Beware who you lend your ear to IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT

There is little doubt that the world is going completely insane. You now have the media deciding on our behalf what is offensive and what is not and whether we can see this or not.

I don’t know about you, but I like to see and know the truth, even if it’s not to my liking. But I am not a political reporter. I am a motoring guy and my rant here is all about how the infestation of clickbait and the chasing of hits are compromising objective reporting from within the motoring industry.

We all know that traditional print

media is under pressure and digital or social media is being seen as the only way forward when it comes to getting your message across to consumers. But this approach is open to wide scale deception for financial gain in my opinion. We as a newspaper have to have our weekly readership/sales figures audited and approved by an independent body in order for them to be recognised as authentic and meaningful to potential advertisers.

But on the digital side of things, this all-important little matter is not so regulated and everybody here has their own clever way of presenting their readership/hits in a way that suits them best.

With the digital explosion, any IT savvy or socially connected person with a love for cars (who doesn’t love cars?) is immediately a fully-fledged motoring expert. Add to this you have the trend of what I call motoring clickbait coming up all over the internet in the chase for hits so that individuals and their digital and social media platforms can become relevant.

With this little loophole and the hunger for hits being more important than objective content and the need not to offend the motor manufacturers, the system is open for exploitation at the expense of you, the readers. Even once very reputable media houses are offering up more and more videos from granny road rage to silly Top 10 this or that posts for hits and financial gain ultimately, over meaningful content.

There are far too many unqualified people playing in this field of what was once expertise and as this trend continues to gain momentum you are honestly going to battle more and more to find honest and critical reviews of vehicles.

I would like to think that print and our publication, will remain committed to bringing you the truth, no matter how unpopular that idea seems to be these days.