The BBC, Fake News and Media Literacy

This is from Jamie Bertlett, author of  ‘The People Vs Tech’, ‘The Dark Net & Radicals’. Secrets of Silicon Valley. Follow him at @JamieJBartlett

Comments (9)

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  1. Charles L. Gallagher says:

    It’s a bit rich, ‘FAKE NEWS’ coming from the EBC considering the damage their Scottish office at Pathetic Quay have been pumping out on behalf of the Brit Nats to undermine the legally elected Government of Scotland. In fact they have a bloody cheek to even mention ‘FAKE NEWS’ given their involvement!!!!

  2. Question Everything- Even Bella says:

    I know that the following sentence is well inattention, but it really is terrifying that the so called “thinking” alternative media is basically mirroring the corporate/state monopoly strategy at this stage.

    “The only solution is to dramatically increase media and information literacy in schools and beyond. Determining what is true and what is not – picking through bias and propaganda is perhaps the single most important thing kids must learn at school nowadays.”

    This sounds like: educate them to think “better” (from a paradigm I agree with!) and not to inquire into certain issues that are “conspiracy” – i.e., control the way they learn how to think and then control the content about which they think. This is essentially parroting what we already have and it is not working out that well for humanity is it!

    And to argue that we should NOT question everything is strange in the extreme!

    “But media literacy must not be ‘question everything’ – that’s the world of conspiracy theorists. Instead it’s to develop a theory of epistemology. ‘Why should I trust one thing over another thing’?”

    Many many historical incidents are confirmed within our mainstream history books to have been conspiracies. Is former British Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, indulging in “conspiracy” theory when he says in this video (published yesterday) that the west have been arming and backing terrorist groups in the middle east and that the White Helmets is essentially a western propaganda organization?: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMraCR3HMg

    “Believe me, not them”, seem to be the crux of Jamie Bartlett’s article . That is not good enough. We must go where the evidence goes and stop this ridicules nonsense of calling ideas we don’t agree with “conspiracy theories”.

    1. Jo says:

      Well said.

  3. w.b. robertson says:

    this piece should be required reading for all the folks who shout fake news at anything they disagree with – and lambast journalists in the process. I was once responsible for a story that appeared in Scotland which involved both sides of the west`s great sectarian divide. In the morning we received lawyers letters from both the Orange Order and the Catholic Church. And the predictable mailbag of mail from irate readers. Which proved something about so called fake news.!

    1. florian albert says:

      What was this story ? It must have been an interesting story if it simultaneously annoyed both the Orange Order and the Catholic Church.
      Where was it published ?

      1. w.b. robertson says:

        florian – email me – [email protected] – and I will give u the details.

    2. Jo says:

      I’ve read it without you making it “required reading”. But I like to make up my own mind without people like you telling me what to think! You do realise that’s what you’re advocating don’t you?

      I’ll also continue to call out dishonest journalism.

  4. SleepingDog says:

    If history is stolen (as in Ian Cobain’s The History Thieves), silenced by academic historians and archivists, or simply kept secret (some WW1 files are just being released after 100 years), then there is often inadequate and misleading public understanding of the context in which modern events take place (although sometimes the locals are bitterly aware of aspects of history that their one-time colonial occupiers seem to have forgotten).

    As we move past 100 years since Armistice Day on the Western Front, what other historical milestones and centenaries will be remembered, and which forgotten? We have had the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, but I cannot remember the British invasion of St Domingue, which resulted in greater casualties (many from disease) a few years earlier, being commemorated at all.
    “Everywhere the British went, they restored slavery, which made them hated by the mass of common people.”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
    Neither do other British wars attempting to restore slavery (like against the Jamaican Maroons) seem to feature largely in commemorations.

    I guess we’ll just have to see what coverage of 100-year-old interventions in Russian internal affairs is commemorated next.

  5. Craig P says:

    the bit that stopped me in my tracks is:

    >>we are all becoming slightly fascist in our style of politics

    With our internet echo chambers, could it be true?

    Mind you there was more hatred here in the pre-internet 1980s, when Labour and Conservatives served two very different ideological constituencies, than there is today with the constitutional question.

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