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.
I wonder if journos retained by billionaires have now gone past that “tipping point” – the line in the sand beyond which laying into you all guns blazing has had the counter-intuitive effect of boosting Labour membership numbers and / or dragging the veil back to reveal their collective dishonesty with sharpened clarity?
Whatever it is, sales are plummeting, they’re being constantly outflanked by new online media and need a new modus operandi.
Continuing down the same, well-trodden path will usher in their demise even sooner.
Bring it on 😁
Yes sales are plummeting. Not without good reason.
That’ll eventually mean that a lot of those ‘journos’ will soon become ‘ronin’ as their feudal lords will refuse to accept blame for their own idealogical misconduct, adopt a bunker mentality, and give their footsoldiers (lackeys) the tin-tack.
There’s a good few of them don’t realise the steady growth of sites like this demonstrates that their current ‘following of orders’ mean they’re slowly ‘commiting journalistic seppuku’.
There’s plenty of names I can think of who I’d love to see collecting their P45…I’m sure the same names are in most readers of this site’s thoughts, too.
Maybe sites like this can then report on their ‘struggles’ as they have to navigate the life of the hoi polloi. Oh, the schadenfreude I’d get from seeing them at the offices of jobcentreplus; after they labelled the rabble as ‘scroungers’…
It seems that change is difficult for all of us.
Good work Skwawkbox. I’ve said this many times before, but I can’t stress how important and valuable this site is. News that inconveniences the establishment is not “fake”. Skwawkbox, unlike a lot of mainstream media, is always careful not to lie to its readers.
Skwawkbox is, however, pro-Corbyn and investigative. Most mainstream news outlets just don’t bother any more and even label investigative reporting “fake” or “conspiracy” news. What this implies is that uncovering *real* conspiracies is somehow wrong.
Anyhow, I urge anybody who regularly reads Skwawkbox to make a regular donation, however small. The reason why there’s a lack of investigative reporting is because there is a lack of funding for it. When nobody is willing to pay any money for proper news any more, what we largely end up with is drivel, propaganda and plagiarism.
“When nobody is willing to pay any money for proper news any more, what we largely end up with is drivel, propaganda and plagiarism.”
Aye – And advertisements masqerading as stories (telegraph). I’m not an oborne fan, although to his credit he at least had the courage of his own convictions to spew them because of it.
SKWAWKBOX ON THE BALL YET AGAIN, RUFFLING THE FEATHERS OF MSM AND THEIR COHORTS!
I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER!
Perhaps you need to think about “All rights reserved” and copyright on your articles now maybe that will force MSM into seeking permission first
Great work Skwawkbox, and all of the other sites that tell it like it is, not how “They” want us to think it is.
Changing the shape of journalism, foor good and forever. Time for penniless publishing to become the MSM
More power to your elbow Sqwawkers!!
Sent from my Samsung device
Thank you!
It’s not the content but what they do with it that matters. Is there any way u can stop some papers using your content? I wouldn’t be happy with Sun or Mail using anything I wrote because u know it’s going to be used in a bash Labour/divide & rule kind of way.
Is there any chance I could get the email contact for Skwawkbox again? I did have it before but can’t seem to find it now.