WHAT MAGGIE NEW:

Truth, or another media Euromyth? (Graham Bowley International Herald Tribune)

The Daily Mail, one of the many British tabloids that love to hate the European Union, published a thunderous report shortly before Christmas that Britons faced a shortage of Brazil nuts, a favorite seasonal food. The cause, naturally, was that the European Commission in Brussels was banning them.

In his central London office, James Marsh, 27, a press officer for the commission, sat anxiously, perspiring slightly.

"We are not banning Brazil nuts," Marsh said. "We have import restrictions, but only on Brazil nuts in shells because some batches have been found with dangerously high toxin levels. We will have to look at the article, possibly write to the paper, and I hope get a letter published."

Today it is Brazil nuts; on other days the EU is accused in Britain's tabloid press of banning fake snow, rocking horses and even children's playtime.

Recently published articles have reported, among many other things, that the EU could ban homemade cakes from church functions; that it was insisting that Europeans sing a new Euro-hymn in which they pledge allegiance to a Stalinist-sounding "motherland"; and that it was ordering the British government to change the names of Waterloo Station and Trafalgar Square because these insulted the French.

These stories have emerged from a British press that appears to revile most aspects of the grand European project, and will use every journalistic exaggeration, trick and sleight of hand to blacken the EU's name.

How can the Tories not get what even Fleet Street does? There are fortunes to be made in treating Europe as the enemy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2005 8:17 AM