The UK Met Office has shone a ray of click-bait clearing sunshine on fake news churning corporate media outlet the Daily Mirror and its parent company Reach PLC.
In a piercing piece of social media communications, it poured hot water on the outlet’s factually erroneous weather warning on TikTok.
However, there’s a bigger storm brewing within the climate of clickbait journalism of Reach PLC at large. This is because the company’s publications have a habit of producing a lot of hot air – or in short – fake news stories.
Rain check on the Mirror and Reach PLC’s fake news
The Mirror story in question concerned a purported weather warning from the Met Office. Its TikTok video announced that:
This is the exact date the UK will get pummelled by torrential rain as the Met Office warns Brits to shut their curtains by 4.30pm.
Fortunately, the Met Office was ready and raring to rain on the Reach PLC-owned outlet’s parade. It responded with its own TikTok post:
🚨 NEW: The Met Office has attacked Reach publication The Daily Mirror, saying “please don’t believe them” over their ‘utter rubbish’ misleading weather news pic.twitter.com/I9TXJvM1my
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) September 19, 2024
Promptly, it debunked the Mirror’s claims. It blasted everything from the “exact date” of this torrential downpour, to the odd suggestion for the public to shut their curtains at 4.30pm. Spoiler, it’s total bullshit – there’s no fathomable reason to swiftly shut the curtains, and batten down the hatches at a precise time in the afternoon, on a entirely undisclosed date. What exactly does the corporate outlet want to hide in the sky on this mysterious and amusingly, unmentioned date you might be asking? Your guess is as good as mine.
Naturally, the news outlet has also plastered its website with similar drivel. Because if there is one thing to bait the British public with, evidently, it’s a weather scare.
The Met Office rightly branded it ‘clickbait journalism’. It’s the bread and butter of Reach’s outlets. They design their stories to hit the search algorithms just right, and draw readers in with sensationalist and eye-catching headlines. Of course, that in itself isn’t a problem – all outlets must do this to generate revenue. However, when the stories are manifestly false, there’s clear potential for harm.
As the Met Office pointed out, over three million people had seen the Mirror’s TikTok video. While a whacky, error-riddled storm story might not do too much damage, as one person on X underscored, weather news is the bedrock of many outlets:
The @metoffice was right to call this out. Weather stories & forecasts are a bedrock for the start of a day in a newsroom, and often the first thing you address in the morning. They generate interest across platforms, and they’re shareable by design.
However, with embellishment… https://t.co/DmUlqkn1q6
— Matt Capon (@MattLCapon) September 19, 2024
In other words, these stories act as a gateway into its website. And there, Reach peddles more bluster on a range of other topics too.
Whichever way the establishment wind blows
So, scare-mongering weather stories is one thing, but really these are just a sign of a much larger problem. Specifically, this is how Reach PLC’s publications get in line with the establishment agenda of the day.
Obviously, this was previously the Tories.
For example, the Canary has highlighted Reach’s cosiness to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). In numerous instances, Reach has put out fake news stories that has fed into the department’s demonisation of benefit claimants. It revels in this type of clickbait content – because it quite literally leads to more clicks – ergo more revenue. But what it also does is props up the government’s sweep of repressive policies.
These sensationalised, factually inaccurate stories laid the groundwork for the Tories to lay into vulnerable social security claimants en masse. Essentially, it’s part of the corporate media’s ecosystem of manufacturing consent.
Now however, Reach is also falling into line with corporate-captured Labour. As the Canary’s James Wright noted, ahead of the election, the Sunday Mirror was spouting propaganda for Labour about saving the NHS. It may as well have come straight from a weasely Wes Streeting’s departmental press release, parroting his ploy on privatisation as the panacea for all the healthcare system’s current ills.
Corporate capitalists and Reach deserve a cold reception
The point being that Reach PLC is indisputably a mouthpiece of political and corporate capitalist class. However, it’s hardly surprising for two major reasons.
One is that as the Canary’s Steve Topple has pointed out, corporate media is packed with middle and upper class journalists. Naturally, Reach’s publications will be no exception this. So, what this invariably means is that these journalists rarely have the lived experience of the things they’re writing about – things that affect the poorest and most marginalised members of society.
The other is that Reach isn’t actually run in the interests of the sidelined groups its articles target for clicks either. Of course, none of this is any wonder given who owns it. That is, a veritable shareholder smorgasbord of major asset management companies and investment banks. Among these are big players in the financial sector such as Hargreaves Lansdown, BlackRock, and JP Morgan.
That is, the same financial sector who’ve also been courting both Starmer’s Labour and the Tories. Pumping out puff pieces and fake fear-mongering content is therefore partly about providing a pretext for the government’s policies. In particular, those that either directly, or indirectly benefit corporate capitalists and their hedge fund financiers.
I don’t think the Met Office will correct me if I forecast more Reach fake news shilling for Starmer and his establishment stooges.
For the foreseeable future, it’s cloudy with a high chance of cronyism and corruption. No need to close your curtains though. However, the Canary issues a strong advisory to shut all your windows displaying Reach’s absolute shower of shoddy journalism.
Featured image via screengrab
