Tautology of the Day

Despite the bashing he gets from the less thoughtful bloggers, Tim Ireland does some sterling work attempting to clear the Augean stables of the UK's public sphere (as in Habermas, not (just) blogo-). Actually, strike my first sentence - I'm sure much of the malice and slander comes directly as a result of his calls for high ethical standards among bloggers. It baffles me that the bloggertarians, especially, cannot see the merit in his arguments. Look what LabourList has done for the quality of political blogging in this country, and where do you think Draper took the template from?

But there's little less interesting than meta-blogging. Tim has been watching the newspapers for a while now; he's created the Sun Lies project, and now looks to be casting his net wider. It needs to be done. Tim has proved conclusively how both the Sun and the Daily Mail dishonestly manipulate their comments to imply unanimity with the papers' view. You might think that neither tabloid is any better than it ought to be; at least the broadsheets don't play that game.

Well, the Independent ran this travesty of an article today, which harmonises nicely with the mood music playing from the DCSF's open windows that tries to conflate Home Education with child abuse. Incidentally, the Victoria Climbié Foundation have emphatically distanced themselves from the NSPCC's attempts to link Victoria to Home Education:

VCF - The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK is genuinely concerned about the link being made between Victoria Climbié and home education, and Victoria as a hidden child. Victoria was neither home-educated nor hidden.

The reality is that there is no such thing as a 'hidden' child, only children who are allowed to fall through the gaps. The key issue here is how statutory services interact with children that are known within the child protection system. [Front page, 26.02.09]

Quite. I know from mailing lists that a number of people have protested about the Independent's coverage. Numbers of comments published as of going to press? Well, take a wild guess, why don't you. Yet, just as with the dodgy tabloids Tim highlights, the comments box remains ostensibly open, luring the casual reader into thinking there is nothing controversial (let alone plain wrong) in the article on the site. It's dishonest journalism, and there's your tautology for the day.