McDonnell smashes the ‘fake news’ myth while Watson postures
John McDonnell [Image: BBC/Skwawkbox].
This time, it’s about Watson’s fake inquiry into fake news. Although there is certainly fake news around, most of it perpetrated by right-wing hate propagandists, Watson has chosen to attack left-wing news outlets like This Blog’s good friend The Canary.
Another good friend, Steve Walker of the Skwawkbox blog, heard Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell talking on the subject and wrote an article about it, which I can only quote and applaud:
In appointing one of Corbyn’s most shameless opponents in the Parliamentary Labour party (PLP), sometime S*n and Daily Mail columnist Michael Dugher, to head an inquiry that it is doubtful Watson has any authority to instigate and by naming one of the most reputable independent news sources in the UK, The Canary, as a source of fake news, Watson couldn’t have telegraphed his intentions and motivations any more clearly.
To continue his ‘Anaconda’ project to strangle Corbyn’s leadership.
In stark contrast to Watson’s posturing and scheming, John McDonnell gave an object lesson in straight talking on the subject on Saturday.
Speaking at the Media Democracy Festival, on a panel alongside The Canary and Novara Media, McDonnell was direct in a way that you will not hear from Watson or Dugher on the subject, including calling out Watson’s ‘inquiry’/hatchet job (emphases mine):
“I congratulate those who have looked at establishing other kinds of media, but again, what was seen in recent months, with the inquiries into fake news and all the rest of it, is a very assault on those media outlets because they’re challenging the distortion that’s taken place in the mainstream media itself.
“The bizarre post-truth situation and post-truth political debate have been founded upon the media distortion that’s been talking place, exemplified by the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, and coming semi-directly from the concentration of ownership [of media].
“The good thing at the moment is that there is now a growing backlash [against something] people now see as an elite establishment and I think increasingly the media elite establishment is seen as a part of that.”
Source: While Watson postures on #fakenews, McDonnell tells it like it is | The SKWAWKBOX
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But the majority of the electorate won’t have been in attendance at a fringe festival. So it matters not one bit until Labour get their message across publicly. They can’t and they won’t. The ONLY solution is direct grassroots action. Labour are finished, all people see is the division – at best. Everyone else still distrusts them or thinks Corbyn is as bad as Castro. THat Labour did sweet FA these last 6 years to defend themselves has mortally wounded them
The majority of the electorate don’t attend party conferences either, but we all find out what happens there.
You know what John McDonnell said at this event, having read it here.
Direct, grassroots action is certainly part of the solution, as is building up a solid media presence that doesn’t require the complicity of the right-wing “mass” media. So, for example, This Blog just had its five-millionth hit this year. That’s more than 100,000 a week. Recognition of the site and what’s on it is far wider, of course, because many more people will have seen headlines and links without clicking on them. Seeing the headlines is enough, in many cases.
And This Blog is not the biggest, by any means.
Neoliberal Labour under Miliband was weak in its own defence, I’ll grant you that. Corbyn’s Labour has stood up for itself – except when neoliberals have been asked to do so, but they’re on the way out the door.
Watson with his zionist backers are after running the labour Party for them self and lets face it the zionists have the money
Well there are certainly more and more people beginning to realise the media has an agenda whether it is right or left in its leaning and that you nee to dig deeper to find the truth, or a balanced viewpoint. There is also a tendency to use wording such as hate far to often you can’t dislike or have a disquiet about a subject apparently you either love or hate it these days so if someone disagrees with your viewpoint they accuse you of hate speech, but love everything you say that agrees with them. This is probably the cause of so much divisiveness throughout the world.
Will wonders never cease, Barry?
I actually agree.
Sometimes I think that this very blog resembles one of those “fake news” sites, or, at the very least, is selectively truthful and deliberately evasive far too often when it comes to statistics and facts – rather like arch faker Iain Duncan Smith during his messianic stint at the DWP.
Jeremy Corbyn is a great and popular leader.
Labour is on course to win the 2020 general election.
The political polls will improve for the party within a year.
(Sorry, that wasn’t you. That was intellectual giant Diane Abbot on the Andrew Marr show this morning. You don’t believe in polls any more do you, Mike? Sorry about that. I wouldn’t want to mislead anybody.)
See what I mean?
This kind of thing seems fanciful, let’s say, to most rational and unbiased basing their judgement of all available extant evidence and no more plausible than a recent story on a fake news site that claimed Michelle Obama was a man.
What a lot of twaddle – and a false argument, too – professing to present the views of This Blog and its writer while actually skewing them to your own purposes, which I would suggest are not rational but are biased.
People looking for fake news – or at least opinions pointing towards it – need look no further than your comment.
Seriously, did you honestly think you’d get away with this? VP readers are far too intelligent to be taken in by it – they read the same articles as you.