False claims suggesting that the BBC has been misreporting temperatures in southern Europe have been spreading on social media.
A clip of Neil Oliver, a GB News presenter, accusing the BBC “and others” of “driving fear” by using “supposedly terrifying temperatures”, has been viewed more than two million times.
For the past few weeks, an intense heatwave has been sweeping through parts of southern Europe and north Africa, with extensive wildfires breaking out in Greece, Italy and Algeria - leading to more than 40 deaths.
Speaking about the fires on Rhodes on GB News on Monday, Mr Oliver accused the BBC, and other broadcasters, of trying to “make people terrified of the weather”.
It hurts me that this one turned out to be a farsighted documentation.
I remember being angry at people saying it was “too on the nose.”
It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s so “on the nose” and yet perfectly reflects reality.
“Difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable…” and all that
The worst was the people who insisted it wasn’t funny enough. I thought it was pretty funny, but was that really the point?
“I’m inadvertently in this movie and I don’t like it”
There is something to be said about subtlety in story-telling. When writers tell their message with a sledgehammer, it comes off as unrealistic.
Except in this case it was less a sledgehammer and more a mirror.
It was meant to be a spoof in that it was so on the nose was it not? I enjoyed it with that lense
And yet we are getting hit with the sledgehammer as we speak and yet still not “getting it”.