The Daily Telegraph

Well, I keep saying I want to do a giant post about the media, but now it's becoming clear that's not feasible. I think I'm going to do a bunch of posts about different columnists and papers.

Let's start with The Daily Telegraph. This is the worst mainstream paper I ever find myself reading, yet Rationalwiki for some odd reason does not have an entry on how ridiculous it is (as opposed to The Daily Mail). Whenever I see a story that looks really fishy, I somehow get linked backed to the Telegraph. I read in the Atlanta Jewish Times that Ahmadinejad is of Jewish descent and soon find that it comes from the Telegraph and that it is not true. I read on Failed Messiah that Hitler certainly has yichus too and guess where I find that tall tale going back to?* People seem to think the Mail had it first, but the Telegraph put up the story four hours before the Mail. In fact, if you want to be the most up-to-date on all the developments in propagating silly ideas, you can rely on the Telegraph. Looking for "evidence-based Intelligent Design?" Telegraph. Want to read about how Dawkins actually believes Hoyle's Fallacy (ie thinks Hoyle's "Boeing 747-out-of-a-junkyard-through-a-tornado" idea was right)? Telegraph. How about homeopathy? You're catching on.

What's scary is that the Mainstream Media often takes the Telegraph seriously. If you google some of the Telegraph's claims which I just described, you'll find a scary amount of papers and news sites which took the Telegraph at its word. This is dangerous non-journalism, folks, and I hope this post heightens our sensitivity to the importance of reading the news critically.

*Oddly enough, the first good debunking I found was by a Nazi, but I'm not linking to him.