My Take | Far from enlightening, the media have worsened the fog of war in Ukraine
- Since hard facts and good analyses are so hard to come by, people understandably end up going by their gut instincts or moral preferences
I would never have thought of subscribing to The Telegraph but for a promotion email that landed in my inbox offering 99 pence per month for three months or something. Anyway, I forgot to cancel ahead of time so they sneakily managed to charge my credit card for next month amounting to 10 or 12 pounds. Well, I guess they won this round as they managed to squeeze a good deal out of me over and above the initial offer. I thought only porn sites do that, so I have heard, and not reputable British newspapers!
But I have now definitely cancelled. Take that, Telegraph!
Not that I regret subscribing to this venerable conservative paper, apparently with the highest circulation for a broadsheet in Britain. It’s a great read, and indeed eye-opening. I am just a cheapskate who tries to avoid paying for any online content.
But its stance on the Ukraine war does have me intrigued. One columnist, Hamish Stephen de Bretton-Gordon, is specially obsessed with it, though given his previous job with Nato, it’s understandable. His opinions, though, are not far from the paper’s official editorial stance, and those of his fellow columnists, and probably large swathes of the Western media.
Consider some of his recent column titles, which he usually contributes twice a week.