Riots

By Law I mean the law enforced by the Deep State (ie the real law) not by the Police and Criminal Courts (which only applies to the General Public, who dont own newspapers in the first place). If you ignore a D-Notice you will be classified as a threat to national security by MI5,CIA etc and end up like various people involved in Wikileaks.

Editors are not the type of people who would ignore something like a D-Notice and do what they are told*. As for newspaper owners I can mention one or two who have had suspicious deaths, but if you are directly involved in the deep state that can be the price you pay...

* - I personally know a journalist who was lets just say told not to investigate something in no uncertain terms - he was sent a picture of himself on a train station at night to reinforce the message. Most journalists know their job has the potential to get them into some pretty dangerous waters and alot of veteran investigative journalists who work for large newspapers probably know things they would not publicise or mention because of the potential consequences.

Daily Mirror, Express and quite a few more minor titles and magazines are owned by a plc with Chairmen Nicholas Prettejohn representing the owners. He's been around quite a bit. Not only for these papers but also on the board of trustees at the beeb and also has held positions at our friends the FCA. An all round good egg that has zero influence on the papers he has big stakes in ? I doubt it. Ok maybe he's a good egg but he certainly maintains influence.
The Telegraph is up for sale so that makes the current owner not control its content? Oh its up for sale, so it must be owned by a large group who are free from any bias?

The issue is not whether the owner (or tiny number of owners) are billionaires or millionaires as they obviously have to be. The issue is that such a small set of people decide what a lot of people read. Its simply a fact. I know you are happy with that and like to keep your head in the sand - your choice you're free to do that.

Thanks michaelc , that was an interesting response. Some comments on your comments .

"The culture secretary sits on its board".  The Culture Secretary sitting on its board is not something I object to. It is a quasi-public body, it is intrinsic to the state, and it does receive government funding (see more below). Sitting on a board allows for influence, but doesn't necessarily equate to control.

"All its money comes from government taxation" is factually incorrect. I did a bit of googling and found this:-

"Yes, the BBC license fee is a tax that funds the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The Office of National Statistics classified the fee as a tax in 2006, after it had previously been considered a service charge. The fee is required for UK households to receive live TV, stream online content, or watch BBC programs on iPlayer, regardless of the device used. As of July 2024, the fee is £169.50 per year. In 2022/23, the license fee accounted for 65% of the BBC's total income, which was £5.73 billion".

(NOTE: This was a Google provided "AI overview". Is that the first time we've had to label something as such on this forum?).

So the ONS has determined that it's a tax. OK, I didn't know that but I'll accept it. The BBC also receives revenue from its commercial arm, and selling programmes to other networks etc.

"Nicholas Prettejohn".  OK, I take your point. Equally a fairly vanilla city grandee. Every board of every company is full of them.

"That is a good point. However, whilst I don't believe in the "deep state" as such I do believe that there are entrenched views and culture within the organisations. So they're ok to have a fairly robust interview with a government minister for example but that doesn't mean they are providers of unbiased news. They have IMO a broadly similar agenda which changes slowly over time but generally supports the kind of things you might support such as appears in the centre ground of politics. Centre ground of politics doesn't equal unbiased reporting".

OK, basically I accept that. My conclusions lead me to lean in a different direction, but it's one of interpretation rather than one of kind.

I would like to see, from ALL media, far more robust challenge of public figures. The "old style" worked when a politician might be caught out in the odd fib or an embellishment. It does not work with people like Farage who conduct a male cow related manure machine "post truth" kind of operation where every word out of their mouths is a lie, a miss-statement, an embellishment, an exaggeration or a manipulation.

"Could be wrong but I think I heard once RT referring to BBC as the "British based broadcaster". Case of kettle and pot I suppose".  Let's say I would generally consider that the BBC would score 8/10 on a truthfulness / bias scale, where you might give them 5/10. Now let's talk about RT. I'd score them at 3/10. Where would you score them?  The point isn't whether you or I score them correctly.  The point is which do you put more store in.

"provably false material" - Take the recent horrific stabbings in Southport as an example. Relevant because they're the spark that ignited the recent spate of national unrest. When the police, local community in Wales where he grew up, social services, CPS, politicians and press (and...) ALL come out and say "he grew up in South Wales, the child of two Somali immigrants", and in under a day, do you choose to disbelieve ALL of them, and instead believe the anonymous unattributable commentator on Telegram who claims that he was a recent asylum seeker who arrived on a small boat across the Channel?  (And I'm not talking about you, Michael, I'm talking about the muppets attacking the police, attacking mosques, trying to burn down buildings housing asylum seekers etc).

The Post Office has failed to get it's story straight and it's had fifteen years to do so.  The idea that the government (or any "player") could manage this across the nation in a... let's call it a volatile situation... is completely implausible.  Get all their ducks lined up, with no leaks, immediately?  Not a chance. 

"TR...". I haven't read, or watched, a lot of his material. I have read and watched some (including his debate at the Oxford Union). My opinion is that he's a malevolent grifter who's out to benefit nobody but himself by preying on the fears, real or imagined, of people he can take advantage of. He's also got an arrest warrant out for him and he fled the country. He's perfectly happy lighting fires. He delights in the results but is unwilling to be held to account for it.

The perfect solution for somebody like TR (or Johnson, or Corbyn, or Farage... or any flake you care to name) would be to see him grilled in a public forum by somebody like Jason Beer (the lead KC for the Horizon inquiry). He'd be rinsed. Sadly this isn't feasible.

"Overall, this entire discusion for me is about the idea that 10 or 100 people can filter my news. With the advent of the internet and social media things are getting substantially more transparent but I feel its still not a solution".  I think my first comment would be something along the lines of "the only thing governments, of all stripes, are consistently capable of is demonstrating their own incompetence" (sorry, I'm sounding like Dominic Cummings now). I mean... look at Nadine Dories... They'll be a Labour equivalent along soon enough.

They can't even manage the Civil Service well enough to produce effective outcomes. The idea that they can exert enough control over the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, GB News (or whatever it's called), the FT, etc etc etc etc is... preposterous.

There are people, and organisations, who seek to influence things to their own benefit, or to support an agenda they believe. There always have been, there always will be.

The answer is critical thinking, fact checking, not swallowing material from dubious sources wholecloth and not giving them your money, your eyeballs or your clicks.

There's an awful lot of extremely good "non-mainstream media" out there.  Sadly there's also even more malevolent rubbish.  Russia's war on Ukraine is a perfect example.  Some material is brilliant.  Some is... not.  It's going to get much, much worse, as AI generated content (including sound and video) proliferates.  

In a world where everything is in doubt, which line are you going to hew to?  The BBC, who've been... broadly positive for the world for decades, or... some random sock puppet pulled out of a Telegram / Truth Social / Facebook / Twitter hat?

(Apologies for the confused wardrobe metaphor at the end there).

I've given you a like for that not because I agree with it (although some it I do) but because you've discussed and debated in a civilised manner without resorting to personal attacks. That should be commended. I suspect neither of us has time to continue this but at least we've outlined our positions in a clear and thoughtful manner.

That's all very well, but nobody's explained how you can avoid the Deep State's MSM  without ending up a complete ignoramus. How can you understand the world from sources that have no foreign correspondents? Most people are not on their arses all day with time to sift through botland looking for snippets of news from around the world. You have to use a digest provided by established MSM providers. And you make allowances for who they are. If it says Mail article, Mirror article, you know what discounts to apply. Enough of this nonsense.