Comments on Five Chinese Crackers: Tabloid bullshit of the month award - July 2011. T...

@Keir - good point there by Kaspar, I read that is...

2011-08-14T16:21:45.714+01:00

@Keir - good point there by Kaspar, I read that issue too and it looks like the 'group who claimed responsibility' was really just someone on a forum posting something which got picked up and pounced on by the press. And everyone knows things people say on forums are lies, in fact everything I just said is completely untrue. Don't tell the Daily Mail!

@Keir - try reading this week's 'Private E...

2011-08-07T18:27:29.016+01:00

@Keir - try reading this week's 'Private Eye' for a more plausible story behind "an Islamic jihad group claiming responsibility". Once again, it appears the tabloid press pushed the narrative in the face of inconvenient facts, and it lodged in your mind as something you "remember reading" and thus an indisputable fact :-)

Look, fair enough people immediately assumed Musli...

2011-08-06T15:37:59.061+01:00

Look, fair enough people immediately assumed Muslims were to blame. Were you expecting 7/7 to be forgotten already? And I remember reading a Islamic jihad group claiming responsibility as soon as the news broke. That would make me jump to conclusions. But then I assumed Oklahoma had to be by Muslims and look who the culprit turned out to be; mea culpa.

"It's a nice reminder to try to read arou...

2011-08-06T12:30:10.333+01:00

"It's a nice reminder to try to read around and check whatever we read in the papers, even in 'respectable' papers."

I would have thought Flat Earth News was reason to keep a fairly close eye on the broadsheets.