image: damage

It’s not possible not to make mistakes. A professional, no matter how careful, no matter what profession, will know this. This naturally includes professional journalists, who, no matter how careful, will sometimes make mistakes that get past their newspapers’ checks, and get printed. Thus, when a newspaper claims to print the truth, which unavoidably includes a claim not to lie by mistake, you have proof it intentionally lies.

The Times: “Revealed: the plot to stop you reading the truth.

It’s arguable that those careless with language might not understand what they’re really saying when they claim to speak the truth. But would a journalist, whose profession is words, whose profession is communication, be so ignorant? Would a journalist really not understand what they’re actually saying? Of course they know, of course they understand precisely: it’s their job to do so.

With this article, The Times joins the Mail and the Express in my list of papers too dishonest for even a glance. If someone now quotes them to justify an argument, I’ll doubt even more that person’s opinion.

I did an informal survey, about twenty years ago, of all British national newspapers. I found that, with one exception, they all deliberately lied on their mastheads by claiming to print the truth. The one British newspaper that did not lie at the very top of its front page was the Financial Times, so it’s the one British newspaper that I would automatically take seriously should it make an outrageous claim.