What happens when a political agenda takes over any semblance of journalistic standards Telegraph admits its story about private school family not being able to go on five holidays was complete nonsense and not remotely fact-checked Beyond embarrassing www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/the-t...
it was a PR firm who hoodwinked the journalist acc to @pressgazette.co.uk
who simply printed a not very informative statement from the Telegraph with no further questions asked
I thought I'd read quite an informative piece but can't find it now!
oh here pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/n...
"Journalist", good one...😂😂
Their recent story on the Spanish blackout was utter bollocks too. I’m not linking to it 🙄
🧵 I read the piece (yes, the whole 'article'), & found it so OTT in all its absurd detail (the last holiday was in Holland & they couldn't even afford a rental car) that I thought it was either a spoof or AI-written. (It just so happens the father's name is Al.) It was entirely unbelievable.
2/ So I wonder whether the assumption that it was intended seriously & as part of a political agenda is true. Obviously, the most blinkered believers might do so. But the exaggerations in the piece (5 long-distance holidays / year) are so blatant ... honestly, it defies common sense.
3/ I was reminded of a story a few wks back: Annually, US papers publish a summer reading list. This yr, readers were confused. They couldn't find authors or titles. Turns out, the author used AI (he admitted he did) w/o checking it, & AI credibly made up ⅔ of the books - titles, authors, & content.
AI eh? 🤣🤣🤣
Our progress / technology tends to be only ever as good as we are...
“We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays” sounds like an article that @privateeyenews.bsky.social would have published to take the piss out of the Daily Telegraph anyway.
We used to call this…lying
But is it any surprise Honestly
Telegraph hasn’t been a serious paper for well over a decade now. Expenses scandal was probably their last piece of proper journalism.
‘Which included stock photographs and not, as reported, photographs of the family’ Yeah that isn’t an accident is it…
Unless the editorial standards of one of Britain’s historic national newspaper brands are now lower than those of the Wigan Weekly Wank in 1991.
Harsh on the Wank that, did some good stuff
It reads like a complete parody in the first place. How that actually got into print is either an editor taking the piss or an editor so completely out of touch with reality that it seemed like a true story.
I think that the Telegraph's current 'Journalistic' practice consists largely of 'Throwing Shit at a Wall, to see what 'sticks'. This didn't.
Another tick in the box for self regulation. Look where that has led us.
"In addition, we have not been able to verify the details published" AKA we just made it up.
Apparently this was based on a phone call with someone, who told them what they wanted to hear so they rushed to publication. Goes to show how far the Telegraph has sunk. pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/n...
"Deceieved" aka too lazy and incompetent to make any effort to verify any details.
What's sad is folks just churn out this crap at the Telegraph now. It's so trashed.
Government agencies trying to avoid embarrassment have got nothing over media companies admitting mistakes.
More fantasy fan fiction from supposed broadsheet
Brexit
This apology is weird though, because it implies that the big problem was that the photos used were not of the family featured in the article, and not that they weren't of the family because the family simply never existed in the first place
But why would you even read this arse wiper?...
To be fair that is standard fare for the Torygraph. They have been printing completely made up click bait stories about trans people for at least seven years now.
In the absence of anything approaching a genuine independent press regulator, to help balance the substantial leeway that is granted to supposed “newspapers” , almost certainly nothing. @hackedoff.bsky.social
Non torygraph link: archive.ph/CwquQ
Oh my gosh, what a state this rag is- it’s become worse than the Daily Star!!
I wonder when they are going to apologise for the nonsense headlines over Alistair Heath columns.
You're not suggesting that the headlines are the problems, are you?!
I don’t know. I see the headlines for his articles, but the articles are behind a paywall, and I’m not going to pay.
Fair
You ould take out the word "headlines' and it would still be accurate..
I haven’t read the articles. But the headlines are frequently horrible.
It's the f*cking Torygraph - do you actually expect proper reporting? It's just a propaganda mouthpiece for the tax-avoiding billionaire Barclay Brothers.
How the mighty have fallen. The once regarded broad sheet reduced to tabloid made up stories... oh deary me! 🤣
Sounds like a right divi to me. I suspected it was bollox when she said her hubby had given up a 100k job because he had to pay a higher tax rate. But the best bit was selling the house in Barry because of a “long commute to work”. It’s less than the distance from Lime St to chuffin Southport 🤣🤣
This is just normal for the Telegraph. Who buys this comic?
They are just making up lies and there is zero professionalism. The editor should be embarrassed but they won’t be
Similar issue with this story in The Times www.thetimes.com/uk/education... even a cursory glance at their Companies House filings show the school has been haemorrhaging £ for years, it has 2/3 occupancy, made a significant pay off for CEO to resign, deeply lazy journalism, no fact checking.
It would have been barely less embarrassing had it been true.
The @telegraphnews.bsky.social has long since ceased to be a newspaper. I learned a lot from it and other publications while delivering them in the late 1960s and early 70s. Sad to see now that it is little more than an extreme right-wing comic with no journalistic standards.
The "apology" is just as shameless as the original story. Just absolutely appalling behaviour from the Telegraph and heads should roll.
"we have not been able to verify the details published [but we defo know it wasn't done by AI because: trust me bro]" Even the apology is bullshit; just like the bullshit article.
Oh my goodness we appear to have published an entirely fictitious story, that just so happened to fit in with our political outlook and pandered to the views of our readers. How on earth did that happen?
The telegraph is worse than a tabloid these days. It’s trash.
Who among us hasn’t been duped into running a story thanks to completely inept checks and balances? Me, for one
or just a basic sniff test like, well if someone can't go on 5 holidays a year thats not something that works !!!
There’s a saying among subs when you spot an error in a rival paper ‘There but for the grace of God’ Not sure it applies on occasions like this
Exactly, I’m usually pretty loathe to pint out mistakes in other papers, because it happens. Thus is different - this is based on a desperation to make a political point that clearly resulted in all apparent standards being ignored
Its the reformagraph, formerly torygraph, so it has no standards. It just prints the lies that it thinks its advertisers and readers want published. To think it used to be a paper of record, and now its like the Washington Post: all about reich-whinge commentary, and fuck all about real news.
It was fabulous. Exactly what we expect from msn. Why are they apologising?😂
It's time gov clamped down on these right wing papers telling their made up stories and lies. Review their licence
Don't know why anyone reads the Telegraph. It has become just another right wing rag. @thetelegraph.bsky.social
Was the article attributed? Presumably the journalist and editor are now unemployed?
