This week I asked the IMN team to think about their favourite news story throughout January.

Enjoy!

Phil

My favourite news story this month has to be the Ed Miliband ‘Blackbusters’ story. One of his ministers, Diane Abbott, used Twitter to claim that white people ‘love to divide and rule’ black people. She was accused of being racist and apologised. Ed Miliband was asked by lots of people to sack her but instead chose to stand by her. The next day, sadly, 80’s TV legend and host of BLOCKbusters Bob Holness died. Ed Miliband must have been a fan in his younger days because he took to Twitter to express his sadness at Holness’ passing. He wrote, ‘Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from BLACKbusters’. Obviously the gaff was picked up on and an embarrassing/hilarious (delete as appropriate) media storm ensued. Kind of sums up the man really. He seems to be a walking PR disaster!

Emma

My favourite news story of January was about the cruise ship the Costa Concordia which ran aground off the coast of Italy. Every single element of the story: from the eye witness accounts, the photographs of such a rare sight, the video footage of rescue attempts and the trial of the captain that proceeded was completely fascinating.

Not only was the actual incident so bizarre in itself and the footage unlike anything I’ve seen before - I love a good scandal and the audio of the telephone call urging the captain to come back to the ship to assist the passengers after abandoning everyone in a lifeboat was brilliant.

Despite this being a complete tragedy - his excuse of ‘I tripped and ended up in one of the lifeboats. That’s why I was in there’ - has to be one of the most classic excuses in the whole of history. Ever.

Daisy

My favourite January story has been when a Twitter campaign by McDonald's, aimed at highlighting good news relating to the fast food chain, completely backfired when people used the hashtag 'McDStories', to highlight their horror stories. On January 18, Mcdonald's sent out two tweets with the hashtag '#McDStories', in an attempt to highlight the "hard-working people" who provide McDonald's with their food. Although McDonald's only used the hashtag twice, it took on a life of its own. Observers used the trend to either tell share their own past problems with the burger chain, or simply mock the 'Golden Arches'. One example being: My brother finding a fake finger nail in his fries.#McDStories !! EWWWWWWWWWWw

Hannah

Despite living in London, being from Liverpool, I still keep up to date with the news from home, and there are some stories that could only be from Liverpool. My fave this month has got to be the ‘Spiderman Burglar.’ There is actually a youtube video of burglary in which a man breaks into a supermarket by cutting a hole in the roof and abseiling down a rope into the store, were he steels £10,000 worth of cigarettes and alcohol! I would never condone steeling, but you’ve got to applaud the guys imagination. Total mission impossible style break in to fund a serious night out.

Britt

I think one of the most interesting news stories of this month was the sentencing of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial. Not only did it highlight that our country still faces a serious amount of violent racism, it also showed that justice can still be done after such a long time. The interviews with the family members were incredibly moving to watch and it was good to see that they had managed to achieve peace after such a long time.

Lara

My favourite news story this month…

It has to be the unbelievable twittersphere PR disaster which was the Conservative party over the 5th/6th January.
Firstly Dianne Abbott MP tweeted ‘White people love playing 'divide & rule’ without contemplating the fuss which that would cause, forcing her leader Ed Milliband to call her reportedly for a stern telling off during a live Sky news interview.
As if this wasn’t embarrassing enough, Mr Milliband in cartoon style stupidity made an online mis-tweet the very next day.
Upon hearing of the sad death of eighties Blockbuster host Bob Holness, Ed posted the excruciatingly Freudian ‘Sad to hear that Bob Holness has died. A generation will remember him fondly from Blackbusters.’

Oh dear. Perhaps he should have asked for ‘an O please Bob’…