Don’t Read All About It
Peter Oborne is not someone whose every word I either hang onto or agree with; but every now and again the recently resigned Chief Political Commentator of the Daily Telegraph, associate-editor of The Spectator, and occasional TV presenter makes a convincing case. A full year before the phone-hacking scandal broke, he hosted an edition of Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’ and delved into the murky, incestuous relations between the Murdoch media, the Metropolitan Police Force and politicians. I found it one of the most eye-opening and unsettling documentaries I’ve ever seen; and whatever else Oborne does or says that doesn’t chime with my own beliefs, I’ll always go easy on him because of that ‘Dispatches’.
Call it wilful ignorance or casual ambivalence, but I’d been largely unaware of just how much power was concentrated in the hands of a small and elite few prior to Oborne playing his ‘Woodstein’ card; and the revelation of how the likes of Murdoch’s anointed ginger heir was pulling so many strings at so many high levels seemed both worryingly wrong and unnervingly undemocratic. It was hardly revelatory to discover there were a few bent coppers on the News International payroll, but the scale of the collusion between Wapping, Westminster and Scotland Yard was truly shocking. Murdoch came across as Ming the Merciless-meets-William Randolph Hearst, and the influence successive governments had allowed him to exercise was directly responsible for the unprecedented free rein his organisation had to snoop on, spy on, ruin and wreck anybody who dared to cross him or his lackeys. He unleashed his hit-men and released his hounds – and government gave him the green light to do so.
When much of what had gone on under the radar of the public eye surfaced a year later, the scandal provided many moments of glorious hypocrisy, such as Ed Miliband nominating himself as the head of a moral crusade against Murdoch when the previous summer he’d been amongst all the other fawning and kowtowing dishonourable members paying homage to the Digger at his annual News International bash. The old saying ‘They all piss in the same pot’ never seemed more appropriate at an occasion when party allegiances were put to one side in a manner usually only seen during the ceremony accompanying the state opening of Parliament. How can anyone take the theatrical faux-enmities emanating from both sides of the Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions remotely seriously when supposed enemies are seen sharing a chummy chat and comparing the brownness of their respective noses at the home of a bullying baron who has spent forty years penetrating the British psyche with his vulgar, coarse, crude, lewd, abrasive and ignorant worldview?
Murdoch offered up a sacrificial lamb in the shape of the News of the World to appease the outraged masses, and now all has reverted back to where we were before, as though none of it ever happened. A few guilty parties had a brief holiday at the pleasure of Her Majesty and a few others walked away from court, while dinner invitations to Murdoch Towers are still being accepted by high-ranking members of the Cabinet; and the Great British public demonstrated their capacity for collective amnesia by continuing to purchase Murdoch papers (once more accepting the word of his publications as Gospel) and continuing to subscribe to his TV channels. It’s remarkable how little has changed when it really did seem that we were experiencing our very own Watergate in 2011. How did the Murdoch Empire and its affiliated institutions manage this astonishing PR recovery? Oh, yes – a dead DJ was exposed as the nation’s greatest sexual offender, of course.
I’m not a great conspiracy theorist. I don’t believe anyone other than Oswald assassinated JFK and I can’t believe NASA faking a moon landing at the height of the Cold War wouldn’t have caused at least one of the hundreds engaged on the project or someone at the Kremlin to stoke uncertainty in 1969. Such stories satisfy a desire to prove we’re being lied to by the powers-that-be, but they lack focus or (crucially) hard evidence and are open to endless wild interpretations, thus preventing them from ever gaining any credence outside of a few isolated circles of online fanatics; it’s tempting to regard them as smokescreens, as with the equally felicitous fantasy of Historic Paedo Rings run by the rich and powerful of politics and showbiz. It vindicates a good deal of the animosity many members of the public feel towards the rich and powerful, to believe ‘they were all at it’, something that a string of convenient arrests and sentencing of doddery old men has helped confirm.
Murdoch himself was barred from joining the establishment club when he arrived in England as a brash, uncultured colonial cousin; he responded to his rejection by serialising Christine Keeler’s kiss-and-tell memoirs in the News of the World, raking-up an embarrassing episode that was guaranteed to get the establishment’s goat; his intense, long-standing dislike of elites and the old boy network has survived intact into the present day and is now manifested as a vigorous pursuit of the Victim agenda, thus reinforcing the myth that ‘they were all at it’. And just as journalists and non-journalists alike were terrified of taking on Darth Murdoch and his stormtroopers pre-hacking revelations, nobody now dare question the consensus over this particular issue. In the case of Fleet Street, where jobs in a dying industry are becoming increasingly perilous, it’s no wonder so few are prepared to rock the boat. In the case of the general public, we’re back to ‘It was in the paper, so it must be true’.
Conspiracy theories are a handy distraction, no doubt planted by those eager to deflect attention from their own shady activities, safe in the knowledge there is a ready and willing audience to lap them up and run with them. A similar purpose is served by the unceasing manufacture of rubbish celebrities that inhabit the headlines, those we are told count for something when they actually count for nothing at all. But a distraction from what? If there is a secret elite running this country, they’re not lizards and they’re not Paedos. They’re the same people who were running it before the momentary repulsion provoked by the phone-hacking scandal – a tiny interconnected cabal controlling the media, big business, politics and the police, presenting their agenda as fact and silencing anyone who challenges it. This includes sacrificing the impartiality of the press; as billionaire owners follow the Murdoch path by purchasing a paper and then imposing their commercial interests upon it, more and more newspapers begin to resemble corporate brochures, with ads masquerading as news stories.
Murdoch’s muckrakers certainly did enough damage to the reputation of journalists, but those that entered the profession with ambitious ideals have had to compromise these ideals and lie low for fear of losing their positions, and those that have signed-up to the intern course that passes for journalism these days display the kind of writing talents unseen in print since the heyday of ‘Look-in’. The Telegraph’s cosy endorsement of HSBC and reluctance to cover any misdemeanours concerning that company, one element that provoked Peter Oborne’s resignation from the paper, is not unique, alas; all are guilty to some degree or another. Even if they refrain from unsubtle product placement in their pages, many papers will host ‘corporate weekends’ usually sponsored by a company or, in some cases, a country (especially one with a dubious human rights record) that has a vested interest in positive publicity on the paper’s part. Sometimes it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that most newspapers today are mere mouthpieces for big business and any lingering principles are for sale to the highest bidder – just like everything else in a country where profit has superseded principle in all areas of public life.
But, hey, don’t take my word for it – here it is from the horse’s mouth…
why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph
Petunia Winegum
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February 19, 2015 at 9:57 am -
It was very apparent long before Oborne’s comments that the Telegraph has gone downmarket. I’m afraid it is going to become like the Daily Express; once a respectable paper, now just a pile of crap. The three breast woman story would embarrass the Sunday Sport.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:01 am -
Oborne is as big a twat as the rest of them. Talks bollocks to suit himself.
“By refusing to look again at the potential evidence that the Pollard report is a cover-up, Ms Fairhead is sending out the signal that her reign will be a continuation of the moral squalor of the Patten years. For all of us who believe in and support the BBC this is very worrying.”Will he be the next “Martin Bell” and stand for UKIP as a freedom-loving journalist? I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s also odd how “Murdoch” and the “cabal” are always named and shamed but all the journalists taking the money are above reproach. Following orders presumably. Oborne has fingers in other pies so needs the Telegraph gig not especially. he also works for the Spectator, which is promoting the defenestration of the NHS by conspiracy theory, even to quoting the “glass eye” story.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/06/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-nhss-jimmy-savile-report/-
February 19, 2015 at 7:00 pm -
‘…Will he be the next “Martin Bell” and stand for UKIP as a freedom-loving journalist? I wouldn’t be surprised.’
Neither would I.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:11 am -
Oborne is being incredibly naive. I can’t find the details but a few years ago a chess master won a big tournament then made what either Ray Keene or more likely Leonard Barden called the dumbest move of his career by lambasting the sponsoring company for some reason, which then withdrew its sponsorship. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Would anyone on this site sponsor an organisation that slagged you off or dug up dirt on your past? This is the reality of advertising and incidentally where a lot of this Jewish conspiracy stuff comes from.
In the 1960s and 70s Jewish organisations put financial pressure on the press to demonise the National Front. Now that the country and Europe has been flooded with millions of anti-Zionist Moslems, they’ve realised their mistake.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:29 am -
Peter Oborne is unlikely to be naive of what goes on in a newspaper. If he says something is abnormal in a newspaper, it most likely is.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:32 am -
Oh the years of suffering he must have endured…
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February 19, 2015 at 1:25 pm -
I think Oborne could only be accused of being ‘naive’ if you assume that the right thing to do whilst working for a large organisation is to keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, do as you’re told and count down the years to retirement. The fact that large organisations are stuffed with such people doesn’t make that attitude right – see the NHS for details.
If you discovered that the organisation sponsoring you was clearly behaving appallingly, would you resign and speak out, or keep your mouth shut and keep taking the money? Would you be prepared to be part of the problem just for money and your own comfort?
Some people – thank God – have some principles left.
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February 19, 2015 at 1:35 pm -
He could have blogged his story and then waited for them to sack him…
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February 19, 2015 at 1:58 pm -
Well, the Telegraph seems to sacking just about everybody else at the moment. There will be nobody left but the cleaners to write the leaders, soon. Before they’re sacked, that is….
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February 19, 2015 at 10:37 am -
The Telegraph is not my particular cup of tea, and I am not familiar with Mr Oborne’s editorial efforts and style.
However, I heard Oborne being interviewed on the radio yesterday. He sounded a pretty straightforward man, who felt that editorial standards had been compromised by pressure being placed on the paper by HSBC. He felt that breached the journalistic obligation to give a “true” of “fair” or “balanced” view of the world (although we each bring our subjective views to these problematic concepts). If that impression is correcy, then I applaud him for his resignation.-
February 19, 2015 at 10:54 am -
Yeah, but then you said something similar about Nicky Campbell the other week. You need to get out more…
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February 19, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
That’s true!
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February 19, 2015 at 11:59 am -
” If that impression is correcy, then I applaud him for his resignation.”
I’m with Gildas The Wise on this one, not ever having been a Telegraph reader it does appear that this Mr. Osborne has done the honorable thing. Oh for a return to those days when doing the ‘honorable thing’ meant Politicians caught with the honorable member debagged (when ‘Angry Birds’ meant something totally different & Candy Crush left suggestive cards in Soho telephone boxes) felt the same way, felt the sudden urge to spend more time tweeting with their #wifekidsdog or in extremis, if discovered in some criminal skullduggery, even retiring to the bedroom with a service revolver and not with the Assistant. Not that I’m implying that Mr. Osborne has done anything wrong.
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February 19, 2015 at 12:09 pm -
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February 19, 2015 at 2:02 pm -
My, that Jones is a very narcissistic chap isn’t he? Ever the pariah.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:48 am -
There is nothing new in Oborne’s ‘revelations’. I worked in Fleet street for over twenty years before my retirement and can assure Gildas and Petunia that advertisers have always pulled the strings behind the scenes. Need one quote ‘he who pays the piper’ here? I suspect that there is more to Oborne’s departure than meets the eye, or he is prepared to reveal. But as I have no wish to figure in a libel case I will keep my speculations to myself.
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February 19, 2015 at 10:51 am -
The Barclay Bros are notoriously short of money of course, so naturally need every advertising penny they can accrue…
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February 19, 2015 at 11:20 am -
Murdoch may indeed be an influence manipulator, but ’twas ever thus – Beaverbrook, Rothermere et al.
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February 19, 2015 at 11:43 am -
And there are those who wonder why the nation is getting more cynical? Awareness, dear hearts, is a great help so thank goodness our beloved landlady founded this site.
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February 19, 2015 at 11:52 am -
I would probably have nothing in common with Frankie Boyle apart from this:
“I don’t read newspapers anymore – I just lie to myself and cut out the middleman”
http://www.frankieboyle.com/frankie/free-speech.html
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February 19, 2015 at 11:43 am -
The Telegraph is the only newspaper to have regularly dropped into its articles the name of a firm which has been covered quite thoroughly by the Daily Mail’s This Is Money and the South China Morning Post. The name dropping began in 2011 and was most recently done this January.
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February 19, 2015 at 1:29 pm -
So, apart from the Mail and the South China Morning Post, the Telegraph is the only paper to have regularly dropped into it’s articles the name of a firm which you are not naming now? What are we to make of this portentous information?
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February 19, 2015 at 2:29 pm -
Two have published articles about the firm, despite apparent legal threats, the other drops the name and is the only newspaper to do so.
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February 19, 2015 at 1:04 pm -
The mainstream media have forever been whores for the banksters.
Saddam Hussein was demonised by the MSM before the mad US/UK/EU/NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Organisation) Empire invaded Iraq on the WMD pack of lies. He had been a favourite of the West as long as he was slaughtering Iranians with German supplied poison gas in the 80s. Iran is not in the Western Central Bankster club.
The West didn’t give a stuff how many of his own he was slaughtering. When he wanted to sell his oil in Euros, threatening the Holy $Petrodollar hegemony, he was demonised in the media, invaded & killed.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.infoWhen Ghaddafi wanted to sell his oil in gold dinars, threatening the central bankster Almighty $Petrodollar, he suffered the same fate.
Afghanistan was invaded on the “9/11 Osama Bin Laden did it” lies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgrunnLcG9Q
Or, put in search box: 9/11 – The Truth In 5 Minutes – James CorbettReality is the Western Banksters wanted an oil pipeline, the mineral wealth & the poppy fields back in production. 2001, The Taliban had the poppy acreage down to almost zero. Now, after a 14 year NATO occupation, that acreage is at an historic high.
Lots of money in drugs, as HSBC found. HSBC was fined 5 weeks profits for 10 years? of drug money laundering. Not one jail sentence, no heads rolled. A good deal? A PR exercise? HSBC was founded on opium money, they’ve been at it forever.
http://www.globalresearch.ca & put Afghan poppy acreage in the search box.Rothschild’s plan for global domination was set out in a 25 point strategy drawn up by ex-jesuit Adam Weishaupt, 1 st May, 1776.
Two of those points were: Control the Press (now the media) & Ruin the Youth through sex & drugs. Look around you at Western “civilisation”.
Book: Pawns in the Game, by William Guy Carr.
Published 1955, after 40 years research, 250 page paperback, £20, & worth it.-
February 19, 2015 at 3:03 pm -
Carr was an idiot, so is Corbett. So are you if you credit their insane ravings. Leaving that aside, you are of course correct about Saddam Hussein.
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February 19, 2015 at 1:15 pm -
“Rothschild’s plan for global domination was set out in a 25 point strategy drawn up by ex-jesuit Adam Weishaupt, 1 st May, 1776.”
Well, we’re about 240 years on from there, so Rothschild’s plan isn’t exactly working very fast, is it?
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February 19, 2015 at 1:37 pm -
When planet earth is slowly destroyed by an expanding sun in a billion or two years, the Rothschilds will be getting the blame. They are playing a long game, you see.
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February 19, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
Ah, that explains it. No point rushing these things, is there?
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February 19, 2015 at 1:45 pm -
“Well, we’re about 240 years on from there, so Rothschild’s plan isn’t exactly working very fast, is it?”
Let’s not forget we are talking about the Race who took forty years to walk about 300km…..Vos gicher, alts besser but good things take time.
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February 19, 2015 at 1:45 pm -
“A democracy without an honest media cannot exist. In America, democracy is a facade….”
The UK is no different.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/02/05/cowardly-despicable-american-presstitutes/
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February 19, 2015 at 1:53 pm -
“We’re doomed, Mr Mainwaring. We’re doomed, I tell ye!”
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February 19, 2015 at 9:17 pm -
Pull yourself together Pike!
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February 19, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
I notice he’s mostly bleating about all his mates getting sacked to start with, but then he says this:
“There are other very troubling cases, many of them set out in Private Eye, which has been a major source of information for Telegraph journalists wanting to understand what is happening on their paper.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraphIt all sounds a bit like the demise of the Mining Industry. The notion that cuz they’d always dug coal, coal must be dug.
“Circulation was falling fast when I joined the paper in September 2010… it still had a very healthy circulation of more than half a million…” -
February 19, 2015 at 2:04 pm -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Xmov6y2cI
Or, put in search box: The Biggest Scam In The History Of MankindIt’s called fractional reserve banking, where money is created out of thin air as debt .
The banksters don’t just own the press & media, they own all of us: we’re debt slaves to the Central Bankster system.
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February 19, 2015 at 2:11 pm -
A picture of our world: there are billionaires & people dying of starvation.
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February 19, 2015 at 2:16 pm -
“…Private Eye, which has been a major source of information for Telegraph journalists…”
If that is Oborne’s view, he’s been working for the wrong publication for quite a while!
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February 19, 2015 at 2:21 pm -
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080
These 8 families own the 80 richest people.
Remember, when the banks crashed 2008, our traitorous muppet politicians put their debts on the backs of small taxpayers.
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February 19, 2015 at 4:32 pm -
Is there a prize for the person getting the most conspiracy theories into one blog comments section?
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February 19, 2015 at 4:50 pm -
Anna, returning to something we spoke of the other day, you might like to iplayer the current episode of BBC Radio 4 “Inside Science”, there is a fascinating bit on false memory…and how easily it can be created. The researcher involved managed to create false memories of committing criminal deeds (assault) in Uni students: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052lryy
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February 19, 2015 at 5:13 pm -
I was out and about in the real world last weekend, rather than living in a blog, and it was a sobering experience. Having long given up TV and restricting myself to an occasional diet of the BBC World Service on the radio, I tend to elect for myself what “news” to read, what “opinions” to listen to. Inevitably this can lead to being completely out of touch with what the “mainstream” is, albeit I spend a fair amount of time these days disproving small elements of that mainstream. News seems increasingly to be becoming based around declared opinions about what are often facts that seem as unpopular as they are inescapable. The BBC is very keen on giving the social networks a voice, and so I find myself listening to reportage from around the world, telling me what people are saying on twitter, or facebook. In part this must be because News is now entertainment. That was one reason I chose a science magazine at the news-stand, the cover of which heads up this blogpost. The irony that a BBC-financed magazine had a cover story about the frailty and unreliability of human memory elicited more than a wry smile from my thinning lips. Implant false memories… What sort of blasphemy was this? I wondered if there were a twitter storm going on right then, about this branch of the BBC breaking ranks from the organisation and claiming things that Keir Starmer himself had told us could not be so.
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-undemocratic-truth.html-
February 19, 2015 at 5:14 pm -
That should have attached itself to “The Blocked Dwarf February 19, 2015 at 4:50 pm”
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February 19, 2015 at 5:34 pm -
Must admit I have a sneaking admiration for Murdoch, especially the huge gamble he took on Sky. Journalists do what they always do, try and get information, just different means now and the main charge by the Guardian turned out to be false as they admitted. Lots of ‘celebrities’ got large amounts of cash for what was in most cases trivia on their voicemail which they could have protected. News International wasn’t the only culprit either, I think the whole Levison thing was a huge mistake giving victim status to those who didn’t want their nasty side exposed. I wonder too why more of the police, quite high up from what I hear, we’re not in the dock with the journalists. I don’t buy any newspapers now though read a bit on the Internet, I never believed much that I read anyway and even less so now. Anyone who has ever seen reporting on something they actually knew about personally are amazed at the distortion. How Milliband’s has the nerve to say he stood up to Murdoch is a joke, no one was more in bed with him than Labour, they all think we are stupid and have a short memory.
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February 20, 2015 at 2:29 am -
Anyone who has ever seen reporting on something they actually knew about personally are amazed at the distortion.
Ain’t that the truth! I am always amazed that they can get the football scores right, given the lack of accuracy of most information published. A lot of times journalists have a certain story pre-written in their heads and just seek quotations and information to flesh out the narrative along predetermined lines.
But not always. One of the most interesting stories I ever came across was when I was working as a proofreader at a newspaper in the newsroom, and a journalist was sitting right behind me talking to the local sheriff (chief constable U.K.) who was talking on his cell phone while returning from a city hall meeting in his car. The sheriff was pulled over for speeding by one of his own officers and pulled the usual “don’t you know who I am routine” on speakerphone in the hearing of the entire newsroom. Eventually the ensuing story led to him losing his next election to keep his job and he left the county.
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February 20, 2015 at 2:36 am -
Link that references story I referenced above.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20070103/NEWS/701030461?p=2&tc=pg
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February 21, 2015 at 8:54 pm -
Since the article was posted I see the Guardian have been caught altering news to make it more friendly to one of their biggest advertisers, Apple Computers.
I stopped buying the Guardian about 5 years ago because from being a fairly trustworthy paper, they had in the space of a few years become a propaganda sheet. Now it seems they mix advertorial with propaganda. Thankfully there the net where for free I can get a balanced view by reading both left wing nuts and right wing nuts.
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