I’ve recently spent some time with friends and family members that not only watch the BBC news, but far worse, actually appear to believe it. As someone who gets news from a variety of sources, being subjected to enforced BBC bullshit was a surreal experience. I watched the news bulletins with increasing incredulity, while I mentally ticked off the stories that the BBC were not covering. Many of the not covered stories were to do with Jihad, or the problems that Islam brings to our shores. There was little, if any, unbiased coverage of the French car Jihad stories, nor was there much on the couple who were allegedly killed by a car driven by a Muslim in Manchester. It was like the broadcaster was filtering out any information about the Jihadi threat we all face, in order to fit in with a leftist ‘narrative’.
My experience with compulsory Auntie has made me more convinced than ever that the licence fee is an outdated and unfair way of paying for public service broadcasting. The Television Licence has sheltered the corporation from competition and the necessity to listen to its audience. It has allowed the BBC to become outrageously Left wing, to the extent that it has lost the reputation that it once had, for being honest reporters of the news.
However it is not just the BBC who are speaking untruths in order to push a particular political viewpoint. The American broadcasting network CBS has, according to the writer Mark Steyn, been telling outrageous lies, for example reporting as well attended an African-American religious parade that didn’t happen and reporting the actions of a deranged Muslim as an Islamophobic attack on a mosque. You might not be able to make it up, but it appears CBS can.
Here’s Mark Steyn on the non-news put out by CBS in California.
The notion of “approved” news goes back a long way. If you’ve read A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, you’ll recall that Hank Morgan, the eponymous time-travelling New Englander, was much taken by the Court Circular published each week in Camelot:
On Monday, the King rode in the park.
” Tuesday, ” ” ” ” ” “
” Wednesday, ” ” ” ” ” “
” Thursday, ” ” ” ” ” “
” Friday, ” ” ” ” ” “
” Saturday, ” ” ” ” ” “
” Sunday, ” ” ” ” ” “
But at least the King did, in fact, ride in the park. In today’s world, it is no longer necessary for the event so described actually to occur for it to be reported as a remarkable, newsworthy event. Here, for example, is CBS Los Angeles reporting on the city’s Kwanzaa parade:
The 38th annual KwanZaa Gwaride parade made its way down Crenshaw Boulevard Friday, marking the start of the seven-day festival of Kwanzaa.
The gwaride, which is the Swahili word for parade, brought together members of L.A.’s African-American community as they turn their focus on “Nguzo Saba,” the Seven Principles behind Kwanzaa…
Er, not really. The scene above can’t really be described as a “parade” – in English, Swahili, or anything else. “Gwaride” would seem to be Swahili for “vast empty plain with nary a solitary antelope for company”. And the only members of LA’s African-American community “brought together” by the event appear to be two pedestrians who were out for a stroll anyway.
The only very modest bit of news here is that, even in the heart of south Los Angeles, Kwanzaa is too boring and fraudulent for all but the most gung ho of identity-group hucksters. Which would be mildly interesting to know, and has the additional merit of being true. But you can’t say that on CBS. You can’t report the truth on CBS. So instead reality has to be brought into line with the diversity myths.
That’s the purpose of “news” as social engineering. The great, messy, contradictory, complexities of reality have to be streamlined and organized into the half-a-dozen approved narratives of the age. At its most absurd, you wind up with “Jackie”, the “victim” of the University of Virginia “gang” “rape”, to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for having the courage to come forward and raise awareness by “pulling back the curtain on rape” – even if behind the pulled-back curtain there was no actual rape going on. But the CBS Kwanzaa “report” reminds us that the same philosophy determines a thousand lesser stories every day of the week.
~On Monday, Jackie and the massed ranks of campus gang-rape victims rode through the park. On Tuesday, the spectacular Kwanzaa parade rode through the park. On Wednesday, the Religion of Peace rode through the park pursued by gangs of all-American bigots and haters. In between their delirious Kwanzaa observances, the California media also found time to report on a Yuletide attack on an American mosque – yet more grim evidence that Islamophobia is rampaging out of control:
A vandalism attack on the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno on Christmas Day was immediately branded by Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer as a “hate crime,” and the “Islamophobia” grievance industry began to gear up in response.
Alas, it proved to be just the usual Islamofauxbia‘
Read the rest of this article here:
http://www.steynonline.com/6723/fairy-tales-of-diversity
What CBS, and indeed the BBC, are doing is not reporting news but putting out propaganda. It’s not reporting, it’s dishonestly transmitting the right “tractor statistics” because that is what the political narrative demands. It’s not right, and it’s certainly not honest or truthful.
