Retirement can be a bit on the quiet side sometimes. Don't get me wrong, it's great being able to have a bit of a lie in, and watching all the rain we've had recently from inside the house has been wonderful, but I do have a lot of time on my paws to try to fill up somehow. When I run out of other things to do, I try to keep an ear to the ground to find out what's going on in the wider world.
In one of these quiet spells this week, I took a look at the newspapers and media websites. I was very surprised to see just how many of them seem to ignore the idea of fairness in reporting and come down very firmly on the side of the humans who are trying to stop people hunting. Oh, I'm not talking about the local ones – a lot of those are very good about giving equal time to both sides and letting people know about the helpful things that hunts do – but a lot of the national ones in the UK do seem to be particularly keen to only mention things that put hunting in a bad light or promote the views of anti-hunting humans.
As a case in point from this week, I noticed that the BBC news website had a 'Watch and Listen' interview with Brian May about 'saving foxes'. Now, if they were truly impartial, they should also do a similar interview with someone who supports hunting. But I'm still waiting to see anything like that. And the BBC are not alone in this. If a story can be told in a way that makes hunting look bad, or something that is only done by “nasty” rich humans, then they publish it at top speed – but anything that goes against this is ignored or pushed aside. And the threatening acts from some of the anti-hunting humans almost appear to be considered to be not just acceptable but actively encouraged, when if they were done for any other reason they would be condemned as totally wrong.
This is not journalism as it should be. The politest thing I can say about it is that there is a strong element of bias in such behaviour. It is a worrying development when national media become so one-sided in their reporting. It opens the door to those with their own agenda using the media to spread propaganda on their behalf. From there it is a short step to censorship and deliberate misinformation. And that is something that I and many others would hate to see.
Orpheus is Baily's Hunting Directory's newest team member. He may have short legs but he has some very long and well considered thoughts on hunting with hounds, the future and those who see hunting as an easy target in pursuit of their own agenda. There is no holding this Basset back once he picks up the scent
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