Mr Dacre's rag (albeit covered by libel insurance so let's not feel any sympathy) had to pay £125,000 to TV psychic Sally Morgan after falsely accusing her of using a hidden earpiece to scam a theatre audience.Human beings have had more luck in taking on this least reliable of third-party published sources. It is hard to sue over the many Eurolies told down the years – you can't defame a banana – but lies they are, all told by the vastly wealthy Dacre who rips off EU subsidies for his enormous Highland estate. Here, with the referendum now behind us, they can have their cake and eat it for example, taking the mickey out of a woman who raised the famous 'bent banana' issue on Question Time as the reason for her LEAVE vote, the same reporter having been one of the journalists responsible for spreading the lie in the first place. Of course on Europe, the Mail and the other leading members of the Brexit Lie Machine have fed their readers a diet of lies over the years. Last night, I was heading to the studio well stocked with examples of their lies about human rights, Muslims, vaccines, climate change, and of course cancer – which, as someone tweeted yesterday, is almost certainly caused by spending too much time on Wikipedia. The Daily Mail represents the worst of British values One of his latest obsessions (among the lies being pumped out on a near daily basis) is overseas aid – it accounts for less than 1% of government spending, yet a quarter of British people believe it is one of the top three items of public expenditure, ahead of schools and pensions. We think 30 percent are black or Asian (11%). (It's 5%.) We think 34% call themselves 'Christian.' (59%.) We think 31 percent of the population are immigrants. Religion and race: we think a quarter of the UK population is Muslim.Welfare fraud: the public estimated that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently.In fact, pensions accounted for fifteen times as much as JSA. Welfare: around a third of people said the government spent more on Jobseeker's Allowance than on pensions.Violent crime: more than half thought it was rising when the opposite was the case.Teenage pregnancies: the public thought fifteen percent of young girls get pregnant.It revealed the extent of public ignorance about some of the key issues facing the country before the last election, and which are regularly and inaccurately covered in his rag. But with papers like the Mail so central to our media culture, and papers like the Express aping them in many ways in recent times, we have been dealing with the 'fake news' phenomenon for some time.ĭacre cannot take all the credit, but must definitely take some, for the remarkable findings of a King's College/Ipsos-Mori survey of UK opinion. The elevation of Donald Trump to President, and the role of the Russian government and largely Eastern European media entrepreneurs in the US elections, has seen 'fake news' enter the language and provoke a lively debate about the nature of journalism in the US. alternative facts) and has a pathological dislike of admitting wrongdoing and, when forced to do so, buries apologies where few shall see them. Enough said about the paper that regularly tops the list of complaints about mistakes (err. For example, one signal that a news organisation engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy is the publication of corrections. Wikipedia also use a variety of criteria to evaluate reliability. Well, the Mail is certainly a third-party published source, but for the rest of it. On the issue we were meant to be discussing (and let's park the fact that the BBC didn't dare just empty chair the Mail's coward-in-chief), when one looks at the guidelines that cover Wikipedia sourcing, why on earth should anyone consider the Mail to be a credible source? As a general rule, Wikipedia seeks to use "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Cowardice and a refusal to engage in debate, while expecting everyone to respond to whatever fanciful allegations he wishes to make against them, are high up a very long list. Modi, May and Trump are all chauvinistic and dead set on global dominationĭacre has many faults.
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