Out of curiosity, I watched Ian Hislop’s programme on fake news.
Ian Hislop’s sharp, provocative take on 200 years of fake news and its consequences – from Victorians on the moon to 21st-century deepfake, and Hislop as never seen before.
As I expected, it was mildly diverting with some interesting historical stuff about how the mainstream media invented or twisted stories for effect.
He lost me when he tried to convince us that the BBC doesn’t behave like that.
Ahem…
He was right about one thing though – treat all news with scepticism. I do and that includes the BBC’s output.
the BBC’s news output…. My default position is I treat it as plain and outright lies, until proven otherwise.
Politico’s dismantling of their cynical manipulation of Trump’s Q&A really does expose how they manipulate the agenda to fit their own worldview – in this case, orange man bad.
On Monday I visited the ONS interactive map of covid deaths via my online Local paper. It showed as different sized dots deaths per Ward. The Local told me that the highest total was in the University Ward (6 deaths) “which is a very popular area for students to live” (stock pic of a student house from somewhere else). Thus Covidshaming the student body ‘it’s all them chinamen Ethel’ when all of those deaths occured early on in an isolated nursing home on the very outskirts of the University ward.
Two other Wards showed up as Covid19 Hotspots (one adjacent to mine) but each contain nursing homes badly hit early on so nothing to do with the general population
Not fake news perhaps, just warped. The link to that item is no longer there.
BBC, John Humphries when confronted about their use of the phrase Despite Brexit getting in a strop with his interviewee “really? I don’t recall that; go on, give me one example”, made me laugh.
“Despite Brexit”:
JRM made same point on QT; Dimbledum “give me examples”; JRM “Let’s ask audience: is it true?” – resounding “Yes”
These days, if the BBC started telling the truth I’d be getting twitchy.
For the old farts out there it would put me in mind of Colditz. Near the end when Major Mohn (Anthony Valentine at his oily and sinister best) realising the game is up starts being nice to the prisoners and brings them a game of monopoly.
He was very good in that role. Stole the show.
A friend was his holiday rep when he went on a ski holiday many, many years ago. Apparently a really nice guy – went on to be a family friend.
Good call. Just ordered the entire Colditz (1972) DVD boxed set for £19.49 with free delivery. I haven’t seen that since it was first broadcast back in the day.
£19.49 well spent.
In my nightmares the BBC do a remake. If they actually were to I’m sure it would be a far greater horror than I can imagine.
A DVD-Rip to TPB would be good. If you can’t, I can
“treat all news with scepticism” – especially BBC and others majority of politicians eulogise
Decided to miss it so Thanks for review. I used to like Hislop on HIGNIFY (stopped watching 2015), post 2010 went off him; post 2016 dislike him and his constant BDS & TDS
BBC’s worst crimes are Bias by Omission, Bias on Interviewee/’Experts’ and News Creation
BBC & CNN Fake News Creation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7FnD-RnOrc
I can remember the BBC giving time to some woman who was outraged that they had allowed a climate sceptic to say that hurricane activity had declined rather than increased as predicted by “scientists”. They completely omitted to mention that said sceptic was correct and that hurricanes had indeed become fewer and less severe over the previous decade or so, giving the impression that the sceptic had been lying.