LONDON (Bywire News) - British media regulator Ofcom says it will prioritise complaints about broadcaster’s news coverage of Russia and Ukraine. Although they stress that this applies to everyone, the focus is front and centre on one organisation, in particular, Russia Today. However, that could be a mistake because anyone who has followed the British media over the past few years will know that even the most reputable are far from immune from peddling a few lies.
Sir Keir Starmer focused on Russia Today in his response to Boris Johnson’s somewhat weak-willed set of sanctions yesterday in Parliament. He demanded that more should be done including stopping those broadcasters piping out Russian propaganda.
He’s absolutely right. Russia Today is nothing more than old fashioned state propaganda with shinier TV sets. Nobody in their right mind should regard it as a serious news channel and the fact that it has been continued to broadcast even as Russia works hard to undermine western democracy is one of the great mysteries of the age.
But our own western media is not without its faults and for that, we only have to dial the clock back a little over a year when senior journalists piped out lies from Number 10 unfiltered onto social media before checking any facts.
The Serial podcast from the New York Times is also currently running with a story about what it says is inaccurate reporting in the British press over the so-called Trojan Horse scandal after an alleged Islamic plot to infiltrate schools in Birmingham. The story blew up all over the press with precious few questions being asked about who had actually written the letter.
Times of international crisis can often see the press become the witting or unwitting accomplices in government misinformation. We only have to look back at the claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the reports at the time, to see that what we read in the press may not be all that it seems.
This excellent blog by Bywire CTO Jetze Sikkema about how Bywire identifies fake or questionable news pieces is a perfect example. It shows how mainstream media can use hype and exaggeration to warp the content of news stories and produce the desired response.
As we move through this crisis, we should all be wary of what we read and see in the news, but that should apply to all news outlets – not just those supporting the other side. Nobody, at times like this, is truly independent.
(Writing by Tom Cropper, editing by Klaudia Fior)