Fake News

"Fake News" is very much in the news these days although it has always been around since time immemorial. Probably the main reason for it being more prevalent now is the expansion of social media and "Instant News" sources such as Twitter which make it far easier so spread such news.

For me, the original fake news was, of course, Lord Haw Haw during WW2, and it was only when I got older and started to read books involving the occupied countries did I realise how desperate people were for news and the risks that they were prepared to take to obtain something like the truth.

In those days, the BBC was the main source of reliable news worldwide. Yes, during the wartime it might have been guilty of the sin of omission at the behest of the censors, but as far as I'm aware it never actually told lies.

But why is it happening now and who is responsible?

I would argue that once respected news organisations such as the BBC along with certain once well trusted newspapers are largely to blame. Far from delivering the impartial wide ranging news that people would once risk their lives to hear, we now seem to get only that what the BBC wants us to hear. They would claim that the choice of news is a matter for editorial judgement, which of course is true provided that the choice is made in an impartial manner.

But I would question whether the selection is impartial. Since Trump was elected in the US, news from the US seems to have occupied far more air time than all the news from the rest of the world put together. But nothing much from Europe, nothing of events in Sweden or Austria or even Paris. Nothing about the very serious problems with immigrants or the major disturbances that they are causing in Paris. Last week Breitbart reported that hundreds of violent thugs took to the streets of Paris near to the Gare du Nord on Wednesday night burning some 47 vehicles but I didn't see anything about this in the UK media. In UK media there has been lots of coverage about Trump's wall, but virtually none about the fences that many European countries are building along their southern borders.
 
Indeed, the previous week, Breitbart was accused by many many news outlets of itself peddling fake news. The news? Breitbart reported that rioting migrants had set fire to Germany's oldest church. "Fake" they all screamed! Yes, it wasn't Germany's oldest church, it was their second oldest!!

The only news about immigrants seems to be that our hard-hearted prime minister is refusing to let in some unaccompanied, suffering, destitute children whose only wish is to come to Britain. Nothing about the fact that Sweden, having let in a number of such 'children', found that they were raping genuine children and that subsequent medical examinations and bone scans revealed that most were nearer thirty than twenty.

But even if you don't spend your time searching the internet for news and are not aware of the BBC's omissions, you only have to watch one of their discussion or documentary programmes on television to recognise the bias. Discussion panels are invariably biased well to the left and questions  frequently start with a biased assumption. And when we come to documentaries, man-made Global Warming is a proven fact.

So what is "Fake News"? Apart from a few items that can be almost instantly disproved, such as the recently reported death of some "celeb" who was seen a few hours later on television, most seems to be either news that has not been reported by the usual media sources or a totally different slant on reported news. This is clearly why the media and governments are getting so alarmed. In this brave new world, we should believe all that we are told by approved news outlets and not believe what I prefer to refer to as "Independent" news sources. It is surely indicative of the decline in our media when one can watch "Russia Today" and feel that there is more truth in some of their news than that offered by the BBC.