A pseudonymous BBC reporter calling himself Charlie Walsham has written a brilliant exposé in the Spectator about the pro-lockdown bias of his colleagues. Here’s how it begins:
I have been a BBC journalist for many years, and in that time I have been committed to impartiality and the corporation’s Reithian values to inform and educate. My despair about the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the pandemic though has been steadily growing for some time. And in early December, as I listened to a BBC radio broadcast, I felt the corporation reach a new low.
During a morning phone-in show on 5Live the topic of discussion was Covid jabs and whether they should be mandated, or if punitive action should be taken against those who refuse them, such as imposing lockdowns on the unvaccinated. Setting aside the fact that these authoritarian measures are now considered a matter for breezy debate, I at least expected a balanced discussion.
This was wishful thinking on my part, as ‘Michael from Birmingham’ – a caller – was about to find out. Michael told the host he hadn’t been vaccinated because he didn’t trust ‘the data’ and cited historic incidents of documented corporate malfeasance by pharmaceutical giants to explain why he was concerned. Now you may disagree with Michael, or think him completely deluded, but he was still a person who had genuine fears about the vaccine and its safety. Yet instead of holding a reasoned debate with his concerned caller, the host immediately lost his temper, talked over Michael, implied he was a flat-earther and then muted him entirely.
It was an interaction that goes to the very heart of the dismal failure of BBC News. I have been working at BBC News throughout the Covid era and have witnessed how the insatiable demands of the 24-hour news cycle have exacerbated a serious and protracted crisis. I have also seen how any attempt at balance has been abandoned in favour of supporting and promoting Covid restrictions.
The downhearted journalist began to feel a bit better in the run-up to July 19th, but the reaction to the Omicron variant has plunged him back into despair.
As ‘Freedom Day’ beckoned in July this year, I began to feel less downbeat about the BBC. Sure, BBC News outlets continued to invite an army of Covid zealots onto the airwaves, all of whom seemed to call for restrictions to continue indefinitely. But I thought the end of the pandemic might be in sight. Most of my BBC colleagues are good, well-meaning people. Perhaps senior managers and editors were guilty only of a form of noble cause corruption, trying their best during an unprecedented health crisis to help keep the public safe. Maybe the BBC had done nothing fundamentally wrong and I was the one who was overreacting.
But this winter has seen a rise in infections again, and inevitably there have been renewed calls for the country to lock down to protect our health service. No one knows how bad the Omicron wave will be and it might just be that only a lockdown can prevent the NHS being overwhelmed this winter. But the national broadcaster should surely feature both sides of the debate and not just relentlessly make the case for further restrictions while ignoring the toll they have on our society.
The BBC insists that it has “covered the pandemic with great care and in detail, which is what people expect of the BBC and it is why we have seen record audiences coming to us throughout, both in the UK and around the world”. But there are signs that the corporation is once again failing in this critical function. The BBC News website now almost constantly features the ‘Live’ number of coronavirus cases. “Two vaccine doses don’t stop you catching Omicron” read a headline last week, as if this was somehow remarkable – totally ignoring the fact that double-jabbed BBC staff had been succumbing to Covid for months, long before Omicron reared its head.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In spite of the BBC churning out pro-lockdown propaganda 24/7, the public are generally content with the current level of restrictions and don’t want them to be ratcheted up. That was the finding of Kekst CNC, as reported in today’s Sunday Times: “58% of people oppose closing all pubs and restaurants, while 60% oppose a ban on household meetings over Christmas.
You can read a detailed breakdown of this polling in a Twitter thread by Kekst CNC head James Johnson here. And worth bearing in mind that this is an online poll so is almost certainly exaggerating support for further restrictions due to pro-social bias, as described by Mike Hearn in this piece.
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That’s a tour de force of a letter!
Thanks for writing it
Read Viz for more laughs and better science. The BMJ (Bill and Melinda Journal) and The Lancet jumped the shark some time ago.
What a risible position to find themselves in and what more vivid example can there be of ‘painting themselves into a corner’.
What a suppurating stench emerges when the lies are stacked so high and so precariously.
The letter is fine although the restraint is unnecessary. Personally I would have ripped the article apart, bit by bit. Viciously.
At least the authors have shown their colours. No need to take any notice of their uneducated tripe again, they can be consigned to the dustbin.
Where is Peter Doshi?
He gave up, clearly. He understands that the jabs are not vaccines. Must be an awful position to be in.
Whoo, over the target.
I haven’t read the BMJ article, but from what I’ve seen of it here it demonstrates the level of ignorance and banal evil that our society is up against.
Yet it’s hardly surprising that these sort of people want to suppress criticism now – by all rights, and if and when the truth comes out, many of them will be looking at very long jail sentences.
I hope and pray that they pay for the crimes they’ve committed.
The BMJ is captured. Let them expose themselves, don’t interrupt them.
Their hubris, desperation and extremism will hopefully be their downfall
The BMJ know, seemingly quite well, which side their bread is buttered. Does anyone here know where the butter comes from?
Great name btw.
Can’t imagine…
Yep give ‘em enough rope….
But there never was a pandemic. Unless you count the one of government misinformation.
The problem with smear articles of this kind is that they’re luring the people thus attacked into defending themselves, often heatedly, against the contained allegiations, thus promulgating a kind of conversation of the author’s choosing[*] and – ideally – burying whatever the attacked the group was actually trying to communicate under a tsunami of irrelevant noise.
This is a standard disinformation tactic.
[*] eg, intentionally crude example, Is or isn’t UKFSMA a fascist organization?
I’m not entirely sure why the author is so shocked; the entire establishment in most rich world countries has been captured by these people.
At least, it’s a good, honest reaction.
There is relentless hubris eminating from the pro-jab, pro-lockdown side of the debate, that always attempts to silence dissenting opinion. This occurs whether the holder of the opinion is a professor of medicine, or a reporter.
I have never seen this push for censorship from our side, merely a desire for robust discussion.
But then again, history has never shown us tolerance by a ruling elite class for dissenting thought.
I have never seen this push for censorship from our side, merely a desire for robust discussion.
That’s why I think we’re going to win (if ‘win’ is the right word, after all that as happened).
I suspect that’s correct, though as you say, “win” may not be the most apt term! In small ways the truth is becoming more evident to an ever- increasing number of people.
It is very worrying that so many journals and institutes consider it is acceptable for them to aid the suppression of freedom which the political class gives wvery sign of leading. The silence of MPs and Peers is shocking.
The article wasn’t peer reviewed, was it?! Not very well written, either. Referring to the shadowy & extreme-left leaning CCDH simply as an innocuous ‘non-profit’ is its own disinformation; to compare questioning of a clearly biassed and manipulated narrative to the machinations of the tobacco industry is outright malevolence. But of even more concern is the apparent intent to sway the process and outcome of the Covid-19 public enquiry, using all the nudge and psyops methods it mentions in its playbook. The only upside is that by doing so it has, to a certain extent at least, shown its own hand and what we’re up against next time. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.
‘BMJ’ and the phrase ‘respected journal’ should no longer appear in the same sentence – it went over to the dark side a long time ago.
The. BMJ article appears to have been written by people with no clinical background, bar one (Martin McKee, whose opinion I have disagreed with before). I am firmly of the view that measured responses are more effective than rant and applaud UKMFA for its restraint.
They ask “The public inquiry should do three things. Firstly, it should examine the extent to which groups promoting contrarian messages were able to influence policy. We think it unlikely that they were able to do so directly but, given their links to the media and influential politicians, they should be investigated. (emphasis added)”.
The answer is that they were not able to do so directly, as I myself discovered early on. All my attempts to engage failed. This is a major plank of my personal submission to the Hallett Inquiry, which I sent this week, suggesting that ignoring my professional clinical advice led to the unnecessary deaths of possibly 25000 people in the UK.
The BMJ has been running a series of articles on what the COVID inquiry should be looking at. I have responded to a couple but this one I missed. I think UKFMA should send their letter through the journal’s Rapid Response channel ans see what happens.
Have just realised why I missed it – it’s in this weeks issue, which hasn’t yet dropped through my door. There are some wider points to be made so I will be following my own advice and penning a Rapid Response!
…yes, one of the ‘authors’ ….Karam Bales, is an ‘executive member of the National Education Union’…”Together we’ll shape the future of education”.
Personally I wouldn’t want him ‘shaping’ (or as we call it in the real world..propagandising..) anything for my children….but feel free to look him up……he has a Twitter page where he and Deepti Gurdasani (another ‘author!) decry anyone who doesn’t agree with mask wearing…..!!
Look on the bright side. We currently have the most inept governance and a police force akin to the Keystone Cops. They haven’t a snowball in hells chance of muzzling us.
Does the BMJ receive any funding from TBMGF per chance? Just asking.
While I agree with the article, and I hope a retraction is forthcoming…we have obviously passed the point of no return where independence, honesty and integrity is concerned. The BMJ, sadly, is no more trustworthy or worth reading than any of the MSM…ALL the opinions are bought and paid for….
This is pretty obvious to millions of us, which is why they desperately need to close down any dissent…
The London school for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has been a cheerleader and promoter of the ‘vaccines’ from the beginning…..and suffice to say a little bit of investigation shows that one of the lead authors, and the chair of the ‘advisory group’ on the paper are from the said London school of hygiene and tropical medicine…(LSHTM)…(Martin McKee/Kara Hanson)
Outside of the USA, Oxford University and the LSHTM are the two biggest recipients of funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation…and between 2014-2018 the LSHTM received $344 million…..
Once I started going down the ‘funding’ rabbit hole I also found this….from 2021..
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2021/vaccine-confidence-projecttm-awarded-macarthur-funds-supporting-equitable
The Vaccine Confidence Project™ awarded MacArthur funds supporting an equitable recovery from the pandemic..The VCP has spent the last ten years listening to understand the drivers of vaccine confidence. Through the Vaccine Confidence Index™, a tool for mapping confidence, the VCP has helped to inform the strategies and designs for immunization programs so human and financial resources can be designed for and with the communities they serve. A significant grant has been awarded to the LSHTM….
The MacArthur Foundation is funded by private donation..Microsoft being just one…(shock horror)!,”……..and round and round they go…….
Methinks the Gates-funded Propagandists in the Global Health Bureaucracies are rattled by their failure to shut down dissent and are very well aware of the large and growing evidence that their methods have made a bad situation far, far worse.
Well done to the authors of this letter for magnificently calling the BMJ out.
“Throughout the pandemic, some people have opposed almost all measures introduced by Governments at Westminster and in the devolved administrations, from the initial lockdown to mask mandates and vaccination certificates”
Er yes mainly because they were all totally stupid, ineffective and in most cases life threatening and dangerous.
You have to realize that – when The Good People[tm] govern – opposition becomes a crime perpetrated by The Bad People[tm]. This is also again centrally controlled wording. I’ve read the same in German as justification why a singer of German ditties most popular in the early 1980s (Nena) shouldn’t be allowed to appear on shows of the German public broadcasters anymore — during the pandemic, she opposed government decisions, especially about mandatory social distancing at her concerts. This cannot be tolerated by The Spanish Inquisition[tm].