Who will stand up for France’s aristocrats?

When it was recently announced that 40,000 people, the great majority civilians, have been killed in the Gaza conflict, I checked the media coverage. Almost all – Sky, CNN, the Guardian etc – correctly reported that the figure came from the Hamas health ministry. All, however, implied acceptance of the figure’s accuracy by the prominence they gave it (except for the Guardian, preposterously plus royaliste que le roi, which said the Hamas figure ‘does not tell the full story of Palestinian losses’). The classic example was the BBC. The story led the six o’clock news on Radio 4, the serious programme with the bongs of Big Ben, always considered the gold standard. Because of its statutory duty of impartiality, it then proceeded in effect to knock down its own story, pointing out that the figure could not be independently verified. Splashing with the Hamas claim is fake news because the truth is simply not knowable at this stage.