Hot Off the Press

The Daily Express and Daily Mail really are irresponsible fuckwits, aren't they?  OK, I know that's a given but, to be more specific, they've gone above and beyond with their fuckwittery during this heatwave.  According to their front pages, anybody worried about the fact that, over the last forty eight hours, temperatures here in the UK have soared above forty degrees Celsius are a bunch of 'snowflakes'. (See what they did there?  Laugh, I thought I'd never start).  Yep, schools being closed and people deciding to work from home rather than risk travelling and getting heatstroke, are just more examples of this country turning 'woke'.  Apparently, we should all be just grinning and bearing it because, God damn it, we're British.  We're not like those namby pamby foreigners who avoid the sun.  Never mind the fact that anyone who lives anywhere that such daytime temperatures are the norm in Summer will tell you that the best thing to do is to stay inside until the temperature drops, they're just weak.  Really, what world are these cunts living in?  Perhaps even worse than the fact that they are peddling potentially dangerous misinformation, ('it's just Summer, it's always hot in Summer'), is the fact that they are undoubtedly hypocrites as you can guarantee that their editorial staff weren't sweating away in their newsrooms these past couple of days, instead sitting at home and filing copy.  

Why do we put up with these purveyors of shit?  Why does this country tolerate a press largely owned by right-wing expatriate millionaires abusing their platforms to try and distort and influence UK politics?  Part of the problem is that the likes of the Express and the Mail are allowed to hide behind the whole 'freedom of the press' bandwagon.  Even nominally liberal media commentators just shrug and tell us that the likes of these excuses for newspapers are the price we have to pay for freedom of speech - suppressing them would open the door to suppressing 'legitimate' news sources, (not that there seem to be many of them about these days).  Which is all well and good, except that it is also used as an excuse to resist even the mildest regulation of the press, (ie setting up truly independent complaints procedures and bodies whose findings are enforceable).  It's all very well going on about 'freedom of the press' and 'free speech', but that isn't what we're talking about trying to regulate here, but rather the use of media by its politically motivated owners to spread misinformation and propaganda.  Perhaps we should just settle for a disclaimer being slapped on the front pages of tabloids, like those at the start of 'reality' and 'factional' TV shows, stating that the contents are presented solely for the purposes of entertainment - all the facts having been changed to protect the guilty.