Mail-Online taking Liberties with "alt" text

For those of you that don't know "alt" text is an attribute of HTML that is used to provide alternative text for non-graphical browsers and is also used by visually impaired people to understand what an image is showing. They are invaluable if you can't actually see what's on screen and are listening via a screen reader.

"alt" tags are also used by some in the SEO industry to reiterate to the search engines what a page is about. The extra keywords can inform Google.

However, sometimes they are used for more unscrupulous ways. Because Google does look at "alt" text you can use them to add content to Google that you wouldn't normally put on your site.

In this instance the Daily Mail, via it's online rag has added the following alt text to an image

In a story headlined "The dirty tricks dossier: ANDREW PIERCE reveals Labour's union vote-rigging scandal is far more extensive -..."

This picture of Len McCluskey

has the "alt" text of: "Unite has given Labour more than £8 million since 2010. In Len McCluskey, it has a general-secretary whose political heroes are Lenin and Arthur Scargill" rather than the more accurate IMHO "Unite general-secretary speaking through a megaphone." Nowhere in the picture is there any indication that his heroes include Lenin. And what the Daily Mail has done here is make a connection between Len McCluskey and both Lenin and Arthur Scargill that may, or may not be true, and they have hidden it from their readers. For me there are questions about both their motives, and why they felt it necessary to hide it from their readers in that way.