How the Guardian tells lies

As one of the UK's post-truth behemoths, the Guardian still trades on a reputation established in more honest times, before the paper carried fake news as a matter of course. Jonathan Freedland today condemns what he terms the lies of others - but ignores his paper's own record of journalistic dishonesty. 

In the paper's news content you don't have to look far to find prime examples of those heinous journalistic sins Omission, Distortion and Misrepresentation. It took me just a few minutes today to find the following in this morning's report in the paper of the protests outside the Polish parliament; 'Police use tear gas to clear parliament blockade' reads the headline, but in the piece itself the gassing is hardly mentioned - "Opposition party MP Jerzy Meysztowicz told the television network that police used tear gas to disperse the protesters who tried to prevent the cars from leaving." In other words, the paper has no evidence for the use of tear gas, no independent corroboration, just a hearsay anecdote from one of the protesters.

Nor it seems did the paper's 'journalists' seek to confirm the story with the Polish police - or perhaps they DID check with the Polish police as to whether tear gas had been used. And didn't like the answer, and so lied about it. RT also carries the protest story -  and reports "Warsaw police spokesman Mariusz Mrozek subsequently denied reports that police had deployed tear gas against protesters, claiming that what might have looked like tear gas in fact was smoke from fireworks thrown by demonstrators".  

And so the truth emerges. Protesters trying to prevent the convoy of official cars from leaving threw 'fireworks' - in probability marine signal flares - the smoke from which was interpreted by an inexperienced protester in a heightened state of excitement as tear gas, and the Guardian reported this as a fact.

So the Guardian's strap line is simply lousy, unacceptable, fake-news journalism, based on the single uncorroborated hearsay of a single demonstrator and officially denied by the police. It's either omission or distortion, take your pick. And in Freedland's own words, it's a lie.

Post-credulous audience hears evidence of fake news broadcast by post-truth BBC

The video link provided by a commentor in the post below is a scorcher. At a UN press conference, independent Canadian journo Eva Bartlett demolishes the credibility of the fake news from Aleppo promulgated by, amongst others, the Guardian and the BBC.

"..what you hear in the corporate media, and I will name them – BBC, Guardian, the New York Times etc. – on Aleppo is also the opposite of reality"

In a devastating surgical dissection, Bartlett dismisses the BBC's main source of news in Aleppo - one man in Coventry, with an agenda, who calls himself 'Syrian Observatory for Human Rights'. She points out that there are NO international humanitarian organisations in rebel-held Aleppo and NO credible independent sources of news from there. The White Helmets are exposed as an armed partisan force funded by $100m from the US / EU / UK who fake news footage (documented) and are, I strongly suspect, a thin cover for arms shipments to the rebels and for western intelligence organisations.

There is NO evidence, she points out, that the White Helmets have ever been in rebel-held areas of Aleppo at all. Such news is fake.

Bartlett appeared before fellow international journalists, all of whom had full opportunity to question her and require evidence. She comes out as honest, sane and very credible - and the post-truth BBC and Guardian come out as shabby liars and charlatans.

"So they [the White Helmets] are not credible. The SOHR are not credible. 'Unnamed activists' are not credible. Once or twice maybe, but every time? Not credible. So your sources on the ground – you don't have them. You ask why we aren't seeing this. This relates to the other gentleman's question about why most of the corporate media are telling lies about Syria. It's because this is the agenda; if they had told the truth about Syria from the beginning, we wouldn't be here now. We wouldn't have seen so many people killed."

I commend this video. Make a coffee, take a break and play.

Christmas peace for Aleppo's Christians as Islamist butchers routed

The routing of Saudi, Turkish and US backed Islamist butchers from Aleppo by united Syrian and Iranian forces, backed by Russia, will allow the devastated city's remaining Christians  to celebrate a bleak Christmas this year. They may have little for a festive feast - but the gifts of life, family and hope will transcend the horrors of persecution, dreadful torture and genocide under the repressive and murderous regime of the Islamist rebels. 

Assad has many faults but religious intolerance is not amongst them. He protects not only Syria's ancient Christian population but also many other minority faiths, all the target of violence, hate and extinction by the Islamist rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and others. 

Fools including Cameron and George Osborne in the UK have done nothing but prolong the war, extend the agony and add to the heaps of dead and dreadfully injured innocents. Their corrupt links with KSA and Sunni business interests will not stand scrutiny - and they put greed for gold above the lives of the poor suffering innocents of Syria. May they have a miserable Christmas amongst their Islamist chums. 

Just rejoice and spare a prayer of thanks for our brothers and sisters now rebuilding their lives in Aleppo under Syrian government protection.  

President and Mrs Assad attend a Christmas service