- Opposites attract - 22nd April 2026
- Late post - 21st April 2026
- Shaken AND stirred.. - 20th April 2026
As new information emerges about the discredited dossier written by a spying agency linking Donald Trump with Russia, here our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, looks at the importance for all journalists of how being given details from reliable sources is crucial.
It cannot be over-emphasised that relying on trusted SOURCES for your news is absolutely fundamental.
This crucial truth has been highlighted for me, by more details emerging of a dossier containing alleged ‘facts’ linking Donald Trump to compromising material secured by Russian secret services. All of which have proved to be entirely baseless.
The crucial bit was that as a result of his “perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB” the Russian state security service has “compromised Trump through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him”.
I have often been offered information, but have always tried to check its veracity from an independent source, especially if it comes from a spy because in my experience they are often flakey.
Quite apart from this so-called ‘news’ now being rubbished, we are also in an era of ‘alternative facts’, with absurd so-called ‘information’ published on social media, making independent checking even more important.
When I started in journalism in 1983, the mantra from my trainers was: “check, check, check”, which involved not just confirming the factual accuracy of what was being published, but that the sources could be relied upon.
If only everyone knew this.
The apparent rise of people giving ‘news’ from X or Facebook (FB) is one aspect of this worrying trend – conspiracy theories, and those offering ridiculous anti-vaccination ‘details’, are others.
The former US President Joe Biden accused FB of “killing people” by spreading misinformation about vaccines against Covid-19. He later rowed back a bit after FB pointed out it does quite a lot to stop the spread of such content and to promote legitimate vaccine.
Even so, a lot of stuff on social media is questionable to say the least, and a whistleblower has disclosed disturbing information about what has been happening.
Frances Haugen said that executives disbanded FB’s ‘Civic Integrity’ unit and relaxed measures they had imposed to control misinformation in the run-up to the US election.
“They basically said: ‘Oh good, we made it through the election, there wasn’t riots’”, she told the CBS show 60 Minutes.
Through social media platforms like FB, other myths have also spread.
They include the absurd notion that the Covid-19 virus could be cured by drinking methanol, which led to more than 700 deaths in Iran, and that it was spread by 5G transmitters, which convinced arsonists in the UK to carry out more than 90 attacks on phone towers.
A poll by Gallup of 28 countries on four continents found that in all of them, at least 16 per cent (and as many as 58 per cent) of people thought Covid-19 was being deliberately spread.
A clip of a film called ‘Plandemic’ claimed that a shadowy elite started the outbreak for profit, and within a week of it being uploaded, had been seen eight million times, with its star, Judy Mikovits, topping Amazon’s bestseller list.
A study published in Nature found that, although pro-vaccine FB users outnumbered anti-vaccine ones, the anti-vaxxers were better at forging links with non-aligned groups like school parents’ associations, so their numbers were growing faster.
Among Americans, exposure to social media is associated with a greater likelihood of believing that the US Government created the virus or that officials exaggerate its seriousness.
The broadcasting regulator, OFCOM, censured a tiny TV station called London Live for airing part of an interview with David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who believed the pandemic was a hoax. At the time of OFCOM’s ruling six million people had viewed the full interview on YouTube, which is outside their jurisdiction.
Just hours after the notorious financier Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell, wild and unsubstantiated theories about the death began to circulate on the internet.
Many rumours have centred on what politicians allegedly may have known about Epstein’s crimes and whether some could have wanted him dead.
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest this was the case, and yet, the hashtag #EpsteinMurder trended worldwide.
The appalling case of the fantasist Carl Beech, is another one where wild conspiracy theories were central, and sources should have been checked. Beech had ‘told’ the authorities of a high-ranking paedophile ring in which children were murdered.
He came to public notice on the BBC’s Six O’Clock News, and was being ‘interviewed’ by a reporter, but the ‘questions’ were unbelievable. This is an extract of what Beech (who used the pseudonym ‘Nick’) was asked: “They were sexually abusing you? (Yes) And they seem to have been powerful enough to keep this hidden? (Yes) It’s amazing. There seems to have been quite an organised network to allow this to happen? (Yes)”.
The former Labour MP, and one time deputy leader of his party, Tom Watson warned about “a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10″. The same day, on ITV’s This Morning, the presenter Phillip Schofield brandished a sheet of paper in front of ex-Prime Minister, David Cameron, claiming it was a list of Tory paedophiles that he had “found on the internet”.
For 18 months between 2014 and 2016, Beech was the star witness in a high-profile police investigation into allegations of sexual abuse and murder, involving MPs, generals and senior figures in the intelligence service.
He was even helped by detectives to get a claim processed that he had previously made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, following the ridiculous allegations he had made.
What Beech said was all a complete fabrication and he was given a jail term of 18 years–sentenced for 12 counts of perverting the course of justice, one of fraud, and for several child sexual offences.
Apart from checking the source, another basic tenet of journalism, which evidently the police did not apply in the Beech case, is: USE YOUR COMMON SENSE!
Obviously anyone who comes to you with a story about children being murdered, should be treated with extreme caution. Frankly this is unlikely to be true and you need evidence – yet it seems the Metropolitan Police believed Beech without this. A top detective wrongly called the allegations “credible and true” before his force had even completed the inquiries.
Unfortunately it seems his source is now in jail for making up ‘facts’.
You should always check where the information comes from before you believe something – as we know only too well with the supposed ‘facts’ in the dodgy dossier…
Phil’s memories of his remarkable decades long award-winning career in journalism (when it was vital to rely on trusted sources) as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Tomorrow – why revelations that senior politicians have demanded Fujitsu (which was central to the Post Office [PO] controversy), be awarded no more big contracts by the UK Government, has once again thrown the spotlight on the central role of Wales in this extraordinary scandal.
