Most Daily Sceptic readers will have heard of BBC Verify. This is a group of BBC journalists who check stories to ensure they are factually correct because, as we all know, the BBC is ‘impartial’. From its start, BBC Verify had a slight whiff of something unpleasant when it was reported that a key employee, Marianna Spring, had once lied on her CV to get a job. However, that minor indiscretion doesn’t seem to the BBC to disqualify her as a ‘fact-checker’. I wonder whether BBC Verify was involved when a BBC foreign affairs correspondent almost gleefully reported that the evil Israelis had bombed a hospital in Gaza killing around 500 innocents? Of course, the story turned out to be complete nonsense – propaganda pushed out by Hamas on the gullible, Israel-hating BBC. In fact, a Hamas rocket aimed at Israel had misfired and a piece had landed in a hospital car park, causing unverified injury and loss of life. But we’ll never know the truth – especially if the rather dubious BBC Verify is involved.
But readers may not be aware of our national broadcaster’s involvement in what is called the Trusted News Initiative. Here’s the Trusted News Initiative’s explanation of what it does:
The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a partnership, founded by the BBC, that includes organisations from around the globe including; AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Information Futures Lab, Google/YouTube, the Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, the Washington Post, Kompas – Indonesia, Dawn – Pakistan, Indian Express, NDTV – India, ABC – Australia, SBS – Australia, NHK – Japan.
TNI members work together to build audience trust and to find solutions to tackle challenges of disinformation. By including media organisations and social media platforms, it is the only forum in the world of its kind designed to take on disinformation in real time.
As you’ll see, the Trusted News Initiative includes much of the mainstream media around the world, the largest media agencies as well as the main tech megacorporations. Let’s imagine just some of the supposed ‘disinformation’ the Trusted News Initiative has bravely tackled to bring us the mainstream media’s and tech mega-giants’ supposedly unbiased reporting:
- The origins of COVID-19 – From early on, numerous online voices have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic which killed over seven million innocents originated from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They also argued that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, along with other labs around the world, was carrying out ‘gain of function’ research paid for by U.S. taxpayers as certain well-known figures in the U.S. healthcare establishment used foreign labs in order to circumvent a ban on ‘gain of function’ research in the U.S. This disinformation narrative was repeatedly attacked by members of the Trusted News Initiative who insisted that the COVID-19 virus evolved naturally and was mysteriously carried by a bat which travelled or was carried over 1,000 miles from its cave, without infecting anyone along the way, before it decided to land just around the corner from the Wuhan Institute of Virology which coincidentally was carrying out research, paid for by U.S. taxpayers, into bat viruses.
- The safe and effective vaccines – Most of the members of the Trusted News Initiative have continually pushed the story that the inadequately-tested mRNA vaccines were ‘safe’ and ‘effective’ both in preventing COVID-19 infections and in preventing hospitalisation from serious adverse effects. We now know, in spite of the members of the Trusted News Initiative trying to pretend otherwise, that the safety data on the mRNA vaccines were highly contestable and that the vaccines were never even tested to see if they prevented asymptomatic COVID-19 infections. Moreover, increasing studies from around the world – Israel, Thailand, Germany – have suggested that for many age groups having the vaccines may have been more dangerous to people’s health than a COVID-19 infection as repeated mRNA vaccination may wreck the body’s natural immune system and the mRNA vaccines have been linked to a rise in heart problems – myocarditis and pericarditis – and possibly an acceleration in the growth of many life-threatening cancers.
- Trashing Ivermectin – At the start of the pandemic many doctors were recommending an antiviral, ivermectin, produced by Merck. Ivermectin is out of patent and only costs around $1 to $2 for a course of treatment. However, Merck quickly developed an antiviral, Molnupiravir. Molnupiravir is supposedly a new drug and is therefore protected by patent and costs about $700 for a course of treatment. In June 2021 Merck signed a deal with the U.S. Government for $1.2bn for 1,700,000 courses of Molnupiravir. So Merck had quite a lot of cash riding on Molnupiravir’s success. Members of the Trusted News Initiative mostly ridiculed anyone proposing ivermectin by repeatedly referring to it as a ‘horse dewormer’. Yet prior to the pandemic over 3.7 billion doses of Ivermectin have been safely administered to humans over the last 40 or so years, something members of the Trusted News Initiative seem to have forgotten to mention while trying to discredit the cheap, out-of-patent ivermectin.
Perhaps the worst and most destructive misinformation spewed out at us by members of the Trusted News Initiative is its members relentless propagandising anthropogenic global warming (or climate change or global boiling or climate crisis or whatever it’s called this month) nonsense. There are several reliable individuals who have repeatedly exposed the utter tripe fuelling the global boiling cult. These include Tony Heller’s RealClimateScience, Paul Homewood’s Not a Lot of People Know That, Anthony Watts’s Watts Up With That?, the Daily Sceptic‘s Chris Morrison and my own modest contribution – the book There is No Climate Crisis.
So instead of me repeating here all the reasons why global boiling is Brobdingnagian-sized baloney, I’ll quote the Trusted News Initiative’s warning on why people like Tony Heller, Paul Homewood, Anthony Watts, Chris Morrison and myself are a danger to the future of the human race:
Whether it’s politicians, companies, or states, many actors have an interest in hindering the fight against climate change. And their power cannot be underestimated: some are going to great lengths to muddy the waters of public debate.
Maybe it’s a fossil fuel company pretending to be much greener than it actually is. Or perhaps it’s a petrostate, whose state media promote climate scepticism to their viewers.
Climate mis- and dis-information can take many shapes and forms – but what brings them all together is a fundamental distortion of facts.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, those of us who cover climate change for the BBC often find ourselves being accused of failing to abide by the very same principles our employer stands for: impartiality, neutrality, objectivity.
Why not hear from the other side, they ask, from those who don’t believe in climate change?
The answer is simple. Because the overwhelming majority of scientists (99.9% of them, according to this paper) are in agreement about the key facts of climate change: that it is real, that it is already happening, and that it is being driven by mankind.
What the world does to tackle climate change is a political choice, a debate for our audiences to engage in. Our role is to provide them with the facts they need to have informed conversations about the biggest challenge of our time.
This can involve reporting on or debunking falsehoods that emerge on any given day, but also producing content that audiences may find useful at any given time – like practical guides to convince climate deniers, or fact-checks of common climate myths.
So do you trust the Trusted News Initiative?
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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Considering the allocation of levels – deep, middle, and shallow – are the medical, & tech (incorporating engineering) organisations really shallow? Or are they actually deep in many cases? After all, most of them really supersede democracy altogether. Most people just live with them with no thought at all, in the main. In this context, the “deep state” is global, in effect, with the USA being down the pyramid a bit.
“unconscionable forced shots that have not only killed and wounded many but demoralised and subjugated the population”
One bit of good news regarding that is the ‘uptake’ in all vaccines is down, making it harder when they next take orders from the WHO & IHR fascism.
What a surprise. Maybe they are not so good at marketing as some supposed. But yes, it is possible that the tactic used will have a negative effect.
It’s too late.
Even if Trump wins, he’ll be lucky to make it to the January 2025 inauguration. Even as a President he’ll be “minded” by reps of all three levels, who have infiltrated the fake Republican Party.
And they’ve had two strikes at him already, a third might do it.
If they have a go, it will be a bomb. I pray they are unsuccessful.
Take him out …. and they’ll get Vance.
“information machine controlled only by stakeholders. I’m not making this up. This is what they say!”
I know you’re not….”We own the science and I think they should know it”…WEF. The arrogance knows no bounds. The Free World rests on Trump!
It is not the politicians elected by the voters as such but the permanent state structures that exist on three levels: shallow, middle and deep.”
Why do you think the Dems kept FRK off the ballot, that’s why he joined Trump, other times they put him on a ballot when it would benefit the Dems where he would have to instruct them to remove his name. Ah democracy!
RFK FFS!
“400 agencies that imagine that they are the real and permanent rulers of America.”
You mean like Whitehall
Yes, Minister.
“. We need only draw on moral intuition and what we remember (if we can) of what normal life should be like.” Yes in the old days we could plan our future!
“On nationalism, I had never imagined the conditions in which that impulse would favour rather than oppose liberty…”
Nationalism like racism and far right, have been defined by the Left to convey their desired meaning to support their arguments.
Nationalism the way they mean it is more properly defined as Statism, in the model of Mussolini, and Hitler’s National Socialism – therefore tyranny and dictatorship and must be stamped out. Ironic since the Left is itself a Statist, dictatorial machine.
A Nation is built by monocultural society – shared values, morals, beliefs, manners, laws – bound by the culture, heritage, history, wider family, solidarity, unity, patriotism. Nationalism seeks to preserve this. It’s about the people. That is why it is a threat to Statism and the Left who want to get rid of National identity, destroy the concept of self-government and replace it with a global technocratic government.
He’s so got to win. The alternative is unthinkable, and I don’t even live in the States. I honestly cannot wait to see that maniacal, fake-ass smile wiped off that medicated muppet’s face, as well as all the rest of the Demtard globalist sh*tmunchers reactions before their tiny, toxic brains collectively implode as they try and fail to compute what just happened, with zero fraud or bribery required in order to get there. *Touch wood I’ve not just jinxed things!*
You don’t have to like him, but even with all his faults he’s the only real chance Americans have;
”We’re right on the cusp of – yes, it’s true and not just a hyperbolic cliché – the most consequential election of our time. What can you expect on November 5th – and then beyond?
First, the election itself. As things stand now, I personally do not see how Donald Trump can lose – even factoring in what will surely be widespread attempts at voter fraud including an unknown quantity of illegal aliens who have been registered to vote by the Democrats (which is precisely the reason, of course, that they threw open the southern border for four years). The Democrats know they’re going to lose, which is why activists have already started burning ballot boxes in Washington state and Oregon (and you can expect more ballot boxes in other states to begin meeting the same fate). I don’t see how the Democrats can even cheat their way to victory this time. We all know – and the Democrats especially are painfully aware – that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are a disastrous duo whom no one likes and they have run a terrible campaign that is floundering more and more each day.
Conversely, we also all know – and the Democrats especially are painfully aware – that Trump has been a rock star on the campaign trail and that YUGE crowds have come out for him everywhere. Kamala could only boost her crowds with a bait-and-switch, promising Beyoncé concerts that never materialized, for example. Kamala couldn’t even score a victory with a solo CNN town hall; CNN commentators afterward couldn’t cover for her disastrous performance. Her entire campaign has been based on lies and fear-mongering about fascism and democracy because she’s incapable of talking policy or differentiating herself from the decrepit, deposed Joe Biden.
If Kamala “wins,” her presidency will be the most radical in American history. It’s easy and tempting to dismiss her as an epically incompetent dim bulb, because that’s what she is. It’s easy and tempting to mock her pompous word salads, her nervous cackling, her Meryl Streep-level range of accents when addressing different demographics, but remember that she is also ruthless, ambitious, and cruel, and she enjoys destroying lives through political power. With her in the White House we can expect four years of vindictiveness and retribution against political opponents, in addition to the most radical imaginable policies.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-to-expect-this-election-and-beyond/
“You don’t have to like him, but even with all his faults he’s the only real chance Americans have”
I actually find him very likeable. He may be a bit narcissistic, but still only scores around a 3 on the Barack Obama scale of 10.
And Obama is a prime example why people shouldn’t focus on the sex or the skin colour, only their policies.
Thank you Sir. This is why I subscribe to the DS.
It is one of the most balanced and considered articles that I have so far encountered on this matter. The Brownstone website which the writer established has many intelligent articles, often including British orientated opinion and information. The link given by Mogwai below is worth reading in its entirety.
https://brownstone.org/
“It has become clear, in addition, that the longing for a system of fiscal financing via tariffs rather than income taxes is on the table, as in the 19th century. That would certainly amount to an improvement over the current system.”
Really? Yet it was removal of tariffs and introduction of free trade that saw a huge surge in the British Economy and at that time there was no income tax so it wasn’t either/or.
Do people promoting tariffs really nto understand they are a tax on consumers? Paid by the importer and passed on and compounded through the supply chain, they increase consumer prices = less goods bought = less manufacture needed = fewer jobs needed = unemployment = reduction in economic activity = everyone made poorer.
Domestic manufacturing has not been lost, it has changed. We manufacture as much as we did 50 years ago just different things. Fewer people are engaged in it which is down to increased labour productivity which means higher wages.
The real problem is as the article states, a shift from productive to non-productive activity mostly in the public sector, which means more and more capital, labour and other resources are not available for development of the private sector hampered by the deadweight of taxation to pay for the non-producers. And now floods of non-productive, impoverished immigrants.
Tariffs are not the answer.
To be fair, when there was a huge surge in the British Economy from free trade, we didn’t have a great deal of international competition, certainly not what we have now. We have seen various foreign governments try to subsidise their industry by undercutting and product dumping, in which case some protectionism would be an obvious answer. If we all played by the rules then I agree, no tariffs.
My instincts are towards free trade and it has shown itself to give great benefits. But what has come to bother me about it is that it creates a dependence on other countries. Steel, food, energy, semiconductors. Being dependent on other countries might be OK if they are equally dependent on you, or you can trust them not to shaft you or gang up on you because you step out of line. I don’t know what the answer is.
I was thinking about the whole situation in the US the other day and musing about the tremendous divisions between the left and right, and whether or not the answer might just be to have a partition of the country into two. Do we have two sides of the argument that are so incompatible that division and political independence is realistically the only solution..?
Such a situation would absolutely never happen, of course. Not just because of the obvious practical and constitutional hurdles, but also because the juxtaposition would expose the comparative failure of the Dem state very starkly indeed.
I felt like that during “covid”. Just give us a small country somewhere and leave us the hell alone, youse lot can all go bonkers together, good luck.
The US was founded with the idea that people would be left to live their lives as they best thought, within the law which was at the time confined to a tiny proportion of what it is today. But there’s no more land left to do it again – no land anyone would want to live on, anyway.
Maybe that is the reason for the Billionaires bunkers in places like Hawaii. Some could already be in them, just in case!
He is more beautiful than ever now in terms of his actual beauty and the beauty of his presence. The man is in his seventies and he has the energy of ten young bulls and apparently he subsists on cheeseburgers alone. And perhaps he has gained wisdom from his years in the wilderness He isn’t really a demagogue apart from a few stylistic touches. He never plays the hard man really. His tone is usually ironic or self-mocking. More of a demigod than demagogue. He is a mystery to himself in terms of how his mind works. The demons in charge like predictability and algorithmic thinking and so perhaps a practitioner of chaos magic can slow down the decline.
Today is a rebirth. It may only mean a fifty year reprieve from a precipitous decline but now that we have him I think that we have learned how to love him. And we know that feeding him love and adoration brings out the best in him. He offers himself up as the slain deity and the sacrificial lamb. Our last hope.
They’ve already said that they won’t let him take power even if he wins and that is the beauty of it because it means a rumpus will ensue. He will win and if they to block him they will make a grave mistake. He is no more of a humanitarian than they are but at least it will throw the Anglo-Americans off kilter for the next couple of months which is exactly where you want them.
I hope we’re now going to experience a battle between democratic, nationalistic capitalism in the USA the anti-democratic, bureaucratic corporatism being implemented in Europe.
Sadly, we’re trapped on the wrong side.