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Gro-op
raids - BBC and Newspapers carry police propaganda
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On
Monday 25th September BBC news - on all the stations and website
- gave coverage to a news item that hadn't happened yet. The
BBC announced that the police had just started a series of
raids against cannabis farms. This must be the first time
ever that a series of drugs raids were announced in advance!
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"Seventeen
police forces across England and Wales are carrying
out raids over the next two weeks on addresses where
they suspect cannabis is being grown".
"In
the UK, the type of drug which is mainly grown is known
as skunk, a strong variant of the drug which is potentially
harmful."
BBC
online report
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The
BBC articles didn't question the police tactic at all of course,
but rather they carried the warnings about strict enforcement
and the penalties those caught could expect. They also repeated
the claims that so-called "skunk" may lead to mental
health problems and used that to justify the raids. There
was no examination of the reason for the raids or the reason
these grow-ops exist.
This
is a classic case of news management - policing by public
relations with the BBC simply broadcasting what it was told
to broadcast. The proportion of street cannabis grown in this
country is now over 50% and there is organised crime involved
in this of course, it's big money. That, of course, has only
happened because of the attempt to prevent the trade through
prohibition, so where was the criticisms of the government
that's caused this situation?
Expect
more of this sort of "spin" and news management.
Look out for similar stories of daring police raids in your
local paper over the next couple of weeks.
Why
does the BBC carry such blatant government / police public
relations spin without criticism? So much for the "trusted
news service" the BBC claims to be.
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The
Daily Mail and Independent wade in:
The
same story was run by the Independent newspaper and
by the Daily Mail the day after. In a valiant attempt
to justify the raids, both papers cut and pasted the
police press release to come up with this gem:
"The
crackdown is targeting the most potent and potentially
form of cannabis, known as "skunk".
Skunk
contains far higher quantities of the chemical THC than
herbal or resin-based cannabis."
Daily
Mail report
"The
crackdown is targeting the most potent and
potentially form of cannabis, known as "skunk".
Skunk contains far higher quantities of the chemical
THC than herbal or resin-based cannabis."
Independent
report
How
was it that both national papers had the same cut and
paste error? Did they really copy it from the BBC report?
And
how is it that no-one on either paper seemed to know
that "skunk" is, in fact, herbal cannabis?
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