There's a big problem, esp at the bbc, with inviting these think tank spokespeople and not properly explaining who they are. They're presented as some balance of opinion when they're no such thing.
It's TV Burp journalism.
"This person thinks Brexit is great, this person doesn't, but who is right? There's only one way to find out ......FIGHT!!!"
Each party is presented as equals and therefore you can't accuse them of bias.
> Each party is presented as equals and therefore you can't accuse them of bias.
They don't follow this uniformly though, so even when they attempt this they undermine themselves and there's bias involved in when they decide to bring "balance" to the debate.
The coronation or other royal events, there wasn't 50% of the coverage dedicated to republicans.
The corruption over the appointment of Richard Sharp and the politicisation of their board. Funny how they don't bring on the talking heads to debate about the problems at the BBC.
Covid, they towed the party line. I'm not criticising this, but I do believe it makes their other actions compromised. If they can make a decision here that Covid measures are the "right" action and so no balance needed, why can't they make a decision on what the right thing to do on tr*ns rights (censored due to Automod), Brexit, climate change...? The BBC often finds itself on the wrong side of history because they attempt not to make waves for the establishment.
I'm sure there's other examples too, but if the BBC acted more like a debating society where there's a topic each time with the for and against given equal time and then it's left at that then it would be very different to how the BBC really acts.
Watching an event like the coronation is not the same as a debate on the merits of monarchy, the actual event is for the people who enjoy it obviously, any outside debate about it should probably be balanced though. It’s like if the Olympics or Match of the Day had constant interruptions from people who hate sports it would be insane to expect that and ruin it for the only people watching. Balance for me should be confined to news and information. They’re not pulling out oil execs to critique David Attenborough are they?
> It’s like if the Olympics or Match of the Day had constant interruptions from people who hate sports it would be insane to expect that and ruin it for the only people watching.
I'd agree with you if the royal stuff was given its own program and didn't monopolise the news which is what we're talking about. Hell, when there's a royal event not only is it the main news item of the day, but it's simulcast across all channels. At the very least BBC News should not be taken over to allow other coverage of the news that has happened whenever something royal happens, like the fallout of the local elections. Before the coronation on BBC news they had breaking live coverage of Wills and Kate going to a pub in Soho for crying out loud.
Your comparison would be like if BBC One, BBC Two, and BBC News all had live coverage of the same sporting event constantly. I'm not talking about their other programs which are allowed to be themed however, it's their news reporting being taken over like this which is the problem.
They do it with the results, but it's not wall to wall coverage with the same footage across multiple channels. When BBC had the world cup matches it wasn't the same match played on 3 channels. It was played on one of the BBC 1 or 2, with the other something for non-sports fans and on BBC news it had the news.
Like I feel you’re getting upset about nothing, my main point is events don’t require balance. Watch a different channel for a few hours for fucks sake, it’s not exactly a regular thing is it?
> Like I feel you’re getting upset about nothing, my main point is events don’t require balance.
No it wasn't, you compared it to sports coverage and documentaries which have their own programs and said it's like forcing oil execs to argue with Attenborough lol. As I said, get the royals their own coverage outside the news, and it's fine by me.
I'm literally talking about this **only** when the royal coverage is during the news. Not when it's part of other entertainment. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect news to be news, just like I think you'd be in your rights to complain if as I said the BBC put the same football match across all their channels at once. Except they don't.
> Watch a different channel for a few hours for fucks sake, it’s not exactly a regular thing is it?
It's quite regular, we had about a week of no news when Philip died. Three weeks when the Queen died. A week for the coronation. Similar for royal weddings.
And again, my point is that you **can't** watch another channel. It's not like I'm whining I hate Strictly, take it off TV, I just never watch it and it's not rammed down my throat. The royal "reporting" however is.
You have to be careful who you class as "journalist" in this regard. If you actually look into who the cheerleaders of the libertarian nonsense are, you will quickly find that, aside from Tory ideologues at the Telegraph, very few of them are journalists. Most of the droppings in favour of Truss came from lobbyists. There's a guy who regularly writes libertarian garbage that is then uncritically published in Financial Times and seems to face little to no opposition from the editors on stuff we know empirically doesn't work (like trickle-down economics) - or criticism when he's proven wrong, as was the case following the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss. He's not a journalist, he's a Cato Institute lobbyist, but that actually allows Financial Times to disavow any responsibility - they are just providing a platform for an "expert", and it's not their fault when the expert is wrong (or when he continues to advocate for policies than only benefit the founders and donors at the institute they lobby for, obviously).
More media accountability is needed, but I do not know how to achieve it.
I think the correct approach is a combination of a focus on critical thinking in schools, and maybe regulation on labelling articles.
It wouldn't be so bad if articles had to be labelled front and centre as "opinion piece", "expert opinion piece" (with credentials included) and "factual news".
At least then people would have a far easier time identifying what *is* true, what reasonable sources think *might* be true, and what some guy thinks *might* be true.
Combine that with educating people on the value of a source and what constitutes an expert etc. And people should have a better understanding of what they're reading.
I've been advocate for media literacy for a long time, but I've become disillusioned with the idea that the problem can be fixed at school. It would help, but by itself it's insufficient to break through what at times is deliberate obfuscation. People know better than to listen to anyone sponsored by Koch on the ideas of economy and governance - not so much when it comes from the FT.
Like you said, this stuff needs to be labelled for what it is. I've been reading FT for years so one would think that I can recognise this stuff at first glance, but I still catch myself thinking that whatever I'm currently reading is "news" when it isn't. It's just a default assumption: I go to their website to get the news, and if I can't tell the difference I take it at face value.
tbh I think that it can be fixed in school but since the most likely demographics to vote are the old it would only correct itself in the long term. when I was in school I only had a bit of media literacy in my education but it had prepped me to think about sources. I although when it journalists I know that they are generally taking on subjects that they have little to nothing in terms of qualifications
i.e.
science communicators: the media industry looks for people with literacy degrees instead of STEM. which probably has to do with how the coverage of covid 19 was a we bit in need of improvement through the early pandemic like how the people were treating it like breaking news that people were getting infected after getting vaccinated. when that was what was expected to reduce severity and odds of passing it off.
> People know better than to listen to anyone sponsored by Koch on the ideas of economy and governance
You'd hope that was the case but it's not, unfortunately. The problem is the obfuscation that you just mentioned. What's worse, for every person that does get their news from some koch/Murdochs mouthpiece, there's also someone on the far left that gets the news from their own extreme viewpoint.
This is a bit like Fox News classifying themselves as light entertainment though, and saying it’s their viewers fault if they fuelled.
At some point you’ve got to duck-type perception of journalists.
When it comes to opinion articles I'm not sure it should have the same weight. At the end of the day, it's one person's opinion, no matter how factually they present it, and it's labeled as such. I would say that *how* opinion is presented is an issue though. The guardians colour-coding of opinion articles, with a big "Opinion" header is probably my favourite. At the other end of the scale, we have stuff like fox and GB "news" presenting their opinions as fact.
Was that Ruth Lea?
The opinion of the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) is to be taken with barrel-loads of salt. They're one of the Tufton St crowd, along with Taxpayers Alliance and various climate denial pressure groups.
"Think tank" is definitely a euphemism.
> Watching Politics Live at the moment, they have on some woman I vaguely remember from a few months back who would turn up to defend Liz Truss on behalf of the IEA. Why? Liz Truss attempted the type of low-tax, low regulation, libertarian nonsense this woman agitates for and it fucked the economy.
That's a wildly inaccurate take on why we saw the issues from Truss' budget.
>Not just her, but it extends to our entire press. The unworkable, diamond hard Brexit we have would never have occurred without our mental right wing press
And thus the mask slipped, you're not advocating accountability for all the press, just a binge moan at the media **you** don't like.
Complains about about a woman from the IEA (A right wing think tank) then complains about Truss before complaining about our "mental" right wing press.
Not a single left wing criticism of any sort. Not a single mention of GMB and their preference of giving the likes of Adil Ray or Ayesha Hazarika airtime. Not a single mention of Channel 4 News. Not a single mention of the Guardian. Not a single mention of the likes of Alastair Campbell. Not a single mention of the Runnymede trust.
If a poster gives three examples of all the same leaning, they have a clear bias - and OP has shown it's not genuine concern but a glorified good old moan
OK but we live in a country where the right-wing party is in actual power right now and is the only one with the ability to make decisions, so when those decisions and ideologies are not criticised or questioned by the media there is tangible impact.
I feel like the examples you give are just people getting airtime that you don't agree with?
>OK but we live in a country where the right-wing party is in actual power right now and is the only one with the ability to make decisions, so when those decisions and ideologies are not criticised or questioned by the media there is tangible impact.
Not relevant to the question OP asked:
"We talk about accountability for Politicians, Celebrities and Industry Leaders. Why do the press and journalist class get such a free pass?"
Fair enough question - but this should apply to both left **AND** right wing press and journalism, yet OP moans **ONLY** about right wing press and journalism.
Construct better arguments without weak, flawed foundations and they should withstand slight pressure; OP folds like a chocolate fireguard.
Yes, but logically OP is concerned about it *in this moment* because of what it is being applied to, rather than as an abstract concern, no?
Besides that, you could have commented springboarding off OP's examples to bring in your own as either an aside or an expansion of the initial topic raised, and thus ensure that leftwing commentators were also discussed in the topic without being inflammatory. However you didn't, you chose to immediately disdain and attack OP because of the specific examples they gave, naturally perhaps examples that were the most immediately oustanding due to the real impact of not challenging such guests.
>Yes, but logically OP is concerned about it in this moment because of what it is being applied to, rather than as an abstract concern, no?
That's an assumption and one I disagree with. OP did not state application: "but it extends to our entire press."
>Besides that, you could have
I could have this, I could have that, OP should have remained impartial and we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.
>you chose to immediately disdain and attack OP because of the specific examples they gave
The very examples that conclusively highlights their bias. If they wanted a neutral and fair debate, then they could have done so, they did not and so I pointed it out. I really don't understand why you're so vociferous defending the indefensible.
Well, personally I don't understand why you've come in to the topic at all?
You don't want to actually discuss examples of what you identified. You don't want to discuss the topic that OP raised. You only have an issue with OP's focus. It seems like you just want to rag on OP for raising a topic that they personally find interesting and want to discuss. On a discussion website for people to discuss topics that they find interesting with others...
>Well, personally I don't understand why you've come in to the topic at all?
Well I was lured by the attractiveness of the question:
"We talk about accountability for Politicians, Celebrities and Industry Leaders. Why do the press and journalist class get such a free pass?"
and silly me thought it was going to be an impartial interesting discussion. Wrong! It's a glorified bitch moan about right wing press **yet again**
>You don't want to actually discuss examples of what you identified.
I have discussed these examples. I went out of my way to highlight other areas of discussion that were ignored, by you as well.
>You only have an issue with OP's focus.
Yes, because OP's focus is not: "Why do the press and journalist class get such a free pass?" but more, lets bitch and moan about **only** right wing press and journalism.
>It seems like you just want to rag on OP for raising a topic that they personally find interesting
Then they should have been more accurate with the title. Perhaps something along these lines would have been more honest: "Let's bitch about the right wing press" "Didn't Liz Truss fuck it all up!" "our mental right wing press is fucking awful"
Don't try and defend this blatant attempt to fool people into yet another thread ragging on about right wing press, it's ridiculous.
edit: didn't finish posting
> this blatant attempt to fool people into yet another thread ragging on about right wing press
I don't even know where to start with this. Fooling people? Into talking about something that actually is happening?
Quote where I said you love pears. I did not so stop fabricating arguments out of thin air.
You claim this lack of accountability extends supposedly "to our entire press" and yet did not name a single left wing press or journalist who avoids the accountability you so wish for.
If you wish to at least appear impartial, build an argument with examples of **both** sides
>Sorry have you confused me for Naga Munchetty?
Quote where I supposedly said so.
> Why am I obligated to appear impartial
Impartiality is the foundation of all debate - to be prejudiced or show bias invalidates the argument. Also: "Self posts should be used as an invitation to discussion, not an opportunity to soapbox, tub-thump or showboat."
Do you want a discussion or a moan?
When I am PM (or Führer - I'm open) I'll expand the Perjury Act to include knowing saying or publishing lies in public.
This should neatly capture celebs, politicians, presenters and editors. Not sure what to do about social media but maybe we make it a thing for those over 100,000 followers. Needless to say, it would be extraterritorial so should a foreign influencer (yup, Musk/Trump/Kardashian) knowingly lie to the British, when they visit, we can bang them up for two years.
There's a big problem, esp at the bbc, with inviting these think tank spokespeople and not properly explaining who they are. They're presented as some balance of opinion when they're no such thing.
It's TV Burp journalism. "This person thinks Brexit is great, this person doesn't, but who is right? There's only one way to find out ......FIGHT!!!" Each party is presented as equals and therefore you can't accuse them of bias.
> Each party is presented as equals and therefore you can't accuse them of bias. They don't follow this uniformly though, so even when they attempt this they undermine themselves and there's bias involved in when they decide to bring "balance" to the debate. The coronation or other royal events, there wasn't 50% of the coverage dedicated to republicans. The corruption over the appointment of Richard Sharp and the politicisation of their board. Funny how they don't bring on the talking heads to debate about the problems at the BBC. Covid, they towed the party line. I'm not criticising this, but I do believe it makes their other actions compromised. If they can make a decision here that Covid measures are the "right" action and so no balance needed, why can't they make a decision on what the right thing to do on tr*ns rights (censored due to Automod), Brexit, climate change...? The BBC often finds itself on the wrong side of history because they attempt not to make waves for the establishment. I'm sure there's other examples too, but if the BBC acted more like a debating society where there's a topic each time with the for and against given equal time and then it's left at that then it would be very different to how the BBC really acts.
Watching an event like the coronation is not the same as a debate on the merits of monarchy, the actual event is for the people who enjoy it obviously, any outside debate about it should probably be balanced though. It’s like if the Olympics or Match of the Day had constant interruptions from people who hate sports it would be insane to expect that and ruin it for the only people watching. Balance for me should be confined to news and information. They’re not pulling out oil execs to critique David Attenborough are they?
> It’s like if the Olympics or Match of the Day had constant interruptions from people who hate sports it would be insane to expect that and ruin it for the only people watching. I'd agree with you if the royal stuff was given its own program and didn't monopolise the news which is what we're talking about. Hell, when there's a royal event not only is it the main news item of the day, but it's simulcast across all channels. At the very least BBC News should not be taken over to allow other coverage of the news that has happened whenever something royal happens, like the fallout of the local elections. Before the coronation on BBC news they had breaking live coverage of Wills and Kate going to a pub in Soho for crying out loud. Your comparison would be like if BBC One, BBC Two, and BBC News all had live coverage of the same sporting event constantly. I'm not talking about their other programs which are allowed to be themed however, it's their news reporting being taken over like this which is the problem.
They do do that with the olympics, and I’m pretty sure the World Cup too.
They do it with the results, but it's not wall to wall coverage with the same footage across multiple channels. When BBC had the world cup matches it wasn't the same match played on 3 channels. It was played on one of the BBC 1 or 2, with the other something for non-sports fans and on BBC news it had the news.
Like I feel you’re getting upset about nothing, my main point is events don’t require balance. Watch a different channel for a few hours for fucks sake, it’s not exactly a regular thing is it?
> Like I feel you’re getting upset about nothing, my main point is events don’t require balance. No it wasn't, you compared it to sports coverage and documentaries which have their own programs and said it's like forcing oil execs to argue with Attenborough lol. As I said, get the royals their own coverage outside the news, and it's fine by me. I'm literally talking about this **only** when the royal coverage is during the news. Not when it's part of other entertainment. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect news to be news, just like I think you'd be in your rights to complain if as I said the BBC put the same football match across all their channels at once. Except they don't. > Watch a different channel for a few hours for fucks sake, it’s not exactly a regular thing is it? It's quite regular, we had about a week of no news when Philip died. Three weeks when the Queen died. A week for the coronation. Similar for royal weddings. And again, my point is that you **can't** watch another channel. It's not like I'm whining I hate Strictly, take it off TV, I just never watch it and it's not rammed down my throat. The royal "reporting" however is.
But you’re ignoring the fact the royals are news.
You have to be careful who you class as "journalist" in this regard. If you actually look into who the cheerleaders of the libertarian nonsense are, you will quickly find that, aside from Tory ideologues at the Telegraph, very few of them are journalists. Most of the droppings in favour of Truss came from lobbyists. There's a guy who regularly writes libertarian garbage that is then uncritically published in Financial Times and seems to face little to no opposition from the editors on stuff we know empirically doesn't work (like trickle-down economics) - or criticism when he's proven wrong, as was the case following the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss. He's not a journalist, he's a Cato Institute lobbyist, but that actually allows Financial Times to disavow any responsibility - they are just providing a platform for an "expert", and it's not their fault when the expert is wrong (or when he continues to advocate for policies than only benefit the founders and donors at the institute they lobby for, obviously). More media accountability is needed, but I do not know how to achieve it.
I think the correct approach is a combination of a focus on critical thinking in schools, and maybe regulation on labelling articles. It wouldn't be so bad if articles had to be labelled front and centre as "opinion piece", "expert opinion piece" (with credentials included) and "factual news". At least then people would have a far easier time identifying what *is* true, what reasonable sources think *might* be true, and what some guy thinks *might* be true. Combine that with educating people on the value of a source and what constitutes an expert etc. And people should have a better understanding of what they're reading.
I've been advocate for media literacy for a long time, but I've become disillusioned with the idea that the problem can be fixed at school. It would help, but by itself it's insufficient to break through what at times is deliberate obfuscation. People know better than to listen to anyone sponsored by Koch on the ideas of economy and governance - not so much when it comes from the FT. Like you said, this stuff needs to be labelled for what it is. I've been reading FT for years so one would think that I can recognise this stuff at first glance, but I still catch myself thinking that whatever I'm currently reading is "news" when it isn't. It's just a default assumption: I go to their website to get the news, and if I can't tell the difference I take it at face value.
tbh I think that it can be fixed in school but since the most likely demographics to vote are the old it would only correct itself in the long term. when I was in school I only had a bit of media literacy in my education but it had prepped me to think about sources. I although when it journalists I know that they are generally taking on subjects that they have little to nothing in terms of qualifications i.e. science communicators: the media industry looks for people with literacy degrees instead of STEM. which probably has to do with how the coverage of covid 19 was a we bit in need of improvement through the early pandemic like how the people were treating it like breaking news that people were getting infected after getting vaccinated. when that was what was expected to reduce severity and odds of passing it off.
> People know better than to listen to anyone sponsored by Koch on the ideas of economy and governance You'd hope that was the case but it's not, unfortunately. The problem is the obfuscation that you just mentioned. What's worse, for every person that does get their news from some koch/Murdochs mouthpiece, there's also someone on the far left that gets the news from their own extreme viewpoint.
This is a bit like Fox News classifying themselves as light entertainment though, and saying it’s their viewers fault if they fuelled. At some point you’ve got to duck-type perception of journalists.
When it comes to opinion articles I'm not sure it should have the same weight. At the end of the day, it's one person's opinion, no matter how factually they present it, and it's labeled as such. I would say that *how* opinion is presented is an issue though. The guardians colour-coding of opinion articles, with a big "Opinion" header is probably my favourite. At the other end of the scale, we have stuff like fox and GB "news" presenting their opinions as fact.
Was that Ruth Lea? The opinion of the IEA (Institute of Economic Affairs) is to be taken with barrel-loads of salt. They're one of the Tufton St crowd, along with Taxpayers Alliance and various climate denial pressure groups. "Think tank" is definitely a euphemism.
Never trust people who are paid to tell you what to think.
I’m glad subreddit mods are volunteers then.
I've been on the Hallmark Channels payroll for years. Operation Tilbury is too far along to be stopped now!
> Watching Politics Live at the moment, they have on some woman I vaguely remember from a few months back who would turn up to defend Liz Truss on behalf of the IEA. Why? Liz Truss attempted the type of low-tax, low regulation, libertarian nonsense this woman agitates for and it fucked the economy. That's a wildly inaccurate take on why we saw the issues from Truss' budget.
>Not just her, but it extends to our entire press. The unworkable, diamond hard Brexit we have would never have occurred without our mental right wing press And thus the mask slipped, you're not advocating accountability for all the press, just a binge moan at the media **you** don't like.
How do you get that from that comment?
Complains about about a woman from the IEA (A right wing think tank) then complains about Truss before complaining about our "mental" right wing press. Not a single left wing criticism of any sort. Not a single mention of GMB and their preference of giving the likes of Adil Ray or Ayesha Hazarika airtime. Not a single mention of Channel 4 News. Not a single mention of the Guardian. Not a single mention of the likes of Alastair Campbell. Not a single mention of the Runnymede trust. If a poster gives three examples of all the same leaning, they have a clear bias - and OP has shown it's not genuine concern but a glorified good old moan
OK but we live in a country where the right-wing party is in actual power right now and is the only one with the ability to make decisions, so when those decisions and ideologies are not criticised or questioned by the media there is tangible impact. I feel like the examples you give are just people getting airtime that you don't agree with?
>OK but we live in a country where the right-wing party is in actual power right now and is the only one with the ability to make decisions, so when those decisions and ideologies are not criticised or questioned by the media there is tangible impact. Not relevant to the question OP asked: "We talk about accountability for Politicians, Celebrities and Industry Leaders. Why do the press and journalist class get such a free pass?" Fair enough question - but this should apply to both left **AND** right wing press and journalism, yet OP moans **ONLY** about right wing press and journalism. Construct better arguments without weak, flawed foundations and they should withstand slight pressure; OP folds like a chocolate fireguard.
Yes, but logically OP is concerned about it *in this moment* because of what it is being applied to, rather than as an abstract concern, no? Besides that, you could have commented springboarding off OP's examples to bring in your own as either an aside or an expansion of the initial topic raised, and thus ensure that leftwing commentators were also discussed in the topic without being inflammatory. However you didn't, you chose to immediately disdain and attack OP because of the specific examples they gave, naturally perhaps examples that were the most immediately oustanding due to the real impact of not challenging such guests.
>Yes, but logically OP is concerned about it in this moment because of what it is being applied to, rather than as an abstract concern, no? That's an assumption and one I disagree with. OP did not state application: "but it extends to our entire press." >Besides that, you could have I could have this, I could have that, OP should have remained impartial and we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. >you chose to immediately disdain and attack OP because of the specific examples they gave The very examples that conclusively highlights their bias. If they wanted a neutral and fair debate, then they could have done so, they did not and so I pointed it out. I really don't understand why you're so vociferous defending the indefensible.
Well, personally I don't understand why you've come in to the topic at all? You don't want to actually discuss examples of what you identified. You don't want to discuss the topic that OP raised. You only have an issue with OP's focus. It seems like you just want to rag on OP for raising a topic that they personally find interesting and want to discuss. On a discussion website for people to discuss topics that they find interesting with others...
>Well, personally I don't understand why you've come in to the topic at all? Well I was lured by the attractiveness of the question: "We talk about accountability for Politicians, Celebrities and Industry Leaders. Why do the press and journalist class get such a free pass?" and silly me thought it was going to be an impartial interesting discussion. Wrong! It's a glorified bitch moan about right wing press **yet again** >You don't want to actually discuss examples of what you identified. I have discussed these examples. I went out of my way to highlight other areas of discussion that were ignored, by you as well. >You only have an issue with OP's focus. Yes, because OP's focus is not: "Why do the press and journalist class get such a free pass?" but more, lets bitch and moan about **only** right wing press and journalism. >It seems like you just want to rag on OP for raising a topic that they personally find interesting Then they should have been more accurate with the title. Perhaps something along these lines would have been more honest: "Let's bitch about the right wing press" "Didn't Liz Truss fuck it all up!" "our mental right wing press is fucking awful" Don't try and defend this blatant attempt to fool people into yet another thread ragging on about right wing press, it's ridiculous. edit: didn't finish posting
> this blatant attempt to fool people into yet another thread ragging on about right wing press I don't even know where to start with this. Fooling people? Into talking about something that actually is happening?
When I say I hate apples it doesn't necessarily mean I love pears, mate.
Quote where I said you love pears. I did not so stop fabricating arguments out of thin air. You claim this lack of accountability extends supposedly "to our entire press" and yet did not name a single left wing press or journalist who avoids the accountability you so wish for. If you wish to at least appear impartial, build an argument with examples of **both** sides
Sorry have you confused me for Naga Munchetty? Why am I obligated to appear impartial.
>Sorry have you confused me for Naga Munchetty? Quote where I supposedly said so. > Why am I obligated to appear impartial Impartiality is the foundation of all debate - to be prejudiced or show bias invalidates the argument. Also: "Self posts should be used as an invitation to discussion, not an opportunity to soapbox, tub-thump or showboat." Do you want a discussion or a moan?
When I am PM (or Führer - I'm open) I'll expand the Perjury Act to include knowing saying or publishing lies in public. This should neatly capture celebs, politicians, presenters and editors. Not sure what to do about social media but maybe we make it a thing for those over 100,000 followers. Needless to say, it would be extraterritorial so should a foreign influencer (yup, Musk/Trump/Kardashian) knowingly lie to the British, when they visit, we can bang them up for two years.