Many of us suspect that the media doesn't always tell us the truth. Maybe that's a bit of an understatement. But here's an example that's of little real importance in itself but maybe indicates how they deceive us with never a second thought.
There are all sorts of programmes in which people have to 'achieve' something. Maybe they have to complete an archaeological dig, or bring an old barn-found car to pristine condition, or transform the home of a disabled person. And there's always a time limit, and almost always it's entirely spurious. Imposing a fake time limit and then banging on about it as if it's the inviolable Law of God Almighty is misleading and utterly false. It gives the whole programme a dimension that distorts everything. But I suppose compared to the many straight lies and half-truths and the lies by omission the media foists on us, it's nothing really. In a way it's good, because it serves as a warning.
When I was a little kid my mam warned me that adverts in the paper might not be wholly truthful; the implication being that the editorial matter in the Daily Mirror was as good as Gospel. Once I was old enough to have independent knowledge of events reported in the press I started to realise that reporting was often distorted by the ignorance and laziness of the reporter and by the bias of the proprietor. Now, sixty-odd years later, I have lost, almost completely, any faith in the veracity of media reports. Am I over-sceptical, or is it best these days to treat every story as a ?version?, maybe containing grains of truth, but maybe also coloured almost beyond recognition by bias and ignorance?