Rupert Murdoch’s The Times has celebrated the first of April with a front-page that surely has to be a jolly jape in celebration of the ancient tradition of ‘April Fool’. Surely even the sister-paper to the S*n couldn’t prepare such obvious nonsense in seriousness – a claim that Facebook groups that are not controlled by Labour and have no official standing with the party are “Corbyn’s hate factories“.
But Twitter users had different ideas. @EL4JC thought it betrayed intellectual bankruptcy on the part of the rag, or more likely of the ‘MSM’ in general:
The Guardian’s Dan Hancox pointed out that the article exposed its own premise as false in its first page and betrayed a serious lack of clue and sense about how Facebook works:
ScouseGirlMedia pointed out the bleakness of working for a Murdoch publication and the painful reflections on life choices that must – or should – ensue, with a reminder of that intellectual bankruptcy for good measure:
Twitter campaigner ‘Rachael Swindon’ suggested the article may reflect the MSM’s fear of the fact that Corbyn in Downing Street will order the immediate resumption of the Leveson inquiry into their reckless and criminal behaviour:
“Vanity by nature” pointed out that the claims in the article had pre-emptively been made nonsense by the failure of a months-long undercover journalism operation to find anything incriminating:
Writer Alex Nunns pointed out that any idiot could create a smear story about a political party by visiting any political Facebook page and that it’s much easier to do it with a Tory page – including pages with actual links to Tory organisations and politicians:
While journalist David Osland observed the what such front-page dross demonstrated about the Times’ current status compared to past glories:
But surely just before noon tomorrow Rupert Murdoch or Times editor John Witherow will leap out and shout ‘April Fool’, just in time to avoid the traditional fate of being the April Fool themselves for letting the gag go on too long.
Nobody could be that bad and that transparent if they were serious about trying to make mugs of every reader.
Could they?
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Pleased to say that the BBC picked up Alex Nunns tweet and used it on Radio 4 Broadcasting House just now, and used to devastating effect against Lord Carlile, once the Independent Regulator on social media, but who had reverted to being his former Lib Dem self and was laying into Labour. Also, a good number of Sunday Times readers are, in the comments space, deriding this feeble non-story that seems to obsess its editorial team.
However BBC radio 5 a BBC political commentator asked to explain the story repeats Times article including Ms Bergers bits. Presenter(in fairness to him) comments that Facebook a vehicle for random comment and that Mr Corbyn “damned by association”. Correspondent ignores this then over to the news headlines,”Jeremy Corbyn supporting Facebook groups have been responsible for over 2000 anti Semitic and racist posts including threats to kill a report has revealed.” Good to see the BBC upholding its proud tradition of impartiality.
The only ‘Hate Factory’ is of course The Times et al, whose hate-mongering (and fear-mongering) becomes more hysterical by the day, as THIS example shows all too clearly.
Talking of which, I just lurve the ‘Weapons Of Mass Deception’ newspaper montage at the top right of this page (at the time of writing), and skwawkbox should adopt it as a banner (or whatever the word is I’m looking for). But it should probably also include The Guardian and the Huffpost, and to be fare to the BBC, it should specify ‘BBC News’, and perhaps have some sub categories in a box that includes Newsnight and the Daily Politics etc.
Anyway, no doubt next they’ll be saying that Jeremy’s responsible for all the hate in the world! And to think that The Times – pre Murdoch – was once a highly regarded newspaper.
Correction: That should be ‘fair’ of course
I am a member of WSJC the site with 16000 posts in a month. In my experience large numbers of them are by people who have nothing better to do and many others by people who are lonely/get a sense of comradeship from the site. There are, as there would be in such a large group, people with mental health issues and people who are downright rude. In addition there are trolls of all sorts, including a fair number of Zionist/hasbara trolls hunting for “antisemites” and trying to confuse people into believing that anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same. Just once, earlier last week in fact whilst I was in the course of debating one of the hasbara plants, I came across a poster who was perilously close to holocaust denial. I reported the poster to admin. and he was removed from the group within 30 minutes, once they had reviewed his posts. These are the facts of the matter, so for this journalist to dress this up sufficient to make the front page of even the Beano requires some considerable manipulation of reality – but as my old man used to say: “do not confuse them with facts, they have already made up their minds.”
Thanks for the reminder – I’d forgotten to post my own daily hate-filled rant on WSJC.
I don’t go there much but I don’t recall ever seeing anything anti-semitic on that group.
this is so sickening. I lack the words to adequately express the anger and disgust msm cause.
The Establishment’s propaganda machine you mean!
Is this the same Right Wing media that some suggest were using a ‘dog whistle’ against Ed Miliband (and his late dad) in a previous GE?
I remember in that campaign posting Pro-Labour comments on the BBC News Comments website page and each time I did there were instantly 5 or so Pro-Tory rebuttals.
Nothing perhaps unusual on a public, open and democratic website but something just didn’t add up; the social media monikers from these posters were not the usual odd type but were by ‘Fred’ ‘John’ ‘Bill’ ‘Alan’ etc. and I felt a pattern was emerging there?
And on the Saturday after the GE all my suspicions were confirmed by a US Democrat IT whiz who was boasting (in the Guardian or Times – can’t remember which one as I read both in the pub) that he was paid by the Tories (I think £250k?) to post fake ProTory comments on social media (to interfere in British democracy?).
I complained to the BBC and pointed this out to those at the top in Labour but heard nothing.
If it hadn’t been for this programmers laziness in unintentionally highlighting a pattern and his vanity in going public we may have never known about this.
I have no problem in a spotlight being shone upon our humanity but as Alex Nunn shows brilliantly here perhaps it should be shone on the Tories too!
Feel the need to share a poem:
OH VERITAS SHINE THY BRIGHTEST BEAM.
AND VANQUISH EVIL STORIES.
TO SMITE THINE GREAT INVISIBLE FOE.
THEN COME YE FOR THE TORIES!
Solidarity!
What the Times fails to acknowledge is that anyone can create a FB profile in any name they like, join Corbyn supporting groups and post hate-filled comments. It has already been proven that Corbyn’s detractors are not above faking screenshots for their own ends.
It’s the Black Propaganda Ops Department Kathy, and The Times is well aware that they are doing – and HAVE been doing – just what you describe………. so that The Times et al can then run front-page headline stories just like they ARE.
True, the establishment’s always slanted the ‘news’ in its own favour but at least it used to be subtle enough that you had to look twice to see the bias.
Now that social media’s made it obvious how deficient basic education has become they’ve realised subtle won’t work any more.
Today they lay it on with trowels in words of two syllables or less.
Sounds like the red rag initiative from Damian McBride in 2009
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rag
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LabourList#Controversies
Meanwhile, I gather today’s [Monday] Mail editorial is calling Labour the real Nasty Party over this.
Well, Something really shook and horrified me a couple of years ago. I read an account on MailOnline of the migrant refugees washing up on the beaches of Cos. The report was very fair in the way it showed harrowing.almost biblical scenes of misery and despair.
That’s not what shocked me. It was the moderated comments. I repeat, moderated.
There were hundreds of them [literally] and they were over-whelmingly sharing the same sentiment. They called them ‘rats’. They called them ‘maggots’. They wished that they had ALL drowned. They said they’d go out there themselves and drown any that had survived. And so on and so on.
The language reminded me forcibly of Nazi comments about jews in the 1930s. I was troubled, and still am when I think about it.
Using measured language I joined a handful of people who questioned the prevailing view. I received much the same abuse. I could cope with that. What REALLY rattled me was that the vile vile comments were getting [again literally] 100’s of likes, occasionally over 1000. Likewise the rare dissenting voices were getting 100s of dislikes.
I was only allowed to post two comments myself. When I complained to the MailOnline moderator I was told I had exceeded my limit of 6 comments. I replied again but that was the final word on it.
That’s how the Mail stable cleans itself up. An Augean stable, in fact.
The Mail itself manipulates the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’, and I have no doubt whatsoever that the vast majority of the ‘hostile’ comments are posted by their own shills (so as to try and inculcate their readers with such views and feelings towards whoever or whatever, as with the Daily Express and The Times also, albeit more ‘refined’ in the latter). And one thing I noticed – just by chance – in the Express……..
Right, let’s start again: About six months ago, whilst doing some research, I came across an article – a hit-piece – about Owen Jones in the Express (the day after the article had been posted), and some of the comments were really aggressive and hostile and threatening towards OJ (and the vast majority of them were derogatory anyway), and it was hard to believe they hadn’t been deleted within minutes, or an hour or two at most, given their content. I then happened to revisit the page a couple of days later, and the posts I am referring to had now been deleted, but I have no idea of course at what point during the two days since I had initially seen them that they were deleted. But THAT’S irrelevant really, because the point is – and as occured to me on the second visit to the page – the vast majority of people who read the article AND the accompanying comments, will have done so in the first twenty-four hours or so after the article was posted, and the Express is well aware of that of course, so although the hostile and incendary comments WERE eventually deleted, it was only done AFTER the vast majority of people who read the article (and the comments) would have done so. And I have no doubt that it is their practise to do so – ie delete such comments only after the vast majority (who read the article) had seen them. And needless to say, the Express manipulates the likes and dislikes as well, so as to (try to) influence and manipulate their readers views and feelings regarding whoever or whatever.
I support Alex Nunns’ analysis and I can add more information to expose the conditions inside the fantasy world of hate factories: readers should be aware that Jeremy Corbyn’s fictional hate factory pays it’s hate workers the living wage; by contrast, Ian Duncan Smith’s is staffed by hate workers on zero-hours contracts. Here is conclusive proof that even in the realm of non-existant hate factories, Jeremy Corbyn is precisely 83% better than The Tories.