Taxpayers cash being spent on Tory propaganda in right-wing press

TruePublica Editor: The government in Britain are using taxpayers money to issue mass propaganda campaigns. It is attempting to convince as many people as possible that somehow they are doing a good job in the midst of a crisis when the opposite is fact. The truth is we will never know much taxpayers money is being diverted to deceive a nation because there’s no way of finding out.

The Boris Johnson government took no notice of the warnings issued not just by China and the WHO but by the Italian government and many doctors, scientists and experts – all pleading with Britain to lockdown.

The late lockdown killed many people. How many, again, we will never really know.

Throughout this testing time involving government’s all over the world – Britain, which should have given a lead, failed in every way possible as far as public health was concerned. They were warned three years in advance that a flu-like pandemic would happen, they tested their preparedness, dramatically failed – and then hid the results. They then turned the other way when the virus arrived knowing what was about to happen because a herd-immunity strategy would deal with it. The backlash caused a U-Turn and the lockdown came. Since then, its been scandal after scandal, misstep after misstep and now it’s turned into a public relations battle in the media and on social media. So when Boris Johnson’s government was actually tested, its deceptions failed it – because there is no concrete holding up the pillars of good governance.

Throughout all of this, the government have been spending millions on social media campaigns, on an army of ‘bots’ to attack oppositional and dissenting voices and rallying what looks like grassroots supporters when they don’t exist. Tory campaign HQ (CCHQ) have run out of money – so now they are using taxpayers cash. Here is one example:

 

 

As you can see, the reporter is ‘MailOnline Reporter’ – in other words – no one has written it in person and so this is little more than a Tory campaign propaganda piece pushed out by the Daily Mail – who, in turn, has been paid by the taxpayer. I don’t know about you but as a taxpayer – it’s infuriating to think that the Daily Mail, of all the newspapers in Britain, is benefiting just as their readers are deserting them for The Guardian, Times and FT. This is because they want factual news about the C19 crisis when the DM is largely stuffed full of fake news, misinformation and now open, in your face state-backed propaganda.

Boris Johnson has been accused before of using taxpayers money to push Tory propaganda. Last August he was in the frame for doing just that and just a few months ago, Johnson set up a film company to create films about the triumphs of Brexit. The purpose there was simple – to rewrite history and make out its ideology was a battle of good versus evil and he was its leader. Then one month later in February, Johnson went on to spend £5million on a propaganda campaign in Scotland to get the message across that the “Tory Government is a force for good.”

It is hardly any coincidence that all this is going on when Johnson’s publicity ally actually builds anonymous propaganda campaigns for all sorts of bad actors, dictators and corporates wishing to clean up their misdeeds.

First Draft – is a non-profit organisation which works on debunking fake news. It found 88% of Facebook ads paid for by the Conservative Party contained misleading claims. It said out of 6,749 ads paid for by the Conservatives in just one four day period, over 5,000 contained misinformation or just plain lies.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that the UK Government had been forced to deny claims that it was behind a bot network imitating NHS staff on Twitter. And it never really killed the story because yet another scandal over PPE and deaths in care homes buried it for them.

In the meantime, TruePublica has suffered a two day DOS/DDOS attack to stop the website being accessed by its audience over a story about Dominic Cummings. openDemocracy has been the subject of ‘vindictive’ treatment by Downing Street – and this was on the direct orders of our PM and his toxic political advisor Dominic Cummings. Many other media outlets have either been banned or gagged one way or another for challenging this government, who as we’ve said before, are now immersed in a battle for the national narrative – not fighting a pandemic with all of the economic fallout to follow.

Reporters Without Borders has also warned that Downing Street’s “vindictive” response to media criticism of its handling of the pandemic meant press freedom in the UK was being eroded. They are right.

In the meantime, the Daily Mail gets rewarded by an unwitting taxpayer for parroting Tory propaganda and being the false mouthpiece of a government sinking in the mendacity of its own making.

 

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