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Comment by trwhite | Hacker News Reader

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> You don't think the media attacks Boris and the Tories?

Not really. Boris outright lies all the time, and he's rarely picked up on for it. There are also several instances of Newspaper's running stories on the exact same policy, positively when suggested by the the Tories, and negatively when suggested by Corbyn. You can't get much more objective bias than that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50722167 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50717606 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50711868 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50630355

> That story about the boy sleeping on the hospital floor wasn't a setup by the left-wing media?

No, it wasn't.

The lies about it being a setup were started shortly by the unnamed sockpuppet trolls and spread fast. The media can't seem to fight this

https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/10/trolls-claim-photo-boy-hospit...

> That story about the boy sleeping on the hospital floor wasn't a setup by the left-wing media?

It wasn't. There's an official statement from the hospital confirming they had no beds left. Of course, the media chose to report it, but they aren't lying.

The right-wing media lied about it though, and it's a very relevant example of online disinformation:

"Despite the claim that the photo was staged having been acknowledged as false, it [the claim] has continued to spread on both Facebook and Twitter [...] Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson retweeted screenshots of the Facebook page to her followers twice, telling them “I presume this is genuine”, and adding later that the photo was “100% faked”. Her posts have received thousands of retweets between them."

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/dec/10/woman-says-acc...

(This is already downvoted, along with every non-pro-Tory comment in this discussion. Probably it will recover, HN usually does, but it would be better if people who disagree counter the arguments, rather than just downvoting what they're uncomfortable with.)

the rise of this submission to the front page and the swift sinking back under the waves, along with the vote war on comments here is interesting. this place isn't nearly so left-leaning as i'd assumed.

It seems mostly to be socdems and right-libertarians, depending on what thread you're on.

I agree with your point in parentheses. It appears I've been downvoted into oblivion despite not even indicating my own leaning.

Even if we're acknowledging that this story wasn't a setup, it's wrong to suggest that there's more right-wing bias in British media than left. It's probably about the same, though of course some establishments will always have particular leanings (e.g. Guardian to the left) Even the Beeb, which one would assume is neutral, regularly jumps on the Boris-bashing brigade.

No, it was not. However, the claim that it was was a lie that was spread far and wide through social media and by the right-wing media.

So again, no, it's not "both sides do it". It's mainly the right.

> That story about the boy sleeping on the hospital floor wasn't a setup by the left-wing media?

It's been proved beyond any doubt that the boy sleeping on the hospital floor was in fact true[0], despite an army of twitter and facebook bots being deployed to try and discredit the story[1]. The hospital involved publicly apologised for the incident.

[0]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50717606

[1]: https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1204175955314577410

The "left-wing" media? Who is that exactly?

Guardian and Mirror

There's an institutional left-wing bias in the media. Said by someone who (nearly) worked for it.

I'm less certain about the hospital incident and overall left-vs-right bias, but I can tell you: Wow, Labour is really, really good about sounding the chorus "we're being unfairly targeted! smears!" whenever there's a new story that another MP has resigned over the party's systematic antisemitism (or that someone who was fired, ostensibly to actually deal with anti-semitism, has been mysteriously re-hired).

(Our local "anti-Zionist" friends in Labour will mod me down for this, I know.)

The current Conservative leader has called Muslim women "letterboxes" and black children "piccaninnies" [1] with "watermelon smiles".

Maybe someone has made a systematic review of the reporting of Conservative and Labour racism, and the reporting of it, but just throwing up a statement like yours, without also including the racism of Conservative party members/leaders, is just fuelling the fire of hostile debate.

There will be racist people in both parties. Step back, and compare the depth of the racism and the number and influence of the people involved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickaninny

Trust me, I am always glad to say that the island's politics are a poorly contained dumpster fire, and point out the big stuff, like the Windrush scandal, or the English-proficiency-test scandal (not the original cheating, the Home Office response where they told thousands of international students their tests were invalid and they were subject to removal).

But if we're playing the "which one is really worse?" game, instead of striving to better either, we've lost.

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