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.