The war on fake news
As usual about this time of year, I am sitting in a hotel
room, thinking that this must be very much what it is like to be a foreign
correspondent in general and a war correspondent in particular. Except of course it’s not. The hotel room is in central London and
so unless I have undergone an unexpected and unnoticed transformation of
nationality, I’m not a foreign correspondent. Having said that, English does appear to be the minority
language here in the hotel, a consequence of the continued popularity of London
as a tourist destination, a weak pound making it even more popular and lots of
worried Europeans getting in a visit while they can before a fucking huge fence
goes up all round Britain, or something.
But as has been stated before on this blog, there is something about
staying in a hotel room and having a laptop open on the desk that suggests
something of the war correspondent.
Previously, I was in the happy position of exaggerating the
foreignness of places when the most exotic thing about them was that they had
not one but two Chinese take aways.
I was also in the happy position of inventing the ‘war’ element of the
correspondent bit. And actually,
as anyone who has read this post this far will know, inventing the
‘correspondent’ element too. Sadly, this is no longer true.
Of what war do I speak? Certainly, the next few hundred or few thousand words could
be about the war on terror, a war where the front line is on our streets, or
actually on our high street.
Various nutters with pokey things have made right nuisances of
themselves in 2017, but they don’t really deserve a mention here. If you want one defining image of the
war on terror, it’s that bloke fleeing from the attack at Borough market, still
holding his pint. When the little
fuckers roll up in a tank, we might put our drinks down. Until then, cheers!
Nor is it the war that is being fought over inappropriate
touching, usually by celebrities, occasionally of people who wish to become
celebrities. This is not a war as
such, merely a continuation of the battle of the sexes, which appears to have
somewhat hotted up again. The view
from the G&P trenches (not, you will note, the view from the feminine
equivalent, which I guess would be ‘Lady and Spectator’ or ‘Lady and Person
Responsible For Cakes’ or something) is that that bastard Wienerstiener has
ruined it for all of us.
Basically, if I call somebody ‘Love’ in the office, I’m fucked. Not that I ever would. I call everyone ‘chaps’. ‘Chaps’ is a gender neutral form of
address. In all my tears of using
it, I only ever had one person comment that one of those addressed was a woman,
or a chappess. The person
complaining was not the lady in question, because she was a bloody good chap
and would not do that sort of thing.
No, it was, I stringly suspect, the same person who complained when I
brought doughnuts into the office for a treat that I had neglected to provide a
fruit alternative. FFS.
The war in question is the war on fake news, or as Fox News
calls it, ‘news’.
London is, of course, the home of the BBC, a corporation
with correspondents both foreign and domestic, both war and peace. The BBC is funded not, as you might
imagine, by flogging episodes of ‘Top Gear’ to China and a TARDISload of
‘Doctor Who’ merchandise, but through the license fee, which everyone is happy
to pay even if the BBC only ever broadcast ‘Blue Planet II’. That alone would be worth it and you
won’t find anyone that will contradict that because nobody wants to look like
an idiot in public. Recent voting
patters demonstrate that people are happy to be idiots in the privacy of a
booth, but in public, unwise social media posts aside, it’s a different matter.
Because everyone pays their license fee, two mind-sets
simultaneously evolve. They can be
held by the same person at the same time.
The first is that evey license fee payer feels that they have the right
to criticise any aspect of the BBC.
The second is that when anyone who does not pay a license fee tries to
criticise the BBC, they defend it like Horatio defends a bridge.
Case in point.
The BBC loves to cover extreme weather events by sending presenters with
usually immaculate hair and make up to report live from the scene. This usually involves wellies but it’s
not unusual to see a BBC presenter in a North Face parka, screaming into a
microphone held to their lips, trying to make themselves heard over the
screaming wind that is driving the rain into their face. So essentially you have a BBC reporter
doing their bit from where was until yesterday a busy high street, but is now
the Little Puddling Water Recreation Centre.
Then you have one of those masochistic BBC programmes where
the viewer gets to make their point, usually that a presenter has been too
rude, or too Tory, or too Leftie, or too female, or too black. And the complaint in question, that the
BBC reporter was giving advertising to a particular brand of anorak.
Now, the benefit of this sort of attitude is that there is
no other broadcaster of news, in the world, with such rigorous oversight.
Which is why fake news does not happen on the BBC.
Admittedly, some of the correspondents and editors can give
an opinion on something that is about as palatable as a Bush Tucker Trial, but
that’s part of the fun and it all balances out.
The problem now is that the BBC is reporting on certain
individuals, naming no names, who lie, and because the BBC has a duty to
report, those lies get broadcast.
It’s like retweeting fake news.
And that’s the soft end. The hard end is the truly terrifying boiler rooms in malign
states that are pumping out fake news clickbait.
By the way, I can assure you that G&P is not written in
a vast warehouse just outside of Minsk.
If it was, it would be so much more better writtener.
Every screen is the front line in the war on fake news. And right now, I’m not sure who is
winning. Certainly, fake news has
gained considerable ground. It
used to be that fake news was confined to the playground and the pub. Not any more. Thanks to malicious minds taking the innocent internet, that
used to be used for such lofty pursuits as porn and bickering about Star Trek,
and using it to drip poison into the ear of Joe Public, fake news is a Key
Opinion Influencer.
Maybe though things will change. Fake news is getting easier to identify. Everyone should have the fake news
equivalent of one of those aircraft spotter posters showing the silhouette of
enemy aeroplanes, except that they would show the signature shapes of fake
news, such as ‘anything that you really want to believe is true, probably
isn’t’, or a picture of a fox.
And those that peddle fake news need to be identified
too. It’s a pity that the entire
established media hate Facebook because they fear it so, and also a pity that
facebook does appear to be a home for fake news. But so what, who cares? The Internet is the wild fucking west, there are no
rules. And really, what sort of
person believes something they read on Facebook. Unless it’s about kittles.
Trusted sources, that’s what it’s all about. Like the BBC. Never knowingly fake.
Finally, a note on the hotel. It’s in the centre of London which is a big area I admit, as
any area connected to the tube might make that claim, but this really is, there
are more busses and cabs than cars.
The hotel is discreet but posh, and judging by the fluffyness of the
towels is luxurious. My room is on
the first floor, meaning that the window, with views of a typically
cosmopolitan London street, is a few fee above the windows of the top deck of
the busses that stop outside at the lights. Nobody has waved yet.
The bar looks like the sort of place a foreign correspondent might
frequent in that it sells cocktails, which is hard liquor mixed with more hard
liquor or, if you’re a lady, some fruit.
There was also what appeared to be a fashion shoot going on. Rude to stare.
Brexiteers would loath this place. It’s full of foreigners, coming over here, boosting our
economy. And that’s just the
staff.
Labels: Alcohol, BBC, Hotels, Media, Mini bars, News, War, War correspondents