October 09, 2018

BBC's fake news?

Jack Kemp

When I logged into the Bing search engine this moring, I found a story about a mini-controversy concerning U.S. Astronaut Scott Kelly quoting Winston Churchill while being photographed in space flight. What caught my eye in this BBC story was the article referring to Kelly as not married to former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a shooting victim, but rather being her brother-in-law. This apparent fake news "fact" contradicts every news account at the time of the shooting of Giffords which stated Kelly and Giffords were husband and wife. What is going on here?

Either every news story I read in America was a lie or the BBC is either lying now or did poor fact checking. Why would the BBC lie, if that were indeed the case? Well, stating that Scott Kelly is not so closely connected to a man who made a Churchill quote (and Churchill made some quotes that would be considered racist in this century) literally distances a liberal anti-gun shooting victim and icon, Gabrielle Giffords, from this now politically incorrect and somewhat controversial astronaut.

This situation is starting to resemble The Ministry of Truth from Orwell's "1984" novel - or the editorial policies of the Soviet era Pravda.

Here are the quote and opening lines of the BBC article:

Astronaut under fire for quoting Churchill

One of the unwritten rules of social media is avoid inspirational quotes.

American astronaut Scott Kelly put that to the test on Sunday when his use of Winston Churchill quotes landed him in hot water with people who oppose the wartime British prime minister's views on empire and race.

But when Kelly tried to apologise for the tweet and offered to educate himself, Churchill fans attacked him for discrediting the politician's record.

Kelly, whose sister-in-law is former Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, used the famous remark by the former British prime minister to comment on deep divisions in American politics.

END OF QUOTE

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 04:58 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 What's going on is that NASA jumped at the opportunity to recruit a couple of identical twins so they could do the usual sorts of experiments that allows. I find it much easier to believe that all of the US media got it wrong, probably following the lead of the AP or NYT, and that the BBC was more careful with the facts, our media is just that bad.

Posted by: Anonymous at October 09, 2018 08:40 AM (FPIRN)

2 I believe you are right, anonymous! Thanks for making a great point.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at October 13, 2018 10:47 AM (bheE+)

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