Half of Brit kids ”have never been read a bedtime story”: Survey

London, April 30 (ANI): A new British survey conducted on teachers has revealed that more than half of the students of their class have never been read a bedtime story.

Researchers believe that not telling stories to children at home hampers their writing abilities, reports The Scotsman.

Poll statistics revealed that 55.7 per cent of primary school teachers have taught children who have never been read a bedtime story in their homes.

The Oxford University Press survey of 300 teachers also came to the conclusion that 72 per cent of the teachers believed that primary pupils were less able to tell stories than ten years ago.

“To develop children as writers, reading is absolutely essential. Every teacher knows the best writers, the most proficient writers, are always readers,” literary expert and former primary head teacher Pie Corbett said.

“It not only gives children language, it develops their imaginations. Storytelling is also hugely important, as the ability to tell a story is developed by building up a bank of well-known tales to draw upon,” Corbett added.

“Narrative is a necessary, primary act of mind and natural to all human beings – we are all story-makers whether we like it or not,” Corbett informed. (ANI)

Police swoop on sellers of Jaswant Singh’s pirated book in Pak

Lahore, Sep.18 (ANI): Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh’s book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah has sent the Pakistani book piracy nexus working overtime, but it has also landed people in police custody.

Pakistani security agencies have arrested three people for selling pirated editions of the book ‘Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence,’ following a countrywide crackdown on publishers and sellers of counterfeit editions of the controversial yet popular book.

Several fake copies of the book have also been recovered and cases have been registered in Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi and Lahore, The Daily Times reported.

Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials said the action was taken on a complaint filed by Tariq Haq, regional sales head of the Oxford University Press (OUP).

Tariq said the OUP had the sole rights of publication and distribution of the book and the company is facing heavy losses due to large scale piracy of the book.

Singh’s book which has created a furor in India, has received an overwhelming response in Pakistan.

Not only intellectuals, but people from different strata of the society have also shown interest in the book, in which Singh has praised Muhammad Ali Jinnah and described him as a leader who had strong faith in united India, while blaming Sardar Patel for the partition in 1947. (ANI)

Political blogs considered more credible than newspapers

Washington, May 17 (ANI): People who regularly follow political blogs and regular news media tend to believe that the content on blogs is more accurate, according to a book by a Brigham Young University political scientist.

Professor Richard Davis’ ‘Typing Politics’, the new book published by Oxford University Press also showed that journalists tend to follow the liberal blogosphere more closely despite equal awareness of conservative blogs.

“Blog readers still get most of their news from regular news sources, but they are concerned that they are not getting the whole side of the story there. They suspect habitual bias in the traditional news content,” said Davis.

For his research, Davis studied daily blog readers from a nationally representative sample and found that just 3 percent got most of their news from blogs.

He discovered that a majority of readers still got their information from traditional news organizations, despite some bloggers’ predictions that they would entirely replace traditional media.

Instead. Davis said that blogs have become an echo chamber that extends the shelf life of news stories.

Professional journalists and political bloggers have different takes on accuracy in the world of political news-while the former pursue objectivity, the latter openly dole out their personal opinions.

Still, political bloggers have an edge with shared readers when it comes to the trust factor, what with 30 percent participants in the study thinking that blogs are more accurate.

Eight percent of readers said traditional media are more accurate, 40 percent said they’re about equal and 21 percent were not sure.

Davis also questioned over 200 journalists to learn how they use blog content in their coverage of political news.

And he found that a majority of journalists were aware of influential blogs on both sides of the political spectrum, such as Daily Kos and Talking Points on the left and Michelle Malkin and Instapundit on the right.

But, despite equal awareness, journalists spend more time reading posts in the liberal blogosphere.

“When journalists take story ideas from blogs, those ideas naturally will come from blogs they read. These reading patterns suggest journalists may be getting primarily one view of the blogosphere,” said Davis. (ANI)