A Sun article on 02/04/08 jovially told us that a third of Brits are paranoid.
To help us quivering human jellyfish the Sun produced a hilarious anti-paranoia card with soothing images of cute kittens to carry in our wallets.
The results were from a report by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London.
They tested 200 volunteers on a computer simulated trip in a London Tube carriage.
Incredulously the Sun says, “one paranoid passenger said a “dodgy” computer character looked as if he might turn aggressive or “plant a bomb.”
I wonder where the spineless fool got that idea from?
Maybe from a Sun editorial in January last year saying: “the 2005 Tube bombings were far from the last and mosques across Britain were now breeding grounds for extremists bent on destroying our way of life.”
Or from this headline to a 2005 article on Kamel Bourgass’s alleged terrorist plots: He wanted YOU dead.
Or from last year’s article telling readers that a Basra style car bomb was certain to be coming to a London street near you very soon.
Or a 2003 article announcing that an al-Qaeda nuclear, chemical or biological attack was inevitable.
Its pretty disingenuous of the Sun to be fully compliant in creating this climate of fear and then laugh at its readers when they take those warnings seriously.
2 responses so far ↓
ianwaterhouse // May 8, 2008 at 6:51 pm
This sort of hypocrisy appears to me to take place on a daily basis in the papers.
When the Sun, Star, etc. plaster a topless teenager on their third page and then moan about exploitation and lowering standards elsewhere in the same publication they are surely guilty of this.
It seems to be a right that newspapers hold and one that no-one is willing to challenge and we all (pun intended) take as read…
Maybe it’s because we like to pat ourselves on the back for spotting the double-standards, but don’t feel like making a song and dance in case they stop doing it – and then we can’t look so clever, can we?
rachelm08 // May 12, 2008 at 12:43 pm
This is typical of the Sun. Hypocrisy is in-bred into its culture, after all.
The Sun is the kind of paper that publishes ‘porno’ pictures – and then uses them to deride the unfortunate woman years later when she’s doing something else – particularly if she’s famous for another reson by then.
So it should come as no surprise that it sees no problem in drumming up fear over terrorism, and then pacifying the public with ‘kitten cards’.
What else would we expect from such a publication?