Briefings for Britain, June 11 2022, Catherine McBride
I understand that newspapers find it hard to get good journalists, and sometimes good journalists find it hard to get an interesting story, but the appearance of this piece of fake news, entitled Carbon emissions ‘could worsen as result of UK-Australia trade deal’ in the Telegraph last week, from their Whitehall Correspondent of all people, reaches a new low.
Surely the Whitehall Correspondent could have found an absurd but true story to write about. Why did he suddenly take an interest in a story whose validity can be checked on the internet in minutes? And if he had done so, I am sure he would have gone back to writing about ‘partygate’ or whatever this week’s ‘crisis’ is entitled.
In fairness to the journalist, he did ask a ‘spokesman’ from the independent Trade and Agriculture Commission (TAC) who apparently told him that the TAC conclusions did not support the WWF’s concerns. But that didn’t stop him publishing the story. Nor did it stop him linking it to some equally unresearched articles written before the details of the trade deal were known.
Click here to read the piece in full.