OMG LIK WE FOUND OUT LIK POSSIBLE RUMOR, LETS MAK IT A HEADLINE!

[Baloki]

Last night I was watching ITV (UK TV Channel) and I saw in the adverts for Corrie (Well who wouldn't watch it when their blowing up 7 corner shops?) a news flash from ITV News saying "Terrorist Plot to crash a plane into Canary Warf Foiled!".

Now I though, ok so I'll watch the ITV news, I'm not keen on its format and their a little more sport oriantated then I like but hey this looks important news so I stay tuned in.

It comes on and the story is announced again in the opening credits and then we go straigh to the live reporter who pritty much says he was told this story by a friend of a friend of a neices friend who has a distant relation with a friend in the intelligence services who said that someone had foiled some kind of terrorist plot and it might have been a 9/11 style attack on Canery Warf, maybe. This just made me say out loud "What a prat!".

It seems to be no story and just plain panic-mongering, am I wrong? Do the media now have the right to report lies? Well ok, lies not cleaverly spun by an inteligence service?

[Wuggly Blight]

Its just fear mongering, they should just belt up with it now trying to instil panic.

[Itsunari 2000]

Conspiracy theory : the goverment is controlling the media , broadcasting misinformation and lies to keep the population subdued and " in their place "!!!!

[Blackmageboi]

Conspiracy theory : the goverment is controlling the media , broadcasting misinformation and lies to keep the population subdued and " in their place "!!!!

Yup they wish to control our minds

[StarlightAngel]

Yup they wish to control our minds

Too true.

[Dr.K]

Its just fear mongering, they should just belt up with it now trying to instil panic.

Correct - but it is this blanket of background anxiety that will keep Blair's posterior very much in Number 10.
I think threats need acknowledging, but focusing too much upon is a recipe for unpleasant things.

[TheAbominatrix]

The best way to get the masses to support all of these insane anti-terror measures is to keep them afraid of constant attack. That's why the US has the terror alert levels and all that crap.

[Big D]

A good 'rumour' can have a permanent effect on public opinion. Like when the US government alleged criminal activity in the UN regarding the old 'Oil for Food' programme in Iraq. Since the UN refused to support the US-led war (mainly because the Bush administration blatantly lied in it's "dossier" of "intelligence"), Bush has been out to discredit or destroy every group and individual that opposed him. Hence allegations of bribery and corruption in the UN. These allegations were splashed over headlines around the world, especially in the US. Now, though, the US government's own auditors have concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing in the UN - none at all; the food and aid donations that went astray were sold on the black market by the Hussein regime of their own volition. The US government now admits there was nothing actively done wrong; they also admit that, as a security council member, they should carry partial responsibility for having failed to protest more against the programme being abused by the Iraqi regime.

However, Bush still says that Kofi Annan should resign because of all this.

This development got a few inches of column space in the newspapers, and I'd bet that most of the American public heard nothing about it, and are still convinced that the UN in an ineffectual, terrorist-supporting pack of mobsters - because that's what their government has told them to believe.

Media hype can be an awesomely powerful weapon, especially when it's abused by corrupt governments and the like.

[lordblazer]

hey Big D your right we didn't hear a dang thing.Heck our local newspaper is so damn censored and stuff like that.Anyway i had to fin dout on my own and when I went to a UK news site I saw the article of bush admiting he was wrong.Anyway yeah the media is wrong.Especially in a country were you have the freedom to press anything you want to but yet its either censored or your told to do this or that.