Monday 5 June 2017

Fake News again

There is a certain amount of crossover between ITBB and Biased-BBC, and as you can see we were urged to cover the CNN Fake News story that Biased-BBC is featuring here. Pleased to oblige.

Notorious bad-girl Katie Hopkins has raised the matter with the BBC, as allegedly the BBC aired a clip from the staged footage during one of their news bulletins. (I missed it and it’s unavailable on iPlayer.) Katie is keen to know who provided the props.

The BBC is always jumping the gun - not checking the veracity of an item - when it suits the narrative (not so much when they’re oh so carefully (Martine Croxall) avoiding any premature and potentially libellous naming of the religion of peace in connection with an unfolding terrorist atrocity) but manipulated sound-bite type stuff is more at home on ‘BBC Trending’.

Anyway, footage of a London-based CNN anchor named Becky Anderson staging (or inventing) a feel-good news item has gawn viral. Or is she merely doing what TV journos do?
The film in question shows director Becky and her crew assembling a few hijab wearing women in front of the cameras, with ready-made placards and flowers. Does this prove that much of the news we get is stage-managed? Is the whole thing one gigantic, agenda-driven  fake?



You’ve all heard the story (maybe you haven’t) of a conversation between strangers sitting next to each other on a flight. A war had broken out in the vicinity of their departure. The two passengers sipped wine and chatted about where they had been and why. “I’m a producer from TV news” said the man, “covering the war.” “Then why,” said the other man, “are you flying away from the action, rather than towards it?”  “It’s fine” said the man. “I’ve got my crew there. They know what footage I want. I’m going home.”

Is that relevant?

The first question that occurred to me when I read about this peculiar CNN incident was: who on earth filmed this pantomime and why? (You can’t help wondering, can you?) It seems it was “Mark”.



We all know that the camera never lies. It’s not the camera’s fault if the cameraman makes one or two adjustments to suit.  Faking /  tweaking / air-brushing; we’re all up to it - faking stuff - these days. You know the type of thing. The camera pans out to reveal that the “crowd” wasn’t a crowd after all. The edit changes the narrative. Pallywood as an art form; the art of hoodwink.

But the funniest thing of all is that in the end, if "Twitchy.com" is correct - and I haven’t verified it - the final bit of film is a massive let-down. It’s just a pointless rant by a somewhat unprepossessing, rather charmless woman, which is unlikely to have any influence on anyone whatsoever. If the BBC was hoodwinked by Becky Anderson's stage-managed ensemble, more fool them.

Do tell me if I've got it all wrong. Seriously.

1 comment:

  1. No you haven't got it wrong, Sue.

    23,000 is not a "handful". And they are not particularly fools either. They are following a sophisticated ideology that has been around for 14 centuries and will soon have 2 billion followers.

    ReplyDelete

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