Letters to the Canary: BBC and Sky non-journalism, politically homeless, and does the Canary want another Tory government?

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This week’s letters

This week we have readers thoughts on poor journalism from BBC News and Sky News, the impending political homelessness many face, and a question on whether the Canary is trying to get the Tories elected by criticising Labour… No, really…

BBC non-journalism strikes again

In a BBC article, “Bank fires employees over fake keyboard activity”, published online on 13 June 2024, reporter Natalie Sherman quoted verbatim some self-aggrandising Well’s Fargo (the bank in question) PR nonsense, without even a cursory journalistic check to see if what the spokesperson for Wells Fargo, Laura Knight, was saying was remotely true or not.

What Laura Knight said was: “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behaviour”.

Crucial here is whether Wells Fargo, in fact, “does not tolerate unethical behaviour”, something that Natalie Sherman could have discovered very easily by typing “Wells Fargo fines” into Google, which I just did.

To pick just one from the long list of search results, the Office of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release on 21st February titled “Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations into Sales Practices Involving the Opening of Millions of Accounts without Customer Authorization”, which provides a litany of not only unethical, but also criminal activity by the bank. Involving millions of people.

So, it seems that Wells Fargo does tolerate unethical, and criminal, behaviour, which obviously includes by its own staff, in flat contradiction to Laura Knight’s statement. Presumably, what they don’t like is being on the receiving end of unethical behaviour.

Now, anyone who isn’t an idiot knows that banking and crime are pretty much synonymous, but not so the seemingly uninquisitive PR parrot Natalie Sherman.

So, once again, the BBC provides not one iota of journalism, and in so doing, also provides an oh-so-conveniently unchecked voice to power. If journalism is about uncovering the truth, Natalie Sherman’s article, and so much of what the BBC produces, is the very opposite of this, what Chomsky would call PR (here simply a repetition of Wells Fargo’s own PR), and what Peter Oborne has referred to as a “he-said-she-said” form of journalism. I would argue that this is not journalism, but it is unfortunately familiar.

Really, the measure of journalism is not the verbatim reporting of what powerful people say, but whether they’re talking bullshit or not. And that really is not hard to do. That the BBC fails so often and routinely in this regard tells us everything we need to know about who it is speaking for.

David Willetts, via email

Does the Canary want another Tory government?

Reader responds to Canary article on Starmer’s lack of comment on UN report into Israel/Hamas:

Is beating up Starmer being printed to ensure another Tory party for five years? Most of us have already this kind of knowledge – but do you really believe a Labour government will be worse in power on these issues than the Tories?

Labour was the first party to get a vote for peace in Palestine in Parliament. It has also recognised Palestine. We all know it’s not enough but also the Party not in power cannot implement anything.

Anonymous, via email

ED: Mate, there is literally zero chance of another Tory government – except the ones wearing red rosettes. We have repeatedly said it is well past the time for the notion of “lesser of two evils” to be binned. Therefore, our coverage will be equally critiquing the actual Conservative Party as well as its poor imitation currently on the opposite side of the House. 

Politically homeless

I thought I would share my thoughts on the forthcoming general election, I HAD been a lifetime Labour voter, I decided this week I will be defacing my ballot paper by writing the reasons I don’t want to vote for any party.

As I’m sure the Canary knows these papers get collected and they do get noticed and even read, I know this because I worked for a local council so with that knowledge I want all parties to realise I am unhappy to condone any one party into government, they lie and until a law is passed to punish them for making false promises I will not vote.

We know who ever gets into government will raise our taxes, no party is going far enough to save our NHS, no party has really said it would reverse all privatisation, in fact the worst I have heard is from the Labour camp, it seems Wes Streeting is happy to put the NHS into more private profiteering hands, I do hate b******s like that.

My vote is for “NONE OF THE ABOVE” and it will my very first time ever I do not vote.

David, a politically orphaned 59 year old, via email

ED: Indeed we do, David, Some of us have regularly spoiled our ballots in the past, and will continue to do so because, as you say, they are counted as votes.

Sky News propping up genocide enablers

I noticed an article on Sky News, posted on the 10th June, about Barclays Bank, which had 20 branches attacked by Palestine Action and environmental campaigners.

At the end of the article Barclays had this to say:

“While we support the right to protest, we ask that campaigners do so in a way which respects our customers, colleagues and property.”

The breathtaking hypocrisy of Barclays and utter failure of Sky News to do anything that remotely demonstrates journalism here.

A quick Google search shows that Barclays: was fined £26m for poor treatment of customers (reported 15/12/2020, BBC); was fined £290m for trying to manipulate a key bank interest rate which influences the cost of loans and mortgages (reported 27/06/2012, BBC); and withdrew a staff monitoring system after it was accused of spying on staff and faced a possible fine of over £800 million.

These examples took ten minutes to find write down. Barclays itself fails in the demands it makes of protestors, and there is no journalism happening at Sky, otherwise they wouldn’t have published Barclays’ own empty PR rhetoric, but would instead have published an article about how much worse Barclays treats its customers colleagues and the entire planet than protestors breaking a few windows and chucking some paint about.

David, via email

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