MSM

James Anderton, the original celebrity cop.
Yet more on the story now called Hackgate. This is not an unimportant story but is, as suggested HERE , a media storm. Clearly the MSM assume their readers can't get enough. In the case of the BBC and the Guardian the line is 'watch out for that evil Rupert Murdoch'. Yet the facts show the liberal-left section of the MSM get things wrong too. Hence the Guardian was forced to apologise to the Sun for getting their facts seriously wrong.

However, other sections of the MSM fight their own battles. Wise people are looking long term on this; what restrictions on press freedom may follow Hackgate? David Cameron has said he wants a free press but then he says all sorts of things which never come to pass. His other problem is the Deputy PM Nick Clegg. The Liberal Democrats are ill named and can be expected to join with Ed Milband and the Labour party in calling for measures to 'stop Murdoch'. A liberal, in the real sense, and free press is not what they want.

So an alternative take on all of this comes via the blogosphere.

All about it?
As far as real news is concerned we are at this time of year in the doldrums. So it's lucky for the MSM that Elton John and David Furnish have become both mothers and fathers, simultaneously, for the trifling sum of $19000. It's news like this that gets us all going eh? Obviously news-space has been limited so some stories have been truncated. Thus the London Evening Standard has a story with the title -

We get the facts, and if you will pardon a pun, just the cold facts. At no point in the story is there a sermon on climate change or global warming. So what's going on then, is the MSM dropping the mantra? Perhaps they think we can work it out for ourselves, namely the whole thing was a con and we will no longer take the lecture? So this leaves the question why did they go on and on about it for so long?

There's no reason for it
The recent shooting incident in Cumbria was a mixture of many things. So much so that any easy understanding of it at this early stage is impossible. However, despite the tragedy, some people saw it as an opportunity to campaign for more restrictions on gun ownership. This is pathetic and an insult to those who have suffered as a result of this incident. People die as a result of unhygienic hospitals yet nobody campaigns for restrictions on hospitals. Perhaps eventually it will be seen that more law, more restrictions, are not the obvious and only route out of any problem. This is not the time to fall on simple 'facts' and, wrongly, extrapolate from them.

The death of reporting?
What is it about modern government? A conversation in a taxi turns out to be the root of the WMD farce and a significant part of the reason, or though others may say excuse, to invade Iraq. See HERE.

And now on an equally questionable basis we accept data from a climate research unit that attempts to - 'hide the decline'; some might call it fiddling, rather than engaging, in real science. It's behaviour like this that leads to the idiotic jamboree now being played out in Copenhagen.

Finding a part of public life that works, to the satisfaction of the public, as opposed to the ridiculous notion of self-approval is next to impossible.