This might not be a newsflash, but politicians don’t always tell us the truth.  Sometimes they might be ignorant of an issue and ad-lib to a journalist’s question.  Other times they might make an honest statement, or election promise, but due to changing circumstances turns out to be no longer the truth.  Then there’s the times politicians blatantly lie, spinning untruths to get their own way.

The Gawker website recently wrote that CNN have used onscreen graphics to highlight the lies of US Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump.  Good on them I reckon!  Media organisations shouldn’t be afraid to tell the public when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes.  To keep these public figures in check takes a lot of archive and research resources, but I believe it to be a vital responsibility of news organisations to ensure we now the truth.

CNN screenshot, graphics highlight Trump untruths

Here in Australia we are in the middle of a federal election campaign, so the politicians are tripping over themselves to get in-front of a camera or microphone to promote themselves and their political party.  I find it terribly frustrating that all we often hear from these candidates is woffle, they get air time or newspaper space without saying too much at all.

In my suburb of Pakenham (in Melbourne’s outer east) we’ve recently got NBN broadband, so the politicians have been quick to spruik the benefits of higher speed internet to local business and residents.  The Minister for Communications, Mitch Field, was at a photo opportunity this week, but what he was quoted as saying to the local newspaper shows he was either pulling figures and phrases out of thin air, or he is technically ignorant of some basic parameters of this major communications infrastructure project.  Ignorant comments may not be deliberate lies, but can still be misleading untruths,  Assuming the minister has been quoted correctly, this is unacceptable from the Minister of Communications.