Sun…beaming light on the news of the world

Lies from the Sun on Saturday, more lies from the Guardian/Observer on Sunday, yet more last week from the Mail. When will these idiots work out the damage they’re doing to free speech in the media?

As ever, The Slog is even-handed when it comes to media bollocks. Matthew Baldwin’s ‘The Nazis are Coming’ drivel in yesterday’s Guardian was pilloried ruthlessly here last night by your faithful correspondent. And as you’d expect, ‘expert’ Baldrick turned up on BBCNews last night for five free minutes of Beeb airtime peddling the same specious fact-free nonsense. Nice work if you’ve got a new book to plug.

But just when you were wondering why we’re all so over-heated about the Dirty Digger, along came the Saturday Sun to remind you. In its print edition on that awful day, The Scum ran this editorial:

‘Why Norway? The answer is simple. Because it is brave. It is a loyal member of NATO and plays its part in Afghanistan and Libya.It has courageously stood up to Muslim fanatics trying to stir up hatred in Norway, where Islam is the second largest religion.

Recently it refused a grant to an Islamic leader demanding that those who did not observe Ramadan should be decapitated. By daring to oppose terrorism, Norway has become a victim of it.’

Unfortunately for the Wapping Liar, wot the Sun sez proved to be a load of old tosh. Anders Behring Breivik turned out to have no towel on ‘is ‘ead, and to bear something of a grudge against those who do. In fact, he bears a grudge against most things in Europe that took place after around 1170. So for the online edition, the Currant Bun changed tack slightly to:

‘The picture emerging in Norway last night was of one blond-haired, blue-eyed man being behind the Oslo bombing AND the island camp massacre. Acts of terror can be an easy resort for any loner who believes their own personal grievance against the state is justification for indiscriminate violence.

Take Timothy McVeigh, a US Army veteran whose warped world view was all the reason he needed to kill 168 innocent people in the Oklahoma bombing in 1995. Or Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, who waged a 17-year mail bombing campaign that left three dead and many more injured because he didn’t like modern American life. ‘

Or take Colonel von Stauffenberg, who also had nothing to do with this, but we better keep going now we’ve started. That bloke at Sarajevo, he was a nutter as well. And Lee Harvey Oswald. John Wilkes Booth. I know, ‘Ten Great Barmy Assassins’. ‘Ten things you never knew about Raoul Moat’. ‘Ten Great Wappers in Your Soaraway Sun’.

One wonders why, if the picture emerging the night before was that of a bloke who looked like someone in the Waffen-SS, The Sun went to stone looking for Bin Laden’s successor, having already in advance worked out the motive.

Now I know that the general feeling in Britain is still that the Sun is “just a bit of fun”. Bollocks. It destroys lives with its brainless accusations – like that of Christopher Jefferies, the man wrongly held for the murder of Joanna Yeats. The Sun is the newspaper equivalent of a lynch-mob, with roughly the same level of civilisation. The spinelessly obese Kelvin McKenzie made it what it is, a deed for which he should be eternally ashamed. But our Kel has no shame. For he is a member of that reptilian species, the Newscorbum tabloidus

Not that the ‘journalists’ over at The Mail are any better. You get a reasonable clue as to their ethics when you deal with the Mail professionally: but you get an even better one when you read headlines like last week’s front page splash,  ‘Did this Nurse kill three patients’, accompanied by pictures of the Nurse getting  pie-eyed and variously looking like A Nutter. Guaranteed her a fair trial, that one did.

Another Mail belter occurred on 15th July last, about a Macmillan press release claiming ‘42% of Britons will suffer with cancer at some point in their life’. This was the Dacre Wail headline:

‘ONE IN FOUR BRITONS WILL CONTRACT CANCER’

Fine, it’s not their fault – they had a post-Labour Comprehensive education. But they shouldn’t be let loose in a national medium. And Dacre the Mad (who had a somewhat more posh education) should check his facts more often.

But he doesn’t want to do that – any more than Goodwin, McKenzie, Thurlbeck, Brooks, Coulson or any of the tabloid tits want to let facts get in the way of their agenda.

Once more last week, the same old cry was going up from Lunchtime O’Booze about the dangers of restraining press freedom. But these people are as bad as the bankers: it’s not freedom they crave – they’ve got that already.

What they want is license.

Those who cannot control themselves will find Big State is very happy to do it for them. I would fight tooth and nail to stop grubby politicos trying to shut the press up. But I’m wasting my time on this issue: the news media will never learn.

I am indebted to the site TabloidWatch for these examples. It’s a terrific site, and I commend it to all those interested in facts, as opposed to bollocks.