{"id":7688,"date":"2017-04-24T11:06:39","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T11:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=7688"},"modified":"2017-04-24T16:50:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T16:50:06","slug":"british-press-put-truth-in-intensive-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=7688","title":{"rendered":"British press puts truth in intensive care"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1918 US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson<\/a> is purported to have said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

There may not be a war, but classifying the status of truth as a mere casualty may be insufficient and it now finds itself on life support in intensive care when the predominantly right-wing British press is reporting politics, particularly politics abroad.<\/p>\n

Yesterday saw France go to the polls in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, with 11 candidates standing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under the French system, the 2 front runners in the first round of the election go forward to a straight winner takes all ballot in the second round.<\/p>\n

In yesterday’s ballot the independent candidate Emmanuel Macron polled around 23.7% of vote with Marine Le Pen, leader of the fascist Front National coming in second on roughly 21.5%.<\/p>\n

Early opinion polls also give Macron a lead of over 20 percentage points over Le Pen with regard to second round voting intentions and he’s currently predicted to garner 60% of second round votes, thus excluding Le Pen from the Elys\u00e9e Palace.<\/p>\n

However, looking at certain sections of the British press, anyone would think right-wing intolerance had triumphed in this first round.<\/p>\n

Here’s The Times, formerly regarded as Britain’s newspaper of record, now reduced to a sad mouthpiece parroting the extreme right-wing agenda of the deeply unpleasant Rupert Murdoch.<\/p>\n

\"Times<\/p>\n

Note the large photograph of Marine Le Pen. It’s also worth noting that despite the hype from right-wing media around the world, a $9.8m loan to the FN from a Russian bank with Kremlin links<\/a> and alleged Russian social media support, Le Pen polled little better than in the 2012 presidential election when she finished third with nearly 18% of the vote.<\/p>\n

However, The Times was not alone in its stilted coverage. Here’s the Daily Mail’s front page.<\/p>\n

\"Daily<\/p>\n

All that can be said is that editor Paul Dacre has presided over misinformation and distortion on a massive scale, but then again the Mail has decades of experience in promoting fascism dating right back to the 1930s and its founder Viscount Rothermere’s infamous “Hurrah for the Blackshirts<\/em>” piece.<\/p>\n

\"Mail's<\/p>\n

Comme on dit en France, plus \u00e7a change… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1918 US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson is purported to have said: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” There may not be a war, but classifying the status of truth as a mere casualty may be insufficient and it now finds itself on life support in intensive care when the predominantly right-wing British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32,15],"tags":[36,16,22,33,20],"class_list":["post-7688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-media","category-politics","tag-comment","tag-english-usage","tag-language","tag-media-2","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7688"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7730,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688\/revisions\/7730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}