{"id":6898,"date":"2017-02-27T07:31:32","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T07:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6898"},"modified":"2017-02-27T07:31:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T07:31:32","slug":"fox-news-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2017\/02\/27\/fox-news-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox news \u2013 Fake news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Deep in the night, a conversation about the bad press that foxes tend to get about what is claimed to be their habit of killing for the hell of it \u2013 think corpse-strewn\u00a0hen houses across the land, bereft\u00a0small-holders, curtailed egg supplies, and weeping infants. \u00a0But what's the (dare I say) truth about this? \u00a0We never get the fox's side of this particular story and have to rely on the \"mainstream media\" with all its prejudices. \u00a0Is this fake news, perhaps? \u00a0Are papers just publishing the sort of story that their readers want to hear, with the kind of editorial slant that appeals to revenue-generating prejudices? \u00a0Heaven forfend!<\/p>\n<p>Well, according to the University of Bristol's <em>mammal <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefoxwebsite.net\/attitudes\/commonmyths\">group<\/a><\/em>, it is fake news. \u00a0When left alone in a hen house, the fox is simply taking the opportunity to lay in food for the future \u2013 rather like a trip\u00a0to the supermarket. \u00a0It's an evolved survival strategy, not wanton killing, which is something we're rather good at.<\/p>\n<p>You will have worked out by now that I've been reading the Fox chapter of Charles Foster's\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/naee.org.uk\/being-a-beast\/\">Being a Beast<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em>But<em>\u00a0<\/em>I also recall a poster that was displayed in the History base room of Bath's PGCE course in the 1980s. \u00a0It simply displayed\u00a0the African proverb:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>... although I did not know its provenance at the time. \u00a0It was reading\u00a0China Achebe that revealed the source and the awkward fact that it is not really about\u00a0lions and big game hunting at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deep in the night, a conversation about the bad press that foxes tend to get about what is claimed to be their habit of killing for the hell of it \u2013 think corpse-strewn\u00a0hen houses across the land, bereft\u00a0small-holders, curtailed egg...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}