Category: Fake News

Corona and Covid Fake News Talking Points

Statistics prove it: British teachers, especially those in primary schools, are at no greater risk of dying from Covid-19 than any other working group. What are the implications, then, for fully reopening schools?

3 February 2021 By Paul Martin

There are lies and lies — and statistics. Or so goes the old adage. Actually that’s not quite true. There are lies and lies — and there are misleading statistics, would be a better way to phrase it. This time, though, the BBC has got its facts and its statistics spot-on. A radio programme called […]

Analysis Fake News Insight Media Blunders or Brilliance

Why correspondent.world cares about an apparently false claim of a filmed interview that never existed.

8 September 2020 By Paul Martin

The controversy over a filmed interview-that-never-was had been first uncovered in correspondent.world, and then in the esteeemed journalists’ specialist website The Press Gazette. Its headline and story is here: Granada producers hit back over censorship claims made in …pressgazette.co.uk › granada-producers-hit-back-over-c… A series of further revelations has followed in correspondent.world, and a number of heavyweight producers […]

Analysis Fake News Insight Media Blunders or Brilliance

British television’s éminence grise Brian Lapping joins protest against a new film, and demands censorship allegations be removed.

27 August 2020 By Paul Martin

The makers of a world-renowned television series have called on a producer-presenter to slash substantial chunks of a new widely-publicised film that claims End of Empire’s Iran programme was censored by the British government or its spy agency. The End of Empire series executive producer Brian Lapping has now entered the fray. He supports the […]

Analysis Fake News Insight Media Blunders or Brilliance

Norma Percy, doyenne of British political documentaries, rejects a claim that an ‘End of Empire’ film was censored. The allegation had been made in a widely-publicised just-released personal-view feature, Coup53, about the overthrow of the Iranian prime minister.

24 August 2020 By Paul Martin

Norma Percy, the award-winning producer of meticulously researched revelatory political documentaries for 35 years, has firmly rejected the claim that the makers of an episode of the 1985 series End of Empire about the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister by a British-supported coup in 1953 were pressured to drop a powerful interview they had with a British spy. 

Analysis Fake News Insight Latest News Media Blunders or Brilliance

They stand accused of having removed a key interviewee from their major TV series – at the behest of Britain’s spy agency. Now though the End of Empire strikes back.

21 August 2020 By Paul Martin

The producers of the major Granada Television series End of Empire, first shown on Channel 4 in 1985, have adamantly rejected claims that they were pressured into withdrawing an interview they had filmed with an MI6 agent. Taghi Amirani made the claims in his documentary feature film, digitally premiered this week, focusing on the British […]

Fake News Insight Media Blunders or Brilliance

A major British television series in 1985 exposed the extent of UK involvement in the Iran coup of 1953. Now a new film has implied that the ‘End of Empire’ film-makers were compelled to cut out the most important evidence. But wait. The End of Empire strikes back.

18 August 2020 By Paul Martin

“It’s a mystery within an enigma,” declares Taghi Amirani, an Iranian who has lived in Britain since he was 15, as he reflects to correspondent.world on a key thesis in his own film, Coup53. Released worldwide (albeit digitally) on August 19 2020, key elements in his film are now under fire, from two veteran film-makers […]