Home / Press and Media
The Fourth Estate
A free press, no regulator, sources protected absolutely, and one newspaper nobody is allowed to hand out. Who’s who in the Dinglese media, how the lobby works, and the foreign outlets you’ll hear quoted on the island.
Monday 29 October 2029: Storm Alicia, the GBC’s “Hostile Island” and the great pallet shortage. See every front page →
The rules
Everything on this page rests on Article 42 of the Constitution. The Government has no say in what any of these outlets print or broadcast, and that includes this one.
A free press
The press is free. Journalists’ sources are protected absolutely and no court may order them named (Article 42(1)).
No regulator
There is no press regulator in the Republic “and there isn’t going to be one” (Article 42(2)).
Who owns what
Nobody may own more than a fifth of any market. A Dinglese paper or broadcaster is owned by Dinglese citizens and by nobody else: no foreign state, no foreign company, no foreign individual. Every owner is named publicly (Article 42(3)). The owners listed below are taken from that public register.
The State broadcaster
The State has the absolute right to offer news, education and entertainment to everybody through the Dingle Broadcasting Service (Article 42(4)).
Holding a story
Where publishing something would put lives at immediate risk, the Attorney of the Republic may ask an editor to hold it. That is the whole of the power. It is a request, and nothing whatever happens to anyone who prints it anyway (Eleventh Amendment).
The Sun
The one exception. Its distribution is prohibited under the Fifth Amendment, extended to online distribution by the Thirtieth.
Newspapers
Three national dailies, all printed in Scouse. English translations of the front pages are published each morning by the Government Press Office.
TD
The Times of Dingle
Daily broadsheet · Port Ringo
The Republic’s newspaper of record. Its first edition carried the Constitution in full on the day it was ratified, 24 February 1987, and it has printed every amendment in full on the day it was carried ever since.
Sober, thorough and occasionally very funny by accident. It was a Times of Dingle headline that first called the Speaker “Pughluigi Collina”, and the name has never come off. Its daily cryptic is the most argued-over grid on the island, and now lives on phones as the Times of Dingle Crossword Game.
NS
The New Swan Times
Daily tabloid · New Swan
Loud, red-topped and very well sourced. The New Swan Times does capital letters better than anyone on the island, but its reputation rests on dogged political reporting that has embarrassed every government since it launched.
Its Political Editor, Eleanor Finney, is a fixture of the lobby and of the press pack that travels with the Prime Minister abroad, and is rarely seen without a power suit in pink.
PE
The Pink Echo
Evening daily · Port Ringo
The island’s evening paper, printed on pink paper since its first edition for reasons its founders took with them. Local news, the courts, the councils, and more football than the other two papers put together, split carefully down the middle between Kopites and Toffees.
Its parliamentary sketch is the most read column in the country. It was the Pink Echo that timed the House Purple’s laughter at the Speaker’s answer to a 2026 request for hydration breaks: three minutes and twenty-five seconds.
Magazines
HF
Hot Flush
Monthly celebrity glossy
“Celebrity News Hotter Than A Volcano.” Hot Flush is written mostly for women of forty and over, and covers celebrity culture with the confidence of a magazine that knows its readers run the country. Copies turn up on desks all over the House Purple, including some belonging to Members who will deny it.
The November 2029 issue, on sale now, has the Prime Minister and Mary Black on the cover.
SE
Speke Easy
Monthly men’s lifestyle magazine
Coats, butties, gadgets and the island’s most argued-about annual poll, Fittest Bird in Politics Of The Year. The Attorney General, Lauren Whitchurch MHP, has topped it every year since she was first elected, which proves that politics is not always showbusiness for ugly people.
Broadcasting
Television and radio are dominated by the Dingle Broadcasting Service, owned in common under Article 72 and never to be sold.
DTV
DTV News
DBS news service · around the clock
The DBS’s news service, on air twenty-four hours a day, with correspondents at the House Purple, the Blind School and every Nee Nor station worth standing outside.
Its Political Correspondent, Mason Roberts, covers the Government and the House Purple and is the most familiar face in Dinglese news.
PTV
Parliament TV
DBS channel · every sitting, live
Every sitting of the House Purple, live and in full, from the opening whistle to the last division. Its floor microphones have caught more than one Member who forgot they were switched on.
Parliament TV doesn’t show adverts. The Speaker has said so on the record, at volume.
ST
Sprogs TV
DBS children’s channel
The State broadcaster’s children’s channel, and home of Pippa Heroine, the singing, dancing, scarlet superhero whose visits to primary schools are greeted the way other countries greet royalty.
DBS
DBS Radio
National radio
News, phone-ins, sport and live music, broadcast across the island and online. In a national emergency, all DBS television and radio services switch to continuous live coverage.
Online
Strings
Most Dinglese politics happens, for better or worse, on Strings, the social network. Strings is neither a paper nor a broadcaster, so Article 42(3) doesn’t reach it, and the House has noticed. Official accounts include @DingleGovt (the Government), @HousePurps (the House Purple), @DrDuncanDingle (the Prime Minister) and the Bizzies’ official account. Members’ channels live at strings.co.dg. See what the island is saying on Strings →
Clips
Absolute privilege covers what Members say in the House and its committees, and nothing else (Article 58(6)). A Member who clips a speech and posts it on Strings is covered for the speech. The caption is on them.
The lobby
The New Childwall lobby
The political journalists accredited to the House Purple. They work from the media gallery above the chamber floor, and from the corridors around it, which is where the actual news happens.
The Blind School press pack
Opposite the purple-tinted marble door of the Blind School sits a press pack that never goes home. Reporters camp there in rotating shifts round the clock, in case anything even vaguely interesting happens to feed the 24-hour news cycle. Ministers arriving for meetings are advised to look as if nothing is happening.
Fridays
The House very rarely sits on a Friday, so most of the lobby takes Fridays off too.
Pool coverage
Where an event of national importance takes place in a room too small for every outlet, a DBS crew films it and provides pool coverage free to all Dinglese media.
Foreign media
Outlets from abroad that you will hear quoted on the island, with a short note from the Government Press Office on each. Article 42(3) applies only to Dinglese papers and broadcasters, so none of these has to tell anybody who owns it.
GBC News
Britain’s state broadcaster. Watch it if you want to find out how hostile you are to the British. Most Dinglese are surprised.
GBeebies
A British news channel. It has never been to Dingle and has a great deal to say about it.
TalkTube
A British talk channel, broadcast mostly as clips of itself.
ABS News
A United States television network. Its reporters, Ted Burgundy among them, work the White House press pack. Pronunciation of foreign names is not a strength.
The Washington Parcel
An American Sunday newspaper, best known on the island for a fashion shoot about beards.
The Political Disco Podcast
A British politics podcast presented by Peter “Gruff” MacIntyre and Henry Tarvin, streamed live on DiscoTube and made by Right Back Attack Productions. Live shows in Manchester, Edinburgh, London and Cardiff. Not, so far, Port Ringo.
Taylor Takes On History
A history podcast, regarded by its listeners as an authoritative source on the Founding Das, and cited here as one because, on the House Purple, it is right: the Das chose a single chamber to shun the old boys’ network that still runs the British establishment.
Maintained by the Government Press Office, The Blind School, New Childwall, Port Ringo. The Press Office does not accredit, licence or regulate anybody, because Article 42 says it can’t.
Page last reviewed: 29 October 2029