[This article originally appeared on our Facebook page]

EVEN though traditional media is in freefall, it’s still doing its best to confuse, distort things, and mislead people.

There was a classic example of this yesterday when newspapers sold in Wales came with a special UK government ‘wraparound’.

Promoting a UK Government message of ‘get back to work, it’s all fine out there’ in blatant disregard of the Welsh Government’s clear ‘let’s still be cautious about this threat’ stance, enshrined in Welsh law.

A deliberate ploy by Westminster to undermine the Welsh position?

More than possible, especially in view of the fact that the powerful media moguls who own these newspapers are so close pals with the Tories and provide them with so much of their party funding.

But, with North Wales reaching a possible peak infection rate next week, these ‘wraparounds’ were not just politically malicious – they posed a real potential threat to life for Welsh readers here.

They were just reckless and irresponsible in truth. Seems a common theme at the moment.

When all this is over, hopefully Wales can have a mature debate about the media, and the desperate need to develop our own homegrown and alternative media to provide a proper Welsh perspective on life.

One idea that could be considered is to impose a ‘newspaper tax’ on these big corporations for the right to sell newspapers in Wales.

This tax could be used in part to fund an independent media here in Wales. It would be our money after all!

Many of these corporations make a good deal of money from sales in Wales, so it’s highly unlikely that they would give up their operations here.

And whilst they are still here, it would be good to know that some of our money is being redirected to build up our own new media.

And you never know, they could even decide to provide some proper Welsh coverage and employ Welsh journalists here rather than just imposing a one-size-fits-all London-based worldview on Wales all the time.

Talking of homegrown new media, GWLAD’s revelations about Tory MP Jake Berry on this site yesterday had 15,500 ‘reads’ yesterday.

That was our best readership level since this Facebook page was set up earlier this year.

Diolch yn fawr a daliwch ati i ddarllen!

If you would like more information about GWLAD – the new Welsh Independence Party – visit www.gwlad.org.