BBC Launches Fact Checking and Verification Service – But Can We Trust It?

Okay, I just caught the announcement on today’s midday news that the Beeb has launched a fact checking and verification service. I didn’t quite catch all of the announcement, but I think there was something about the war in Ukraine. Assuming that this was part of the same announcement rather than a separate news item about the war, it may have been related to the conflicting claims yesterday made by Russia and Ukraine about Bakhmut. The Russians claimed they had taken the town, while the Ukrainians denied it. The BBC seemed to be saying that this new service would be able to cut through such confusion. The Beeb also announced a few years ago that they were going to launch a service aimed at checking and rebutting the fake news coming out of the internet. The announcement today seems to suggest that they’ve finally completed setting the service up. Events have moved on a bit since then, and internet fake news and the ‘alternative facts’ put out by Donald Trump aren’t such a pressing issue on the public mind. They’ve therefore decided to announce its launch with a more topical question, such as who’s telling the truth about the war in Ukraine.

But can the Beeb itself be trusted? One of the right-wing news outlets – I can’t remember which one – said that Britain had one of the very lowest rates of public trust in the news in the world. Only 13 per cent of us, according to polls, supposedly believe the newspapers. I think the amount of trust in the Beeb might by higher, but it seems to me that this will also have been hit by allegations by the Tories about left-wing bias, particularly over Brexit. But the BBC has shown several times to people on the left that it can’t be trusted. It wholeheartedly took part in the mass demonization of Jeremy Corbyn as an evil anti-Semite. And I particularly remember the way it blatantly edited and censored Alex Salmond during the referendum a few years ago on Scottish independence. Their correspondent, Nick Robinson, had asked Salmond if he was afraid that the Scottish financial firms, located in Edinburgh, would move south if Scotland became independent. Salmon answered that they’d gone into that, and the firms wouldn’t. This clip was gradually edited during the day so that first it appeared that Salmond hadn’t given a satisfactory answer, and then that he ignored the question altogether.

And part of the problem isn’t what the Beeb or the rest of the lamestream media tells you, but what they don’t. Like the Maidan Revolution that toppled the pro-Russian Ukrainian president eleven years ago and started the path to the current war wasn’t a spontaneous, popular uprising, but carefully stage-managed by Hillary Clinton and her deputy Victoria Nuland in the state department with the cooperation of the National Endowment for Democracy. Other lowlights that found their way into the alternative media were reports that Clinton and Nuland had been recorded discussing whether or not they wanted the boxer-turned-politico Klyuchko in the Ukrainian cabinet. The gruesome twosome were also recorded lamenting that they hadn’t rigged the Palestinian elections, thus allowing the Palestinians to elect a Hamas government.

Today’s announcement is no doubt intended to reinforce the Beeb’s image as a source of unbiased, objective news. Certainly, that’s the image the corporation likes to project of itself. A few years ago, there was an advert for the Beeb’s news programmes which stated that the Beeb was listened to all over the world, especially in countries with authoritarian and dictatorial governments. The people in these countries trusted it to give them the real news that was being suppressed or distorted by their official news agencies.

Except I think it may be too late for that. The Beeb has shown itself too biased, too untrustworthy too often. You’re far better off getting information from the left-wing alternative internet channels like Novara Media and OpenDemocracy. The internet is notorious for the amount of rubbish, fake news and conspiracy theories circulating on it. But sometimes it’s more truthful than the mainstream news. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the fake news the Beeb will now claim to have checked and refuted is actually truthful, but needs to be discredited because it doesn’t fit the establishment agenda.

Cartoon Against Ultra-Zionist Inquisition

Here’s another bit of art I’ve made. This time it’s a cartoon lambasting the current purging of left-wingers in the Labour party, and particularly those critical of Israel, all under the pretence that it’s about combating anti-Semitism. It isn’t. It’s Starmer, Evans and the Blairite right trying to silence and expel anyone who stand up from real socialism and decries the Israeli state’s persecution of the Palestinians. And there’s more than a bit of anti-Semitism in it. Jewish Voice for Labour only the other day submitted a report to the Forde Inquiry and the Equalities of Human Rights Commission pointing out that four-fifths of those purged have been Jewish, and Jews are more than 300 times more like than gentiles to be smeared as anti-Semites and purged.

I realise that there’s no better way to flatten a joke than to explain it, but to make sure there are no misunderstandings, this is what it all stands for. This is my particular view of what is going on, and in my opinion what is going on is comparable to a medieval inquisition by the Blairites on behalf of the Israeli state. The figures in Klan robes represent just such bigoted, inquisitorial justice. I chose their robes rather than the real costume of the Holy Office or Spanish Inquisition because they are more recognisable but have the same religious overtones in my view. David Evans, who is charge of this perverted kangaroo court justice, also wears them. This is because I regard him as chief inquisitor. I am not saying that he is personally anti-Semitic, although the witch hunt over which he presides certainly is. In my opinion, that is.

The figures at the bottom are supposed to be Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who represents Jewish Voice for Labour. They are all Jewish. Walker and Greenstein have been purged as part of this witch-hunt. I think Wimborne-Idrissi is still a member, but she and her organisation of real Jews have suffered the same accusations of anti-Semitism. Grotty individuals like Neil Coyle have tweeted demanding JVL’s expulsion along with other ‘commies’. And before anyone claims that it’s anti-Semitic because it attacks Zionism, Zionism has never been solely a Jewish movement. It arose in the 19th century among Christians, who wanted the Jews to return to Palestine in order to hasten Christ’s return. It has also been popular amongst real anti-Semites, like the composer Richard Wagner. Wagner had Jewish friends, but he wanted the Jews to move back to Palestine so Germany would be rid of them. See Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship. And as I’ve said very many times, in terms of membership the biggest Zionist organisation in America is Pastor Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. I’d also like to point out that I do respect the opinion of left-wing Zionists, who believe in Israel but want humane treatment for the Palestinians. I should really have called it ‘the ultra-Zionist inquisition’, but this is too much of a mouthful.

And finally, the caption is, of course, a parody of the famous Monty Python sketch. Unfortunately the inquisition in the Labour party isn’t offering anybody comfy chairs Except, of course, for the backsides of those in charge of this corrupt, compromised ‘justice’.