“CHILDREN MUST BE TRAINED TO FIGHT FAKE NEWS” by Donal Kennedy

 “CHILDREN MUST BE TRAINED TO FIGHT FAKE NEWS -schools urgently need to distinguish fact from forgery if we want to preserve our democratic values”
“AMEN” said I, to the quotation in HIGH CASE , and “hmm” to that in  lower case.

Partly because they appeared in  THE TIMES  (on La Fheile Bride) for that paper published a forgery on the morning Parliament was to discuss a Coercion Bill, part of a series entitled Parnellism and Crime. That forgery almost broke THE TIMES whose credibility took a nosedive amongst honest Britons, whilst the exposed forger, Richard Piggott, an Irishman, did a runner and blew his own brains out. Those were days when writers chose death before dishonour, alaslong,long gone.

Incidentally Piggott needed the money to pay school fees for a son at Clongowes Wood College. I wonder did the Jesuits put the money tp good use, or to create a bursary for the distortion of history?

Part of the “hmm” arose from the fact that the author of this week’s piece, Daniel Finkelstein, is a member of that democratic chamber, the House of Lords, and is a prominent member of the Tory Party.

I’ve been a regular reader of THE TIMES for about forty five years, and like the Curate’s Egg in the Punch cartoon have found it good in parts.

I read Finkelstein regularly, and whilst I don’t always agree with him I wonder how such a recognisably human being can comfortably identify with the Nasty Party. I wonder similarly about Matthew Parris, a former Tory MP who also writes a regular TIMES column.

When the Saville Inquiry definitively buried Lord Widgery’s lying report on the Bloody Sunday murders, Parris noted that when Widgery died THE TIMES had published an Obituary praising Widgery’s misconduct.

In 1982 three London newspapers simultaneously did a hatchet job on Ken Livingstone for meeting with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, and they all stated in effect that only Republicans had inflicted death, and only Protestants had suffered death in the conflict in the North of Ireland.

In the 1930s Dr Goebbels would each morning brief the German press telling them what stories to tell and how they should  treat them.

The lying story in 1982 appeared in the Daily Express and the Daily Star and The Daily Mail. The Daily Mail piece went out over the name of Sir Humphrey Atkins, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. A Mr Conlan in Birmingham complained about the Daily Express and the Daily Star to the Press Council which condemned those papers after  a nine month delay. I complained  the Daily Mail to the Press Council but it refused to condemn it or Sit Humphrey Atkins.

When that lie appeared in those three papers it was repeating a lie which had appeared, in May 1981 on the front page of THE TIMES in its report of the funeral of Bobby Sands, the IRA prisoner who had been elected an MP whilst on Hunger Strike. The PRESS COUNCIL censured THE TIMES,  in February 1982 shortly before it reappeared in the other papers.  I had contacted THE TIMES in May 1981 asking it to correct its story, but it stuck with it, and when I contacted THE PRESS COUNCIL that body did its best to dissuade me from pursuing the matter. And it took another nine months to uphold the complaint made by Mr Conlan.

The PRESS COUNCIL, quite independently, had lost credibility with the British Public so it was renamed THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION.

Sir Humprey Atkins was raised to the Peerage and also changed his name, He was appointed a member of THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION which I understand was a nice little sinecure and well-paid.

The PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION lost all credibility and was replaced with something it would be too tedious to contemplate.

Time moved on and when, in 1994 in pursuit of peace, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds sought an American Visa for Gerry Adams, an MP with an Irish passport, British journalist Simon Jenkins took himself off to Washington to brief White House staff with an update of the British Governments favourite lie. The IRA, he claimed, had murdered 3,000 Britons in the past 25 years, The implication was that everyone killed in the conflict was British, all had been killed by the IRA and not one Briton had killed anyone nor had any Irish person been killed. And Jenkins, a former Editor of THE TIMES, had the gall to boast abouthis failed stunt in that paper. President Clinton overrode the State Department’s kowtowing to the Foreign Office and thus accelerated the Peace Process.

But Jenkins got his reward when he was dubbed a Knight together with Harold Evans, who had been Editor of THE TIMES  when it published its BIG LIE in May 1981 and sought to defend  it before the PRESS COUNCIL.

Humphrey Atkins was not a good egg and I doubt an honest Curate could dispute my contention that Sir Harold Evans and Sir Simon Jenkins are a pair of Utter Rotters.

Perhaps children should be trained to fight fake news. But they might infer from this witness that the creation of fake news leads on to fame, fortune and honours, this side of the grave.

But, if there is a Devil in Hell, justice might yet prevail .