Press Cat Uses Up Ninth Life

The central premise of the 70s crime caper Silver Bears - well, apart from everyone conning everyone else - is the presence of a silver mine. Except there is no silver mine: financial guru “Doc” Fletcher is shown what he is told is a silver mine, he wants to believe there is a silver mine, and so, ergo, there is a silver mine. Even though there is no silver mine.

What we are witnessing is falsehood and misinformation

It is an idea that those in and around the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press are most reluctant to take on board right now, when the premise on which so much of their recent copy has been based is one which they wanted to believe, but is in fact false. Worse, it has been demonstrated repeatedly to be false. But sales, clicks, and culture war bullying, eh?

What has happened can be put directly: two school pupils recorded a conversation with a teacher into which they deliberately introduced the idea of a fellow pupil identifying as a cat. The recording was then, not by accident you understand, made available to the Mail titles, where the underlings of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre went off without checking their facts.

No matter that the school concerned repeatedly told anyone prepared to listen that the story was not true, and that there was no pupil identifying as a cat, the right-wing press wanted to believe that children were allowed to identify as cats, they had a recording apparently backing up their belief, it served their culture war paranoia, and listening to mere facts was out.

This belief spread to the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, which amplified the Mail’s Trans-bashing line while still having no factual evidence. At this point, Mic Wright published a post calling out the Tel (read it HERE) and it might have been thought that the farce could not get worse. But that thought would have been sadly misplaced. It got worse. A lot worse.

The following day, the Tel quoted “Britain’s strictest head” Katharine Birbalsingh, who also had no factual evidence. But Sideshow Birb had an opinion, and that was all that mattered. “‘I know of a child who identifies as a hologram’ [ho yus] … [she] says children allowed to self-identify as animals and moons should be moved to a different school by their parents”.

Could it get worse still? Don’t ask: SNP MP John Nicolson brought the bad news on Friday. “The Tory Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch has asked Ofsted to carry out a snap inspection of a school because, apparently, she believes a spoof story that a child at the school identifies as a cat. This MP has risen to Cabinet rank”. And then, yes, it got even worse than that.

In waded the Mail on Sunday and alleged journalist Mary Harrington to howl “Pupils identifying as cats. Teachers too scared to speak out. And a bid to smash every rule and boundary … What we are witnessing is an all-out war on parental authority - but the ultimate victims are our children”. No, what we are witnessing is an orgy of bad faith lying and bullying.

A pile-on under a totally false pretext. Joined by the likes of Helen Carroll, who also claims to be a journalist, Tweeting “Looking to speak to a mum whose secondary school age child identifies as an animal. Can be anonymous and fee paid on publication”. She has now deleted the Tweet. The ridicule raining down on her may have had something to do with it.

But the damage may have already been done: hard-up parents see the opportunity to pay for that much-needed new washing machine, sofa, bed, wardrobe, TV, or just to clear accumulated debt, and cobble up yet more false claims that the press can then feed into their hatred generating War on Trans. Meanwhile, few are thinking of the children caught in the crossfire.

Those for whom gender dysphoria is part of the everyday challenge of getting through life. Those who are already marginalised, othered, vulnerable, fearful and often lonely. The filth in and among the press doesn’t give a rat’s arse about that. So there may be the occasional fatality? They should care. They didn’t care about Lucy Meadows; they won’t care about the next victim.

Why is trust in the UK’s press so low? You may ask that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

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