In my final review of The Wire I discuss how the core theme of season 5 - truth - plays out across several storylines.  From fake news to McNulty's fictional serial killer to the Clay Davis trial, I talk about how the abusive institutions that make up a city's control ...
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A story doing the rounds claims that the Trump administration is taking advantage of the government shut-down to change the rules by which the Department of the Interior processes and responds to FOIA requests. This story could not be less accurate if they were actively trying to mislead people. As ...
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The CIA's Office of Public Affairs is - ironically - very tight-lipped about what they actually do, so I was pleased that they recently responded to a 3 year old FOIA request and provided me with a document summarising their activities from 2014 to 2016. This includes numerous meetings with ...
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The disinformation war kicked into high gear this week with the release of an interview with Petrov and Boshirov by RT. Many people, even sceptics of the British government’s story about the Skripals, have expressed how unconvincing the interview is, leading me to ask: was this RT’s intention? Rather than ...
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In this special episode I reflect on the war in Syria and the propaganda emanating from governments on both sides.  In particular I focus in on how the apparently anti-war Left has been fooled into becoming de facto propagandists for the Russian and Syrian security states, and how the same ...
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In a low-key announcement the British government have demanded that Russia extradite two suspects in the Salisbury novichok attack. Media reporting on this latest move in the novichok saga is replete with the same contradictions and absurdities that have plagued this story since day one. This is my latest article ...
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On March 4th Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in the sleepy British city of Salisbury, by forces currently unknown. The British government immediately blamed Russian intelligence, leading to weeks of accusations and counter-accusations, diplomatic expulsions and lots of conspiracy theories about who really did this, and why ...
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Russiagate has become both the gift that keeps on giving and the scandal that will not die. This week we take a look at the allegations, the perceptions and the misconceptions, examining how the ‘fake news’ crisis grew out of the claim that the Russian government hacked the 2016 US ...
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In our mid-season review and analysis of Homeland season 7, Pearse and I get into various strands of the show including the Brett O'Keefe/Waco arc, the Russiagate conspiracy, how the CIA should be portrayed as having utterly failed the country but have somehow dressed themselves up as the heroes, fake ...
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In 1987, as part of a typical politician's attempts to seem down with the kids, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did an interview with the pop magazine Smash Hits.  There was just one problem: Thatcher knew absolutely nothing about pop music, or anything even close.  So her advisors drew up ...
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Pearse invited me onto PPR to talk 2017: the highs, the lows, the overrated, the underrated, and Trump.  We discuss our favourite film and TV of the year, the most overblown news stories, the most important news that didn't get the attention it deserves and reflect on why this has ...
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What is fake news? Where did it come from and why is it so profitable? In this week’s episode I consider whether fake news is a new thing, or simply a newly-popular name for methods of deceit that have existed for centuries. I explore the idea that it is simply ...
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