W. Joseph Campbell, proprietor of the Media Myth Alert blog has busted the BBC for the same kind of Narrative-supporting BS we often call them on. It’s worth featuring here.
BBC calls Hearst vow apocryphal, quotes it anyway
Apocryphal but still quotable.
That’s how Britain’s venerable broadcaster, the BBC, treated the mythical anecdote about media titan William Randolph Hearst and his purported vow to “furnish the war” with Spain in the late 19th century.
In an article posted online yesterday, the BBC described Hearst as the “definitive [news] baron” and declared:
“He’s credited with the invention of tabloid journalism in the 1890s when his New York Journal began a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. He also had a reputation as a warmonger.
“‘You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war,’ goes an apocryphal instruction he was supposed to have sent in a telegram to an illustrator in Havana.”
That’s right, the line is apocryphal. What, then, is the point in using it? As a none-too-clever, back-handed way of buttressing the dubious notion that Hearst and his newspapers were capable of fomenting a war?
That’s sloppy journalism from a leading international news organization.
As they say, read the whole thing.
Someone at BBC News Online instructed Peter Jackson and Tom de Castella to whip up a piece that would give everyone the idea that nasty Uncle Rupert might be responsible for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they used an apocryphal quote to help create that context of a press baron “known” to have instigated war, knowing full well that’s what they were doing.
“Apocryphal but still quotable” = “Fake, but accurate“
The Beeboids are that arrogant. Journalistic standards? Yawn, it’s for the ankle-biters. If it’s for a just cause, anything goes. They have their agenda, and they know they can get away with it.
No doubt we can expect BBC-NUJ empire to invoke the ghost of Orson Welles’ fictional ‘Citizen Kane’ to build on the Hearst-Berlusconi-Murdoch political myth; they’d rather do that than expose the Robespierre-Stalin-Mao-Guevara political lineage in much of BBC-NUJ ideology.
Goebbels of course will not be allowed a look due to his Godwinlike status.
Pity. Because some of his methods, and quotes do seem… apposite…. if applied to a no-choice intrusive media monopoly piping single-minded messages out via all means 24/7.
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/-if_you_tell_a_lie_big_enough_and_keep_repeating/345877.html
The BBC… leading? Possibly.
But where?
And how can I opt off?
I have written to my MP to express my concerns, and also deep frustration and being tied, so uniquely, and without any means of severance into the foreseeable future (short of living in a cave or emigrating).
Meanwhile, the other means with other media I do have some control over has commenced, with a final straw to this camel’s back…
”That’s it.
Enough is enough.
Bad enough that a media obsession is still claimed to be a public one on a day of actual real news elsewhere.
But to get Kevin Maguire, of The sainted Mirror, to ‘comment’, and him alone, is hypocrisy too far.
Sky News, my support in terms of ad eyeballs is at an end.
Tx for everything. Enjoy where you are going.
While it lasts.’
Will still be watching cops shows, comedies and docos, but they’ve lost me as a ‘news’ viewer.
Now, who the heck is out there to get an actual spread of objective news info from of a morning?
BBC-NUJ loses top news story as it still talks up its political plot against Murdoch and relegates WORLD FINANCIAL CRISIS.
On its web News pages for ‘Home’ and ‘World’, BBC-NUJ has nothing on world financial crisis!.
It must be that many at the BBC-NUJ will be turning the Friday strike day into a long weekend, and that the BBC-NUJ political vendetta against NI must get priority.
For important material on world financial crisis, it is advisable to turn to non-BBC-NUJ source:
‘Telegraph’:
1.)<!– 8641514 –>
European banks set for ‘chaos Monday’ after nine fail
2.)
“Return of the Gold Standard as world order unravels”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8638644/Return-of-the-Gold-Standard-as-world-order-unravels.html
Be fair, the BBC only noticed this past week that the Eurozone might be facing difficulties. Then they decided it wasn’t, really. They’re a bit slow to notice when other people’s money runs out.
Then there’s the apocryphal story of the local radio news editor who having read a news flash himself into the breakfast show exited the news booth with the words, “God, I hope that’s correct. I guess we’ll soon find out.”
But it’s only an apocryphal story…?
Here’s Tom De Castella, co-author of the above BBC article, on Twitter yesterday:
If Les Hinton quits – as is being reported by WSJ – then the Evil/Genius Empire really is imploding. Bring on Fox News…
I see he also wrote a BBC article attacking the NOTW over its use of Orwell’s Decline of the English Murder in the final edition.
How did the BBC describe that Palin film again? Oh yes – “agenda driven”.