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The Commentary

Who is misleading who?

The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war is expected to offer its findings after the General Election, which is due before June 3.

When ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared before the panel, there was a TV frenzy and many people watched the proceedings live on the web. In February, the former Secretary for International Development, Clare Short, who resigned over the war, brought applause from the public gallery when she gave evidence confirming the beliefs of many, that the country and the Commons were misled over the legality of the war by Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith (then Attorney General). She said that when she wanted to raise questions in cabinet she was ‘jeered at to be quiet’. There is a widespread feeling that if the public had known the truth we would never have gone to war — and perhaps that is right.

Kept in the dark

Just how misled are we as a society? The media elite are keen to accuse the Labour government of lying over Iraq but it certainly seems that they themselves fail to give balanced and fair reporting on many issues. For example, it appears the BBC exaggerated the threat of global warming to the oceans in its programme Britain’s really disgusting food: fish. The documentary asserted that in 50 years there would be no fish in the sea. But James Wood from Seafish, an industry body, said: ‘World fish supply has been boringly stable for the last 35 years’. Phone calls to the programme’s producers, who were told that cod stocks in the North Sea have increased by 40% since 2000, were ignored. This fits with the media’s love of sensationalism.

But it is clear that much of TV programming also has an agenda. That agenda is patently secular. The bishops have recently complained that Christianity is generally either sidelined or attacked on our screens. The secular media agenda includes the promotion of sexual ‘freedom’ (despite the prevalence of STDs, etc.), the promotion of Darwinism (despite the fact that results of the genome project imply it is increasingly untenable), the promotion of the idea that material wealth is the key to happiness (despite the rich West being full of dispirited people) and generally to rubbish family and marriage.

When the British Social Attitudes Survey came out recently, Radio 4’s Today programme chose to focus on the finding that attitudes towards same-sex relationships have softened (note the use of language there) with only 36% of people regarding them as immoral now compared with 62% in the 1980s. But isn’t that rather predictable, given what must be regarded as a pro-gay campaign which has been relentlessly conducted by the media for the last 25 years? Anyone with a different point of view on this issue has been treated rather like Clare Short in cabinet — ‘jeered at to be quiet’.

Some wonder whether there is now a similar celebrity led media campaign for the legalisation of assisted suicide.

Truth and the election

We live in a country which often has little regard for truth. Against the background of the most horrendous national debt, we have a General Election due in which (in my more gloomy moments, I think) we will be canvassed by misleading politicians whose words will be reported to us by a media elite following their own perverse agenda. I love democracy. But in this situation I sometimes wonder, ‘What’s the point?’ Our land needs to return to the truth of the gospel which guided its institutions in the past in the paths of honesty. Perhaps a government which misleads us is God’s judgment on a country which is happy to promote and believe the lie of secularism.

John Benton