagree.

It was started by Dominic, but only with the approval of the Tory Grandees.

The proof will be there if Boris makes the fatal mistake in lying to Parliament.

Don't you think that will make things worse though? These "alternative sources" are just as bad in their own way. And, depending on their success at swaying the nation, will become as corrupt as our run of the mill media. I don't have the answers, of course, but I worry everyone will just become cynical and mistrustful of everything. And good grief, if that isn't doom and gloom right there - sorry, didn't mean to come across as so depressing, ha!