The Daily Telegraph has reported the remarks of Damian Green, one of the most senior members of the government, as he used a speech to assembled members of the mainstream media to attack new media outlets including Breitbart News.
The Telegraph reports:
‘Fake news’ spread by websites could result in another MP being murdered, Theresa May’s effective deputy Damian Green has warned. Mr Green, the First Secretary of State, said that websites which spread bile had to think more about “who is reading it and what are they going to do next”.
The Cabinet Minister warned that that websites that only present one side of the story risked “feeding an atmosphere of increasing hatred which at the most horrible of extremes led to the killing of Jo Cox”.
Labour MP Ms Cox was knifed to death days before the European Union referendum in June last year. A extreme rightwing terrorist was sentenced to prison for life in November for the murder.
Mr Green singled out websites such as Breitbart, The SkwawkBox and The Canary for particular criticism in a speech to journalists at a lunch organised by the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
He said: “The point is that our political discourse needs to be better than it currently is, an argument that will not be lost on many people in this room whose livelihoods are under threat from unscrupulous blogs and websites that have no regard for any attempt to check the truth like the Canary, Breitbart, SkwawkBox.
“If mainstream politicians and journalists start to behave like Twitter trolls and then democracy is in danger.
Read more at the Daily Telegraph