About the media – aka “fake news”

There’s a bit of a problem with certain parts of the media: they’re quite upset because people no longer trust them (never mind actually paying for a subscription) and they just can’t seem to figure out why.

We’ve got a prime example here today. The same topic is covered by (at least) two different outlets.

One is the BBC – a “name” everyone could trust….once.

The second one is LBC. I don’t know much about their reputation.

The LBC article adds two small details:

“He arrived in the UK where he claimed asylum and was housed at the taxpayer’s expense in a Hilton hotel in London while his application was considered, the Daily Mail reports.”

“Abdelrahmen Adnan Abouelela, 42, was found guilty in his absence of being part of a bomb-making cell in Egypt and given a seven-year jail sentence on May 5, 2015.”

These are missing from the BBC article.

Well, one of these two options is probably true:

• whoever wrote the BBC article is largely incompetent and/or they have a political agenda. Because of that, they decided to omit the fact that this was a convicted terrorist AND that he was housed in a Hilton hotel
• whoever wrote the LBC article is lying.

It is, I suppose, for the readers to decide, but one thing’s for sure: readers are not the problem.

As for “OK, but who’s the liar?”, I suppose it boils down to a simple question: who’d have something to gain from it? Which one is state-sponsored (or, should we say, government-sponsored) and would try to avoid embarrassing their sponsor?