Let's Get Political!

[Reg Smeeton]

As pointed out on Twitter...

The Tories have already employed their 50,000 new nurses. Sadly they are all fake ones on twitter.

20,000 of those are already in he NHS but were planning to leave before being recruited by Cummings for propaganda work, so are now considered new.

[Arriba]

I definitely want out of funding the BBC now. I don't wish to contribute to their blatant biased reporting etc. They can go commercial as far as I'm concerned. Fuck em.

[Flashheart]

I'm waiting for Rob Burley to come along and belittle us all again. What silly little people we are for holding concerns over journalistic integrity at the BBC.

[horlock07]

You really couldn't make this up for its sheer dreadfulness and the irony in choosing this for Johnson.



1. The character Johnson is a parody of, in the film ends up as just about the only no one loves at the end;
2. The scene relates to a man who desperately wants to cop off with his best mates missus!

[horlock07]

Ah our fearless crusading impartial media...

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1200328947420008448.html

[pauld]

You really couldn't make this up for its sheer dreadfulness and the irony in choosing this for Johnson.



1. The character Johnson is a parody of, in the film ends up as just about the only no one loves at the end;
2. The scene relates to a man who desperately wants to cop off with his best mates missus!

It's not even his idea, completely ripped off a Labour MP
https://twitter.com/DrRosena/status/1197884965444366337

[horlock07]

It's standard Cummings "throwing a dead cat on the table" stuff, along with punchgate. Doesn't matter that it's demonstrably a lie, let's get everyone talking about the fake meta-news instead of focusing on the fact that in the 5th richest country in the world a 4 year old child with pneumonia was left lying on the floor hooked up to tubes for hours because they couldn't even find a trolley for him, much less a bed.

Response from the Editor of the Yorkshire Post (who actually broke the story, despite the Mirror suggesting it was an exclusive), proper journalists in the north....

https://twitter.com/JayMitchinson/status/1204344653174181888

[pauld]

I definitely want out of funding the BBC now. I don't wish to contribute to their blatant biased reporting etc. They can go commercial as far as I'm concerned. Fuck em.

Said already in this thread, the hard right of the Tories have wanted to scrap the BBC for ages, egged on by the Mail and the Murdoch press. One of the effects of their subverting of the BBC's political reporting to be part of the propaganda wing of CCHQ is to strip away those who would normally have been inclined to defend the BBC when they do decide to go for it. Just because Laura K et al have been willing participants in that doesn't undermine the value of the impartial national broadcaster we used to have. In a world where journalism is increasingly owned by a handful of billionaires, we need an impartial national broadcaster as a counterweight more than ever. The BBC, with some honourable exceptions, have failed very badly at that in this election. The answer is to fight to restore the BBC's impartiality not to go along with the Rees-Moggs' and the Dacres' plans to get rid of it altogether.  That just allows the rightwing billionaires to tighten their control on the news agenda

[horlock07]

Said already in this thread, the hard right of the Tories have wanted to scrap the BBC for ages, egged on by the Mail and the Murdoch press. One of the effects of their subverting of the BBC's political reporting to be part of the propaganda wing of CCHQ is to strip away those who would normally have been inclined to defend the BBC when they do decide to go for it. Just because Laura K et al have been willing participants in that doesn't undermine the value of the impartial national broadcaster we used to have. In a world where journalism is increasingly owned by a handful of billionaires, we need an impartial national broadcaster as a counterweight more than ever. The BBC, with some honourable exceptions, have failed very badly at that in this election. The answer is to fight to restore the BBC's impartiality not to go along with the Rees-Moggs' and the Dacres' plans to get rid of it altogether.  That just allows the rightwing billionaires to tighten their control on the news agenda

Buuuttt the other public owned TV channel has done a rather good job so it can be done, just the BBC for whatever reason has failed.

[pauld]

Buuuttt the other public owned TV channel has done a rather good job so it can be done, just the BBC for whatever reason has failed.

Completely agree. The BBC has failed and failed badly. But going along with the rightwing press and Tories wanting to scrap it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Flashheart]

It needs a thorough, independent review.

Which won't happen if the tories are elected - unless they are looking for excuses to shut it down. Ironic really, the BBC backed the horse that might well want to put them out of existence.

[pauld]

It needs a thorough, independent review.

Which won't happen if the tories are elected - unless they are looking for excuses to shut it down. Ironic really, the BBC backed the horse that might well want to put them out of existence.

This is precisely the point I was trying to make, wonder if some of this has been done deliberately, making the BBC's political reporting dept the author of the corporation's overall downfall?

[Nemo]

(Sort of) on the topic of journalism and politics, I thought this a fascinating and depressing piece from George Monbiot - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/10/break-embargo-expose-press-lies-labour

the tl;dr is that he's breaking an embargo to disclose that IPSO (press complaints) have found against the Daily Mail but aren't allowing that to be published until after the election. The particular case in question is interesting, but the key part for me is this: "The rewards for political lying are massive: they include winning referendums and elections. The penalties are either nonexistent or tiny."

And that's the rub. You basically have to be stupid, or stupidly honourable, to not lie and misrepresent your opponents in politics under the current systems. It's not even a just-the-right-wing thing, although the print press being RW dominant means they're a whole lot more effective, plenty of Corbynite online press have got the hang of this.

Just about everyone will say we want truth and honest from our politicians and journalists, whatever our political position, but the incentives seem to be stacked so far the other way that I can't really say I'm surprised by any individuals wanting to be the first to get a story out or the most RTs, rather than really getting to the true story.

All a bit depressing really.

[Flashheart]

This is precisely the point I was trying to make, wonder if some of this has been done deliberately, making the BBC's political reporting dept the author of the corporation's overall downfall?

Quite.

The tories are likely to get some support from people over plans to decriminalise not paying the licence, and they will get that support because...

[Flashheart]

Just about everyone will say we want truth and honest from our politicians and journalists, whatever our political position,

I'm really not so sure.