Tuesday 6 February 2018

News-lite

A lot's being made of 'fake news' at the moment, and yeah, there's a lot of it about. Though fake news is usually easy to spot, it's created to push buttons and therefore it'll be so far up the chosen confirmation bias scale as to intuitively set the alarm bells ringing in rational folk. And of course there's the other use of the 'fake' label, truth labelled fake to discredit it, though that's less talked about. Whatever, it does what it's intended to do, muddy the waters. The thing is, we know it, so we can compensate. Something I find equally worrying, if not more so and just as problematic is 'news-lite', a story with some of the inconvenient truth removed. It's becoming common place, particularly when relating history, and it's the supposedly trustworthy media who are most frequently guilty of it.  A good example is today’s main story, '100 years since women get the vote', a great story, and obviously a step forward on the road to women's emancipation. But..., we were only given half the story, with the inconvenient aspects ignored.  Yes, women got the vote, but ah, only about a third of women were given the vote in 1918, and those women had to be over 30 and possess substantial property or wealth. So, the real story was, 'some' middle aged middle class (and above) women were given the vote. Okay, it was still a start. Though, why weren't we told that? Why weren't all women given the vote in 1918? Well, it was because the government/establishment of the time feared the power that women would have in light of the number of male voters who'd died during World War One.  Little has changed there then. Many of those denied the vote, the two thirds of women, were those who'd worked so hard in the dangerous and health destroying war industries invaluable to the war effort, though their effort and work was not to be rewarded.  Little has changed there then either. It would take a further 10 years for them to get the vote, and a further hundred to breach the bastions of the government/establishment, and that war is far from won. I answered my own question, why was the story edited, why weren't we given the whole story? Because really very little has changed. So, we'll spin the story. I listen to the media today, and but for a few occasions where the whole picture was alluded to, none of the reports honestly reflected what happened in 1918.  I can guarantee that the majority of people now believe that 'all' women were given the vote in 1918, which just isn't the case. Though to many it's now actual history, the beeb said so. History can be dangerous, especially when it differs from the historical narrative on which an establishment has built a nations psyche. Man, this is just one historical event to be presented to the masses, doctored. Dunkirk, Churchill, the Empire and our colonial past, to cite a tiny few, have all been edited to the benefit of the establishments 'benevolent, heroic Britain' narrative. Isn't not telling the whole truth, just more damaging fake news? 

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