{"id":111,"date":"2006-01-30T13:22:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-30T13:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/?p=111"},"modified":"2011-07-07T00:57:49","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T23:57:49","slug":"the-media-witch-hunt-the-truth-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"The Media Witch Hunt: The Truth Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

All sorts of half-truths and plain lies are doing the rounds in the gutter press and broadsheets. Sometimes I think Murdoch has decided to be Witchfinder General<\/a> trying to destroy the Lib Dems. The time has come to introduce a little Pravda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Myth 1: The Scotsman<\/a> reports, “Simon Hughes is now out of the running for the Lib Dem leadership after revelations about his sex life, rival Chris Huhne has said.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The lack of a direct quote from Huhne is suspicious. In fact the actual quote in the article is:<\/p>\n

“It’s a fact that in terms of the perceptions of both journalism and the bookies it is now effectively a fairly close race between me and Ming. So to that extent that is a consequence. But it certainly is not one that I sought and I had obviously moved ahead of Mark (Oaten) before all these revelations. This was something that I very much do not want to will on the party”<\/span><\/p>\n

So the headline should have been, “Simon Hughes is now out of the running for the Lib Dem leadership after revelations about his sex life, according to bookies and journalists.<\/span>“But that might be just too<\/span> accurate.<\/p>\n

Myth 2: The Liberal\/SDP Alliance ran a homophobic campaign in the 1983 Bermondsey byelection. See the BBC and several broadsheets and tabloids over the past week.<\/p>\n

The phrase “A Straight Choice” was a standard Alliance squeeze message and used in many seats at the time. An example of the same slogan in a different by-election can be found from the the Brecon campaign in 1985<\/a>, two years later.<\/p>\n

A two horse race is more usual nowadays (see Dunfermline & West Fife literature for up-to-the minute examples).<\/p>\n

The homophobia is just another urban myth propagated by enemies of Simon and the Liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n

A lot of the Bermondsey byelection literature from the Alliance can be found here<\/a>. The phrase “A Straight Choice” was used just once<\/a> in the context of a squeeze message on a leaflet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All sorts of half-truths and plain lies are doing the rounds in the gutter press and broadsheets. Sometimes I think Murdoch has decided to be Witchfinder General trying to destroy the Lib Dems. The time has come to introduce a little Pravda. Myth 1: The Scotsman reports, “Simon Hughes is now out of the running […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6dbnw-1N","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ianridley.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}