Fake News

Fake News has been in the news in recent weeks as Trump has accused his critics in the media of not just telling porkies but of having a political agenda. In other words, Fake News is defined as news broadcast (and written) not to inform, as Joe Public might think news should be, but to educate the public towards a certain agenda. That agenda is of course opposed by Trump. In the UK we have a similar situation in our media, especially when it comes to the BBC. An example of this is at www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40420910 … where we are told African history and archaeology is and has been ignored by the West. This is patently untrue as archaeologists and historians have been intrigued by ancient Egypt for a couple of hundred years and there are thousands of books that have been written on the subject. Ancient Egypt includes knowledge and recognition of the Nubians, Ethiopians, and the kingdom of Aksum. Not a lot is known about tribal Africa but in a way this is the fault of the media that continually represents Africans as people unable to fend for themselves and requiring an endless stream of aid channelled through NGOs. If the mainstream had taken Velikovsky's 'catastrophism' theory with a little more sugar than salt African folklore and traditions would be more commonly known about. In bringing mythology and folklore into the historical debate he opened the possibility that even the most remote regions of the Earth could share in the history of the world. That was rejected at the time by the same kind of people that wrote this BBC piece.