Considering the extent to which the mainstream media (MSM) routinely makes lazy, inaccurate and illiterate ‘fake news’ smears against the SKWAWKBOX, they sure were filling their boots – and their pages – with our material yesterday.
So much so, that it was as if someone had declared it ‘SKWAWKBOX Day’.
Not one but two of this blog’s articles formed a large part of the offering of almost every mainstream news and politics publication.
One was an interview with the estimable Laura Pidcock MP in which she described why Tories are her parliamentary enemy because of the damage their party is doing to this country and its people.
The other was an article on Corbyn’s foresight in wanting to discuss solutions for the disturbingly growing phenomenon of sexual assaults against women on trains, which morphed into a debate about Labour front-bencher Chris Williamson’s support for examining the idea of women-only carriages as an option for women if they wanted to use them – and the ludicrous, publicity-seeking ‘straw-man’ attacks on Williamson by a number of laughably-termed ‘moderate’ MPs who appear never to have given women’s safety on trains a thought until it was handy as the vehicle for a proxy attack on Corbyn.
The BBC, Guardian, HuffPost, Express, Telegraph, Evening Standard, Politics Home, Total Politics and even the Sun were just a subset of the national and regional publications and even broadcasters, as well as niche Tory sites, using SKWAWKBOX quotes – sometimes, shoddily, without any credit at all.
More often – and more interestingly – the SKWAWKBOX underwent a miraculous and presumably temporary makeover. Instead of being the ‘hard-left‘, ‘fake news‘ we are called whenever we inconvenience and embarrass them – which is frequently – this blog was in most cases ‘controversial’ or even merely ‘left-wing’.
Funny how things can change when it’s in their interests to treat the SKWAWKBOX as a source.
The appetite for our material wasn’t limited to this country, either. Pingbacks started to appear on the blog from all over the world as global MSM caught on. People in the US, Pakistan, India, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Europe and the far East were reading Pidcock, Williamson and SKWAWKBOX quotes.
Perversely, at the same time someone decided to edit out a reference to her correct birth-place on Ms Pidcock’s Wikipedia page on the grounds that the SKWAWKBOX, which put the correct information on public record for the first time, is ‘not a credible source’, in spite of the MP herself tweeting and quoting it – and in spite of the array of publications above using its material. The removal edit was later reversed.
Equally bizarrely/desperately, a Financial Times leader writer decided to attack Ms P for ‘astonishingly’ daring to be interviewed by this blog – an attempt at trolling that backfired spectacularly – even though his own publication has referenced the SKWAWKBOX as a source more than once.
This writer once had a dog that had a love-hate relationship with ‘mint imperial’ sweets. If he found one on the floor, he would spend easily an hour alternately snarling at it and lying flat on his side licking it and whimpering.
It seems the MSM are similarly – and equally bizarrely – conflicted about the SKWAWKBOX.
In any event the new left media, including the SKWAWKBOX, appear to be not only seriously discomfiting large parts of the so-called ‘fourth estate’ but also setting the news and political narrative in a way that they hate but can’t ignore.
The challenge now is how to increase and extend that even further, which is an ongoing project and one for which we’ll be asking for your help – and appreciating your support.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your support. This blog is provided free of charge but depends on the generosity of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal. Thanks for your solidarity so this blog can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.