How fake news plagued 2017


Georgina Rannard

Ah yes, fake news!


Never mind about Lord Adonis's famous career as an elected MP (fake news!),  Georgina from the BBC has a 'thorough' review of this year's fake news for you on the BBC News website.

Or at least the kind of fake news that the BBC considers 'fake news'.

Read it and you'll come away with the impression that fake news appears to come exclusively 'from the Right' and from social media ("right-wing blogs" get a mention).

What about 'respected' media outlets who messed up badly this year (the major US networks especially, who've had to fire staff for fake news reports about the Trump administration)?

And what about those "left-wing blogs" like The Canary, Skwawkbox and Evolve Politics who have been accused (often fairly) of pushing fake news? Why not mention them too?

InfoWars is, of course, at Number One in Georgina's run-down, followed by 'the Muslim girl on Westminster Bridge'.

Naturally Georgina doesn't mention, say, the unravelling of the BBC's own fake news over the alleged Brexit-related anti-Polish hate crime in Harlow that turned out to be no such thing, and which was even worse than 'the Muslim girl on Westminster Bridge' in that it wasn't just some Russian bot insinuating something that wasn't true but the 'respected' BBC itself insinuating something that wasn't true. 

(The BBC's reporting over this is considered biased, though the BBC disputes this.)

It's an easy game, this cherry-picking, isn't it? 

Take the beam out of your own eye please, Georgina.

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