Monday 26 November 2018

"Propaganda in the guise of news"


Another week begins, and what better way to start it that with a bit of Charles Moore. This is from his latest Telegraph column:
The BBC is currently running, in its own news programmes, an occasional series about “fake news”. Its definition of fake news has a political stance of its own. The one I came across, by chance, one lunchtime was an extremely obscure piece about how, in the Philippines, propagandists were trying to gloss over the evils of the Right-wing Marcos regime in the 1980s. The programme-makers would not have dreamt of reporting the same about, say, Castro’s Cuba. 
The BBC itself constantly puts out propaganda in the guise of news. Take its huge increase in reporting of women’s cricket. Women’s cricket is a good thing. But would it, on its sporting merits, make the grade in the tight schedule of a general news programme? 
Being no cricket follower myself, I have checked with those who are. They recognise improvement in women’s cricket, and welcome the good people who are popularising the sport, but say the standard of play is, as one buff puts it, either “goodish public-school” or “minor county”. 
Yet the BBC bulletins often speak of “England’s cricketers” and mention only later that the item is about women players, as if the sexes were interchangeable. They are not, any more than our much-loved local point-to-point is in the same league as the Grand National. Fake news!

7 comments:

  1. At least some in the MSM are catching up with the Beebosceptic vanguard. Too little, too late.

    Ultrafeminism has taken hold of the BBC output. We see it everywhere - even the Archers had some absurd story line about how the women were saving the village cricket team and playing to the same or a better standard than the men.

    We see it in Desert Island Discs where we have been subjected to a succession of dull female scientists and sprotspeople who tell us about hard they have worked. Very exciting. Their existence is probably known only to others in their field.

    Then there is the absurd "women talking cars thing". I'm not sure Radio 4 has ever had a programme about cars before but in order to make a point - "Women can be just as petrolheady as men even if all the evidence points the other way" we have a whole series devoted to women and their cars.

    What next? "Men and Crochet" - there must be some men out there devoted to crochet who are demanding a Radio 4 programme on the subject and surely Radio 4 want to make the point: "Men can be just crazy about crochet as women".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Last night all of the presenters on the main BBC One news were women.
      Mischel Hussein, Laura Kuenssberg, Katya Adler and Alex Forsyth. Coincidence or engineered?

      Delete
  2. PS A fact I heard aired on Sky News's The Pledge and have never heard referenced on the BBC. It must be treated like a state secret and very wise too as the BBC know that those who claim to believe in absolute gender equality can only be shamed by it:

    92% of all deaths in work are deaths of males. 92%!!!

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  3. That women football - or ex-football? - pundit they have on Final Score (e.g. 24/11) can't even talk properly.

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  4. I use #propagandabackedbycensorship and #PRasnews (and a few others) on the more egregious examples I encounter on twitter. I seem to be using them more and more.

    It is hard but not impossible to believe that there are not at least a few professional journalists there who don't think, if not say, 'Hold on, we're just running what we've been sent by this approved source without checking', or 'Hold on, we are deep fixing this story not because it isn't factual or true, but because the source is on our naughty list'.

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  5. The censorship aspect the BBC excels at is pervasive globally.

    https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2018/11/25/what-riots-abc-ignores-paris-burning-amid-protests-against?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Plus:

    https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2018/11/19/they-invaded-abc-nbc-ignore-tijuana-locals-protesting-against

    ReplyDelete

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