Abstract

The widespread use of disinformation in the run-up to the British EU-referendum in 2016 has been extensively criticised. This chapter investigates falsehoods in the British media coverage of European affairs reaching back to the early 1990s. Between 1992 and 2017, the European Commission documented and debunked falsehoods in British news stories, which they called “Euromyths”. Using critical discourse analysis, selected sample texts from a corpus of 334 Euromyths are analysed. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ mythology the chapter finds that the disinformation in Euromyths news stories supported and was supported by a eurosceptic ideology that helped the falsehoods prevail against even repeated factchecks. Thus, since the 1990s British news stories furthered disinformation and ideology at the centre of the British discourse on Europe.