Broadcast - a media review
The New Year began as all new years begin these days, with talk about giving up alcohol for Dry January.
Jacqui Bealing, Senior Media Relations Manager
While drinkers were pouring the Christmas port down the sink, the media eagerly revisited analysis by Dr Richard de Visser’s of whether a month of abstinence actually does us any good.
The early reports were sobering, with the French Tribune recalling Richard’s conclusions that a short stint off the sauce was likely to lead to a reduction in drinking for the rest of the year.
But as the DTs set in, the Daily Mail began questioning the benefits and Metro and many others fell completely off the wagon.
In the swirl, Richard found himself being asked by the BBC World Service what he thought of the Government’s new drink guidelines (based on his earlier research), and also gave comment to the Independent on a news story that revealed young people were drinking less to avoid embarrassing photos.
There was more delirium mid-January when the Lotto jackpot went up to £50 million, and statistician Dr John Haigh revealed to the Mirror a possible formula for winning it. John then hit his own media jackpot by giving 19 interviews (mostly for the BBC) in one day.
Fortunately he left space on BBC Sussex for Dr Lizzie Thynne to describe what life was like to be gay or lesbian in the 1950s and 1060s, and for Professor Clive Webb to express some sane views about US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policy.
Staying with politics, the Independent covered a study by Professor Paul Webb’s that surprisingly showed people could be more left wing than they think. And BBC Radio 4’s ‘The World Tonight’ focused on a lecture given by Professor Mariana Mazzucato that opened Labour’s New Economics series at the Royal Institution.
Droughts of the environmental sort are to blame for a ten per cent global reduction in crop production, according to Dr Pedram Rowhani whose co-authored paper received attention from The New York Times and Independent, among others.
Meanwhile, Professor Benjamin Sovacool examined the slide in oil prices for the Epoch Times, and Professor Norman Dombey explained to the Guardian and BBC Radio 4 how British scientists were able to trace the polonium that killed the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
As the month closed and the cocktail cabinet reopened, the Daily Telegraph was among the many to cover a Sussex and BSMS study on why your brain makes you slip up when anxious. It’s all due to the deactivation of the inferior parietal cortex, which you can overcome with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Or maybe just a stiff drink.
See Sussex in the News for a more comprehensive list of the University’s media coverage.