The Times has come out against online censorship in a leading article today, slamming ‘press ratings agencies’ like Global Disinformation Index as “self-appointed arbiters of truth” that undermine objective reporting. Here’s an excerpt.
The wilful dissemination of inaccurate news stories by hostile foreign states and grassroots conspiracy theorists poses an obvious threat to the healthy functioning of political life. But so too does the attempt to clamp down on so-called disinformation, especially when such efforts clumsily intrude on the legitimate operations of a free press. The work of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a not-for-profit ratings agency founded in the U.K. in 2018, illustrates this chilling tendency. Though the GDI presents itself as an institution devoted to the promotion of “neutrality, independence and transparency”, in practice it has helped to stymie valuable and independent-minded journalism on the basis of little more than ideological prejudice.
More alarmingly still, over a period of three years the Foreign Office invested £2.6 million in the activities of the GDI. On Sunday Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, the Foreign Secretary, revealed that the Government had ended its financial relationship with the GDI in March 2023. That is a reassuring development: no Government in a democratic society should have a hand in the covert suppression of free and open inquiry.
Though their activities may be largely opaque to the reading public, ratings agencies such as the GDI are able to exercise considerable influence within the complex ecosystem of online news. Acting as powerful intermediaries between online advertisers cautious of managing their reputations and news websites seeking advertising revenue, rating agencies have the power to effectively starve an outlet of income if they judge it to have propagated disinformation. If they choose to downrate a news outlet, its advertising revenue can be reduced to a trickle: in the case of small media outlets with fragile financial models, the decisions of ratings agencies determine their survival.
What makes the influence of the GDI so pernicious is the dubiously broad construal of ‘disinformation’ it now employs. Not content with identifying false information, it now seeks to damage the financial model of websites it deems to be publishing “adversarial narratives”. According to its founder, Clare Melford, this extension of its remit has enabled the GDI to target outlets whose work was judged to be merely “harmful” or “divisive”. The creeping manner in which its self-ascribed remit has shifted illustrates a sinister irony of the anti-disinformation industry: in setting themselves up as neutral arbiters of accuracy, the influence of their own biases risks creating a new form of misinformation.
Some of the specific verdicts reached by the GDI are dubious, to say the least. Its influence came to public attention last month after an investigation by the website UnHerd, which found itself placed on a “dynamic exclusion list” by the GDI, costing it thousands of pounds in revenue. The GDI’s ground for blacklisting UnHerd was the website’s longstanding practice of publishing articles by sex-realist feminists, including the philosopher Kathleen Stock, whose writing the GDI considered to be part of an “anti-LGBTQI+ narrative”.
Worth reading in full.
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I gave up on The Times sometime ago. They are little more than Guardian lite these days. Also, have you seen their YouTube channel about the Ukraine War? Complete fantasy, you would think Ukraine are easily winning the conflict rather than being close to absolute defeat.
There is no concept of defeat in Ukraine for Russia, they will continue to wreck the country for as long as it threatens to join NATO. Nasty, but at the same time an admirable sense of purpose.
Why is defending your country “nasty”? In particular where Russia / Nato and EU are concerned since the EU and Nato wished to place missiles all along Russia’s longest border with the West. Which part of intimidation do you not understand?
The war was caused deliberately by the West. Russia had an agreement with Nato that they would not encroach any further East: this was almost immediately broken by Nato. Today the only part of the Russia / West border without missiles pointing at Russia is Ukraine and Belarus.
So, how, exactly, is it “nasty” to prefer people do not point weapons at you and continually call you “The Enemy”? Whilst you ponder that can you also let us know when, with evidence, Russia or China threatened us with World War Three as we see in our news every day from the West?
Hypocrites.
During Covid a good 75% of my posts on their forums were deleted, sometimes before my very eyes a few milliseconds after pressing enter on my keyboard, so they couldn’t have even bothered to read them first.
My name must have been on some blacklist.
Funny thing was that I was a frontline Paramedic and I was simply saying i had not seen an unequivocal serious covid patient and that I sincerely believed it was mass hysteria over an imaginary illness.
Yet if you were a retired tax inspector from Tunbridge Wells or such like you could spout off as to your hearts content from your armchair about your opinion on Covid 19.
It got so bad that I would copy and paste each comment to a word document as a personal ‘archive’.
This is an actual comment from 2020 that was deleted.
Was it offensive, was it hate speech? Apparently the Times thought it was dangerous misinformation!
“I work as a Paramedic in the Ambulance Service and yesterday evening we took in a 67 year old male who had a five day history of a high temperature and headache. He had no persistent cough but felt generally unwell, felt he had breathing difficulties though had no obvious breathing difficulties and was able to speak in full sentences. On listening his chest was clear.
His observations were: Oxygen sats of 88% on air, Blood pressure elevated 160/100, Tachycardic at 106, ECG showed a common abnormality Right Bundle Branch Block(of which he was unaware) and his blood sugar level was normal. He was conscious and had a Glasgow Coma scale of 15 (normal). He was also overweight
He was shaking and had a temperature of 39.9 degrees.
He had been to have a C19 test but had not had the result back yet.
He was pre alerted to hospital and was accepted by the doctors there who informed us he would be put in the area for Covid patients.
So what illness did he have?
Obviously Covid 19. Most people would know that by now even if they’re not medically trained.
Except the problem is that we have been going to patients like this,mainly in the winter months, for all the time I have been in the Ambulance Service. In December 2019, December 2018, December 2017 etc etc all the way back to December 2001 when I started and we, and the hospital staff, would not have batted an eyelid. Patients like this would be put down to a viral infection (like flu), a bacterial infection (like Sepsis) or just labelled as cold/flu like symptoms.
But today, it’s apparently completely different and this person can be confidently separated and diagnosed as suffering from Covid 19 even though his symptoms and observations are indistinguishable from Flu or Sepsis. If he does test positive it will be the ONLY thing distinguishing him from all those patients that we and the hospitals dealt with routinely, with no respirators, protective suits, Aprons, perspex shielding and decontamination afterwards, for all those years.”
Indeed. I don’t believe for one moment that the Times believes in freedom of speech. Look at what they do, not what they say.
Ah, you countered the narrative with your direct experience. You dangerous malcontent. They should have banned you forever.
(sarcasm, in case it’s not obvious)
What they did do was change the rules so that everyone had to post under their real names. No one was allowed to be anonymous anymore.
As you can imagine my bosses in the Ambulance Service wouldn’t have looked kindly on my views about Covid so I had to leave.
That wasn’t a problem for retired tax inspectors from Tunbridge Wells though!
And don’t forget the way The Times attacked the unvaccinated.
Will anyone join the dots between The Times’ little revelation here and what has happened in the world since at least March 2020?
No. Quite the contrary! They’ll say more laws are needed so that dystopian setups like GDI aren’t needed.
“It should be the GOVERNMENT’S responsibility to protect EVERYONE from disinformation, and should not be left in the hands of private enterprise,” they’ll say!
I share your scepticism. This gives us an insight into what they think about freedom of speech: “The wilful dissemination of inaccurate news stories by hostile foreign states and grassroots conspiracy theorists poses an obvious threat to the healthy functioning of political life. “
To be honest, I feel myself becoming less sceptical and more cynical by the day. Sadly.
One seems to lead inevitably to the other.
But I am otherwise an optimistic chappy…
Hope, strength and tenacity to those who think and judge for themselves.
I don’t know about optimistic but I am fairly cheerful most of the time, if for no other reason than I do not want to give any of these bastards the satisfaction or victory of having made me miserable.
Don’t let the bastards (nor their unwitting minions surrounding us) get you down!
They don’t like it up them!
So too am I, but that is because nothing I do will change it. So sit back and wait until they are personally targeted. Then enjoy the spectacle of them all running around like Chicken Littles but not as clever.
I can confidently assert that I am both deeply sceptical and cynical.
Having met you, I can
sayconfidently assert you’re also splendid.Having been in the Army (1975 to 1987) I acquired those two virtues quite young. We, armed forces personnel, were required to guard our camps with nothing more deadly than a pick handle. As I understand it we now carry an SA80 and 10 live rounds plus a Rules Of Engagement Card. IF we had weapons issued (Bikini Red) we had no ammo, that was in the guardroom safe. Mind you, we looked proper ‘ard. I am now at max scepticism and cynicism. My therapist said I had “trust issues”. Really?
The Times is still at it. Their columnist Rod Liddle’s piece on Sunday, while still spouting the usual nonsense about the millions of lives saved by the “vaccines” did say that contrarian opinions shouldn’t have been censored during the Covid crisis. I posted to cite two crimes committed were (1) government-sponsored panic and exaggeration about SARS-Cov-2 and (2) the prohibition of prescribing Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and Vitamin D during 2020 that could have saved many, and if my post even made it to their online comments, it vanished in microseconds.
Latest from the AFD:German court finds AfD pursues goals ‘against democracy’ (msn.com)
Presumably that is the Orwellian definition of democracy.
ONLY ONE DEFINITION IS ALLOWED
and that changes as the past moves on ….
Wonders will never cease: one of the arbiters of lies and disinformation dobs their mates in. Let us not forget 2020 where not one rag printed the truth or even questioned anything; they were too busy counting your money to bother.
Quite frankly, those of us who know what happened should never trust them. What is the real agenda here? A different body which “tells the truth, honest”? The fact is that even if half a dozen of the major names on here were appointed we’d have to be, and would be right to be, suspicious. We live in a John le Carré book that even Smiley would never unravel.
The truth ??????. According to the rulers of Liberal Progressive Land. Where in reality a lie spreads half way around the world while the truth is still tying its laces.
All offshoots of Pravda.