Sue Gray has been forced to resign from her post in Kier Starmers government, not for something she has done, not for some error in judgement, but because the smear campaign by the Tories and the main stream media has made her position impossible.
Sadly the main stream media are becoming ever more emboldened in the their manipulation of politics, we have seen this in recent weeks with the constant none stories about Kier Starmer’s expenses, and the Daily Mails campaign against Angela Raynor during the General Election over her council house purchase, Even now the MSM are ranting about Sue Gray leaving her position, and how Kier Starmer is weak because of it etc, when it was them that made her position so toxic in the first place.
We are now reaching a point where the MSM is becoming so toxic with their constant lies and non-stories and blowing everything out of proportion that the need to press regulation is becoming ever more apparent.
If you look at the barrage of stories over the last few weeks about Kier Starmer’s expenses, you probably missed the stuff that didn’t get printed, like Nigel Farage getting caught actually lying directly in press conference about being told not to hold surgeries by the Speakers office and House of Commons security and when fact checked on it he was even forced to admit it.
Boris Johnson has admitted that he basically made up pretty much everything he said in the Brexit campaign and only did it to win an argument with no thought whatsoever given to what would actually happen if he won. And then of course we have James Cleverly’s expenses, with Mr Not So Clever at All being caught lying and claiming expenses for tickets to Wimbledon where he denies his wife was there, even though there are photographs, and of course the Rugby world cup tickets where again he claimed it as Ministerial Expenses and then took his wife with him. And don’t forget the Tory party and the faux outrage over the hand over of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which of course was a process started by the Tories and that was pretty much done and dusted before the election, and of course is only now a story because it involves the Labour government.
An article from back in 2016 showed that the Daily Telegraph topped the IPSO Naughty List for the highest number of complaints upheld against it by the Independent Press Standards Organisation since the regulator was set up two years previous.
More Recently At the end of 2022, IPSO received over 25,000 complaints about a comment piece about the Duchess of Sussex, the highest number in our history about a single story. The piece was published by The Sun and written by none other than Jeremy Clarkson.
If you want to take a look at the latest 2022 report then it’s available on the IPSO website and it certainly makes interesting reading with most complaints being made against the Mail Online and The Daily Mail no surprises there, and the most upheld complaints being made against The Times and The Telegraph.
But the biggest problem is that these publications just keep on doing it the nonsense printing in many of the main stream media pages about migrants pretty much fed the outrage which led to the Tory party capitulating to a referendum on Europe and of course to our eventual exit from Europe, and that type of control by the press, most of which is not British owned is dangerous.
Its high time that lying to the public when in a position of power because a crime and one which carried a proper penalty (say 10 years), and yes we should include newspaper journalists and news channels in this, and along side that we should also revise the laws on lible etc at the moment the law and process makes it almost impossible for the common man to challenge a newspaper in court, the process needs to be turned on it’s head with the onus placed on the journalist to prove their story or face the consequences, this would lead to much better stories as sources would need to be checked and papers would be on seriously shakey ground when printing what often turns out to be nothing more than rumours and hearsay.
And its not just the direct lies that are harmful its the way newspapers report on other non-stories, there is a great number of stories written these days which takes government think-tank reports, which are exactly that reports into ways in which a problem could be dealt, which are takene by the newspapers and reported as if they are actually government policy, this of course can cause untold stress within communities like pensioners, the disabled, etc, etc. Yes ok the feedback is good from the perspective that the government gets to hear what the people think of these proposals, but is it worth the stress, worry and upset that it can cause.?
More now than ever we need to be thoughtful and vigilant and question eveyrthing we read in the press and even on the BBC news. Do your own research, look to trusted sources, look for the source of the story and whatever you do, do not believe everything you read in the papers.
