The chief editor of Breitbart London is spreading fake news about the Grenfell tower fire

If you ever wanted a concrete demonstration of the savage right-wing bias of the mainstream media consider the fact that the chief editor of Breitbart London has posted a brazen "fake news" Tweet about the Grenfell tower fire that's now been shared over 5,000 times, but instead of holding him to account, hacks at the Daily Telegraph somehow decided to falsely accuse named left-wing websites of spreading "fake news" on their front page instead.

The Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam has had it pointed out to him by hundreds of people that his Tweet begins with an outright lie and is nothing more than a pathetically tasteless bit of right-wing victim complex crying, but he's not taken it down nor apologised for outright lying to the public.

• The claim that Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council is Labour controlled is an outright lie that is fantastically easy to disprove. 

• The fact that the new Labour MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coad once had a powerless position on the Tory dominated Kensington and Chelsea council betrays a very weak understanding of how local government actually works.

• Ignoring the fact that Sadiq Khan was not even mayor of London when the decision to cover Grenfell tower in highly flammable plastic is obviously absurd, as is the ridiculous implication that the mayor of the biggest city in western Europe should micromanage every building renovation project in the city.

• Trying to pin responsibility on Labour because the original construction date for the tower coincided with a Labour government is absolutely pathetic grasping. The problem isn't that there are 4,000 odd tower blocks in the UK, it's that many of them are deadly firetraps thanks to seven years of abject Tory neglect of housing policy, and their refusal to listen to expert advice that flammable cladding should be banned.

• Describing a list that begins with an outright lie as "Grenfell tower facts" is absolutely outrageous stuff that even Kellyanne Conway of "alternative facts" fame would blush at.

• Making up lies and deliberately distorting and misrepresenting the facts in order to recast the Tory party as the true victims of the Grenfell tower fire is a disgusting new low, even for the editor of a despicable website like Breitbart.

Unsurprisingly there is no outrage in the mainstream media over this deliberate lying and sick emotional manipulation from the head of a right-wing news outlet.

Meta-fake news

Meanwhile hacks at the Daily Telegraph (a right-wing propaganda sheet operated by the tax-dodging billionaire Barclay brothers) lazily churnalised a post from the hard-right Guido Fawkes blog into a front page accusation that named left-wing websites are spreading "fake news".

The problem of course is that one of the websites they accuse of spreading "fake news" (Evolve Politics) never even mentioned the story in question, and another website (Novara Media) did mention it, but quickly put up a video post describing the story as "wildly unlikely".

The best way I can think of to describe this fake Guido/Telegraph claim that others are guilty of spreading "fake news" is Meta-fake news. 

The Telegraph's reputation is completely shot

It may seem implausible to imagine it now, but once upon a time the Daily Telegraph was a reasonably reputable highbrow publication. 

Yes they were always extremely right-wing, but they would never have lazily churnalised outright lies from a hard-right blog onto their front page.

Then there was the Telegraph journalist who called for a female politician to be executed for her political beliefs within a year of Jo Cox being murdered in the street for her political views by an extreme-right fanatic!

Then there was the fact that one of their most respected columnists (Peter Oborne) quit in disgust at the way they were letting major advertisers (like the Mexican drug cartel money launderers HSBC) influence their editorial policy.

The Telegraph used to be a reasonably respectable highbrow broadsheet, but standards have slipped so far now that they deserve the same level of outright derision as despicable gutter press outlets like The S*n, Daily Mail and Express.

Where to turn now

Lots of us like to get our news from a variety of news sources in order to get a more balanced view of what's going on, but the Telegraph have now clearly repositioned themselves as exactly the same kind of savagely dishonest hard-right attack rag as their tabloid bedfellows in the gutter press.

They're not only guilty of ignoring a highly influential right-wing news editor spreading outright Twitter lies about Grenfell tower, they also lazily churnalised an extreme-right blog post into front page news without even vaguely checking their facts first.

These hypocritical and outrageously lazy Daily Telegraph hacks have proven beyond doubt that they consider right-wing purveyors of fake news like Breitbart to be beyond reproach, and that they mindlessly accept "fake news" stories they've read on hard-right blogs like Guido Fawkes as so unquestionable they blast them onto their front page without even the most rudimentary of fact-checking.

Anyone who wants to occasionally check out a respectable and generally fact-based right-wing interpretation of the news should clearly abandon the Telegraph as a reliable source and look at the Financial Times, the Economist (the in-house magazine for neoliberals) or even Rupert Murdoch's Times (!!!) instead.

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