Long, long ago, I thought the newspapers brought you the news. I know, I know, I used to believe in the tooth fairy too.

Then I learnt that they only ‘brought you the news’ that showed their chosen political party in a reasonable light – or as reasonable a light as they could, given ministers prancing around Piccadilly Circus in stockings and suspenders, or sending photographs of their penis to lady Deacons. Therein lies the art of the wordsmith – go forth and spin that one, my Son.

But that was still back in the dark ages when you bought a newspaper every day, and stuck to the same one.

Then came the Internet, and you could read several different papers within minutes – and I became hooked on watching the same story emerge in different shapes from different sources.

The hypocrisy is hypnotic.

Just the other day, we had Chris Huhne, an ex-member of the hated coalition which is starving union member’s babies to premature death, a crime for which the left wing would see him roasted at dawn – but lo! there he was restored to near respectability as a Guardian writer on account of his willingness to pen, for filthy lucre, his esteemed opinion in favour of press regulation:

“No one should be judge in their own cause, a principle of natural justice that is the basis of fairness in any proceeding.”

Just to make my day, that line appeared right opposite, bang opposite, a flashing advertisement (for fear you might miss it) for the Guardian’s own attempt at judging their own cause…..”the NSA Files live leaks”……magical stuff.

Not only, but also – Chris Huhne chose to quote a report I just happened to have read recently claiming that it showed 69% of Britons thought the media were corrupt, indeed ‘more than any other institution’ – pity I had a half written post from several days ago, and a couple of screen shots of interesting graphs – like this one….

Oh dear! It seems that actually it is political parties that are viewed as the most corrupt institutions in Britain, not the media….in fact, political parties in Uganda are actually viewed in a more favourable light!

Do they not have boring sub-editors at the Guardian to check politicians spouting ‘facts’?

Then today, the organ that apparently believes that the US is the son of Satan and should be physically prevented from ever involving themselves in any other country’s affairs – was busy taking the US to task for not appearing in the Philippines fast enough bearing gifts of tents and water – why, ‘they should have established bases’ in the area, had an aircraft carrier or two ‘standing by’, they know these sort of weather events are likely to occur.

Would those be the sort of ‘bases’ and aircraft carriers that the likes of the Guardian have so energetically pilloried for getting involved in sovereign nations affairs? Only when the Guardian thinks you should, oh sons of Satan.

Ordinarily, the Guardian would wet its knickers at the chance to write something about the English Defence League, their commentators love the aerobic knee jerking exercise – so why would they neglect to mention that the police were taking pro-active action to curb its activities?

Meet the strange world of partisan political blindness. A student came to the Guardian, and offered to spy on the police. A potential story right up their street! In no time at all, they had overcome their reluctance to ‘spy’, and fitted up said student with a microphone and video camera, and sent him out to spy……’spying is good’, right?

The student came back with a video of a policeman carefully explaining that it was helpful to know what groups like the EDL were up to, along with the UDA, their street fighting partners, and UKuncut, the mob rampagers of retail stores……the policeman went on to explain that ‘in the future’ if it came to actually attending a demonstration, the police wouldn’t be able to pay Guardian rates, but might be able to come up with £30 or so by way of expenses…..only after our ‘source’ had brought up the question of whether he might get paid.

“I guess the money wouldn’t come into it until I was going to other things…”

In fact our dastardly policeman actually says: It’s not about rewarding you financially […] because that goes against […] what we’re doing. But you’d need to watch the video to know that – not rely on journalists to tell you.

Cue for Guardian reporters to leave that bit out of their story. Doesn’t sound as good as “An officer monitoring political campaigners attempted to persuade an activist in his 20s to become an informant and feed him information about students and other protesters in return for money.”

Hmmn, nor will ‘covert surveillance of political campaigners’ go down so well as an ‘anti-story’ with the readers if we point out that it is the EDL that first came to mind – they would approve of the EDL being monitored. Tell you what – we’ll leave that bit out of our report too – they’ll never watch the video, they trust us to ‘report the news’.

I just lurve this quote:

Afterwards, Armstrong contacted the Guardian as he did not want to become an informant. He agreed to wear a concealed camera to record the contents of his second meeting with Smith.

See, agreeing to tell the police monitor if you hear of two violent political organisations planning to meet is ‘becoming an informant’ – and thus dishonourable.

Whereas agreeing to wear covert surveillance equipment to monitor a policeman doing his best to find out when violent demonstrations are occurring and flogging the information to a disingenuous, and duplicitous news organisation who wants to portray this as an attack on UKuncut alone, is ‘becoming a source’ – and that is an honourable occupation in the eyes of those who attend an ‘elite and privileged’ institution which should be shut down. Scrub that – it’s just become an ’800 year old institution’ – even the Guardian can’t knock it today when it’s just served up an anti-police story can they?

therealguyfaux
November 15, 2013 at 15:38

Right now, in the States, there is a story circulating, of a series of hidden camera videos of “Obamacare Navigators” (a boondoggle programme to reward certain “community organisers”) telling prospective applicants, for the subsidies associated with paying the premiums on the new insurance, how to game the system with out-and-out lies: “They’re not going to check this stuff!”

But you see, because it is James O’Keefe III, a right-wing journalist, who is doing this, it is HIS motives for filming those videos which many in the MSM chatterati have chosen to focus on; he has done similar work in the past, and, in fairness, he has run afoul of the law himself in his pursuit of the truth. He looks to scuttle all the good work Progressives do– can’t have that, can we?

Michael Moore has done “slanted” alleged “documentaries” with significantly less journalistic rigour than that employed by O’Keefe, and Moore is praised for his Dan-Rather-”False-but-accurate” evidence and the general Stephen-Colbert-”truthiness” of his work. That is because we know Moore is on the side of the angels, of course.

So– when it comes to exposing wrongdoing, it all depends whose ox is being gored– or, in the case of debunking An Inconvenient Truth, whose Gore is being oxed, I suppose.

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Ancient + Tattered Airman
November 15, 2013 at 15:19

You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! a British journalist – but seeing what un-bribed the man will do there’s really no occasion to!

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Ho Hum
November 15, 2013 at 15:13

Ah, the wonders of the great and the good, doing for you, over the millennia, a greater good, as only they know how

The other day, I was in one of the local takeaways, and had my once in a while skim through that hotbed of informative journalistic endeavour that calls itself the Sun. I actually went through it twice while I was there – not that that’s difficult when it’s alternative name would be the ‘Two Minute Silence’ – and try as I might I could not find any reference to the current phone hacking trial at all. Some kid getting his head stuck in railings, and who knew who was newly screwing whom, seemed to be more newsworthy.

The only difference seems to be that one lot of scribblers’ thirty pieces of silver come with two heads, the others’ with two tails.

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Moor Larkin
November 15, 2013 at 14:57

Chris Huhne was on ITV’s “The Agenda” (I thinks it’s called) last weerk, which is the ITV’s answer to the BBC’s Question Time, which the week before featured Vicky Pryce – once Chris’ fragrant wife. Why the two TV channels choose to feature lying, conniving jail-birds on their panels is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile Gary Glitter, who appears to have committed no crime since being extracted from an oriental prison by the British state some years ago, for reasons I still cannot fathom – remains unseen, unheard, and must never receive a Royalty ever again because that would be immoral.

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