Relying on mainstream media can severely damage your mental health

I trust readers will treat Swedish press ombudsman Ola Sigvardsson’s statement that “almost everything is allowed to print” with the bucket of salt it deserves. The extent to which the Swedish establishment – government and mainstream media (MSM) – is trying to cover up the social catastrophe of uncontrolled immigration – no-go zones, arson and rioting in the “rape capital of the world” – starts with the police, who in February were ordered not to include any reference to nationality or race in its crime reports, is upheld by the Justice Ministry, which refuses to update statistics on crime and immigration, and reinforced by the iron hand of Mr Sigvardsson. Next year, the government is to replace across-the-board subsidies to all media outlets with selective grants decided by a committee of (guess what?) MSM industry figures – not good news for seekers of the truth.
So what do ordinary Swedish people make of this? The Stockholm School of Economics reported last year that 21 per cent of Swedes distrust their MSM, and in May, the Institute of Media Studies found that 54 per cent agreed with the statement: “Swedish media does not tell the truth about social problems associated with immigration.” The only good news is that alternative Swedish media are on the rise (for now). The website Avpixlat (literally, “without pixels”) takes its name from Sweden’s MSM habit of pixellating and even changing the skin tone of photographs of migrant criminal suspects. How fake can news get?
Moving on to the international MSM, there’s more anti-Trumpoganda from those masters of fake news, Agence France-Presse. AFP’s Sunday Nation front-page headline reads: “Trump at odds with rest of world as violent G20 summit wraps up in Hamburg”. But wait... the article goes on to say that Trump and Putin got on very well (their scheduled 45-minute meeting went on for two and a half hours), that relations with Britain are great, and it makes no mention of Trump’s enthusiastic reception in Poland a few days earlier. Further on in your paper, we learn from Asia News Network that “US-India friendship is getting friendlier”. So that AFP headline should perhaps have read: “Trump at odds with rest of world, give or take a billion or two.” Then on Page 5, another AFP headline reads: “US bombers fly over DMZ in battle drill”, except that they didn’t – the article goes on to say they flew “close to the DMZ”. Not quite the same thing – another AFP lie.
Your Sunday edition provides further proof, if proof were still needed, that dependence on the MSM can severely damage one’s mental health.
Nigel Pike
Phang Nga