After former Breitbart News head man Steve Bannon was subjected to a high profile arrest yesterday, being lifted from a luxury yacht owned by billionaire Guo Wengui, who is wanted by the Chinese Government from whom he is a fugitive, the media went into action. Every detail of the arrest, the amount Bannon is having to pony up as collateral against his $5 million bail, and the number of shirts he habitually wears, was put before readers.
But for some reason, not all the Bannon backstory made it to print or pixel. The Tweeter known as @johnleremainer first noticed the omissions in the BBC’s effort: “
BBC does a piece on the Bannon arrest without once mentioning his connections with Cambridge Analytica, Cummings, Farage, Brexit, ERG, Johnson or Fortess Europe”. That’s an awful lot of omissions. And, yes, the BBC managed to miss all of them.
Their
report told simply “
The former investment banker was the driving force behind the right-wing Breitbart News website before serving in the Trump White House as chief strategist. His influence was discernible in key decisions such as the mid-2017 US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement … He left the post in August 2017 and returned to Breitbart, but was again forced to step down after criticising Mr Trump's decisions, prompting Mr Trump to say ‘Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind’”.
But the Beeb was not the only media outlet managing to be highly selective in what it put before its audience. The
Guardian was at it too, which suggests that someone at Guardian Media Group has taken the decision to steer clear of Carole Cadwalladr’s oeuvre this time. And taken the decision not to mention Bannon’s links to several UK politicians: the mention of Farage, Cummings and Bozo should have Jacob Rees Mogg added to it.
We are told “
The bluntly spoken, combative Bannon was the voice of a nationalistic, outsider conservatism, and he pushed Trump to follow through on some of his most contentious campaign promises, including his travel ban on several majority-Muslim countries. He led the rightwing Breitbart News before being tapped to head Trump's campaign, where he pushed a scorched earth strategy”. But no CA. No ERG.
Even the
Daily Mail has joined in this selective analysis of the Bannon story. Their website tells us about Iraq veteran Brian Kolfage, who has also been arrested, and especially about his wife, with several of her bikini snaps being included (how very
Mail Online), we get the lowdown on Guo Wengui and especially his yacht, there are mini-dossiers on all the other Trump associates who have fallen foul of the law. And yet, and yet.
Nothing about those at the top of the Tory Party. Nothing about Cambridge Analytica. Nothing about Nigel “
thirsty” Farage. Little more than a mention of Bannon’s links to the European far right. Given the links between those now running the Downing Street operation, and the use of personal data to target voters, one might expect that the red lights would be flashing when Bannon’s Cambridge Analytics link was factored in.
Rather a lot of our media has been caught asleep at the wheel.
I wonder why.
4 comments:
Censorship by omission.
A different way of lying.
What about Milo Yiannopoulos "Privilege Grant"? Where is the money?! Where is US IRS to investigate Milo's scam?
Better put Bonzo on suicide watch too.
Milo's very close to bankruptcy, all his funds dried up, when he was kicked off all the major social networks and banned from touring Australia due to his rather toxic views.
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