Monday 9 September 2019

Lying Politicians

It is an undeniable fact that Politicians lie, some have catastrophic consequences like Tony Blair and George W Bush with ended up with a million deaths and some are broken manifesto pledges which they never had any intention of keeping and some are a way to try and gain your vote.
American President Donald Trump is the king of liars, The Washington Post counts over 12,000 false and misleading statements from Trump since becoming president in January 2017 but we have our very own liar in Boris Johnson who has been sacked twice for flat out lying.
Channel 4's head of news, Dorothy Byrne, has defended the right of journalists to call out politicians when they tell lies and pointed her finger squarely at Boris Johnson, calling him 'a known liar'.
Byrne said: 'We need to start calling politicians out as liars when they lie. If we continue to be so polite, how will our viewers know that politicians are lying"?
The claim by Boris Johnson during the Brexit campaign that leaving the EU would free up £350 million per week which would go to the NHS was a brazen lie but it was effective in that by the time it was exposed, the lie had been repeated often enough to have gained traction, if wrongly.
As we have no mechanism to remove the Right Honourable Members of Parliament if it is later discovered that they lied or if they have their hands in the expenses till, they just get away with it and it falls to Journalists to shout the loudest, point the finger and bring the liars to account.
The Press doesn't have a great reputation, many being just as capable of lying as the politicians but broadcast journalism, in the UK anyway, is regulated tighter and held to a higher standard and stand between the politicians lies and the viewer.
Donald Trump makes much of branding media outlets who don't pander to his lies as fake news but that is because they expose his falsehoods and don't just accept them at face value.
That we just accept that Politicians spin, show selected information and flat out lie should never become the norm, it can never be right for the people in power to lie to their own citizens for their own political advantage.
In a recent interview, an MP said Parliament would be empty if politicians were punished for telling lies and maybe if a few more were punished we can start believing them, even the well known liars.

6 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

so political liars regulate your journalist liars... good system

Falling on a bruise said...

Say's the Trump voting Fox News viewing right wing Insurance salesman.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

since you seem to be trying to state some facts, let me help you:

i did vote for Trump because Hillary was even worse

i do lean right because i like personal freedom more than equality

i do watch FOX, but I also watch and listen to BBC, CNN, PBS, NPR, MSNBC...

I don't sell insurance. But, in fact, I'm a strategic planner / competitive intelligence analyst / innovator for an F100 financial services company that owns a P&C insurance company, life insurance company, bank, and investment companies...

You leftist community college journalism teacher that watches BBC News (wow, that really sounds harsh of me to say...)

Falling on a bruise said...

So all correct as i stated then.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

- no, i don't sell insurance (gotta have a license in the US)
- and i work for a company that owns an insurance company, not an insurance company
- and by omitting that i get my information from many sources (left, right, and "neutral") you make seem that i'm uniformed (naughty naughty Lucy - tell the truth, WHOLE TRUTH, and nothing but the truth)

so, as usual, you got things wrong and you manipulated. Are you a journalist? I bet you are you little manipulator you...

Falling on a bruise said...

Did you really compare the BBC which is regulated by OFCOM to ensure that it is balanced and shows no bias against Fox News which was removed from British TV by the same OFCOM for not being balanced and showing bias? That did give me a chuckle.

Don't know what a community college is but if it is the equlivalent of a sixth form college then they do great work preparing students and providing a basic knowledge of a subject before they are passed onto us. Bit elitist to talk them down, they do the dirty work so we can build on that and do our bit. It's like a taxi firm taking down driving instructors.