Mark Steyn has been one of the most consistently brave and brilliant political analysts of our generation. He has always firmly stood his ground, challenging the ‘official’ narrative on issues like climate change, illegal immigration and cultural Marxism, in the face of constant attacks from the establishment. He does it all with great wit and sarcasm.
Steyn was one of the only ‘mainstream’ media personalities to speak critically about the Covid vaccines and to interview the vaccine-injured and bereaved when he was a presenter on GB News in 2022. This clearly riled the establishment, who demanded that Ofcom, the British regulator of TV and radio, intervene. Hence, in December 2022, Ofcom ruled that two of Steyn’s programmes were in breach of Ofcom regulations.
One of the Ofcom rulings focused on a programme in which Steyn claimed that UKHSA (U.K. Health Security Agency) data showed triple-vaccinated people were at much greater risk of contracting, being hospitalised and dying from COVID-19 than unvaccinated people. Ofcom ruled that Steyn misled the public on these claims, stating:
Mark Steyn said in the programme that UKHSA data on those people that had, and those that had not, received a third COVID-19 vaccination dose could be compared because the two groups included approximately the same numbers of people. However, his interpretation that there was “only one conclusion” from this comparison – that the third vaccination caused increased levels of infection, hospitalisation and death – was misleading because it did not take account of key factors such as the significant differences in age or health of the people in these two groups. The programme also failed to reflect that the UKHSA reports made clear that the raw data should not be used to draw conclusions about vaccine efficacy, due to the biases inherent in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
The other ruling focused on a programme in which his guest Naomi Wolf made claims about vaccine adverse reactions. Ofcom ruled that these claims were inaccurate and that Steyn failed in his duty as the presenter to challenge Wolf on them.
Ofcom, who act as judge and jury, did not allow Steyn to provide any defence against the rulings, and so he decided to mount a judicial review against them in the High Court. The case was heard in the Royal Courts of Justice, London by Justice Farbey on June 11th, 2022. On July 30th, 2024, Justice Farbey ruled in favour of Ofcom. Her full judgement can be found here.
A couple of weeks before the case went to Court on June 11th, 2024, I was asked to provide a report about the statistical issues relating to the claims about the UKHSA data. My findings challenge Justice Farbey’s final decision about this, namely her conclusion:
Ofcom was not “obviously wrong” to insist that broadcasters avoid the risk that vaccinated individuals be caused alarm.
Hence, it is important now to bring the facts into the public domain that show that Ofcom was indeed “obviously wrong”. Sadly, it seems Justice Farbey did not have these full facts at her disposal.
In summary, my report (which includes relevant links to the data and evidence) found that:
- Ofcom’s ruling that “Mark misled the viewer” is based on the narrow examination of the available UKHSA data and only that to which Steyn specifically referred. Ofcom took no account of all relevant data available at that time, which categorically supports (and strengthens) the contention suggested by Steyn that the vaccinated were more likely to be hospitalised than the unvaccinated. Analysis of all the data shows Steyn’s assessment not just to be correct but to underestimate the negative hospital outcomes for the vaccinated categories when compared to the unvaccinated.
- Ironically, the only editorial criticism Ofcom could have validly made was that Steyn did not provide an analysis in support of his contention using all relevant data available – and that, if he failed in anything, it was to insufficiently alert the audience to the risks from booster vaccination. Not only were the boosters ineffective, but the Covid case rates in the ‘ever vaccinated’ were higher than those in the ‘never vaccinated’ in almost all age groups and at least three times higher in the boosted than the never vaccinated.
- With respect to Covid mortality data, Steyn’s comparison between the UKHSA boosted and unboosted vaccine categories was indeed oversimplified, but this was understandable given the obfuscated way in which the UKHSA presented the data. Even had he broken it down by age to avoid ‘age confounding’ (as the Ofcom counsel correctly claimed he should have done), it would not have changed the overall conclusion to be drawn from the data that, for a reason known only to Ofcom, they failed to consider.
- Missing from Ofcom’s analysis was anything about all-cause mortality (i.e., death from any cause) as opposed to just Covid mortality. Only by comparing the all-cause mortality rates of the vaccinated and unvaccinated can we get a true assessment of the efficacy of the vaccines. If the vaccines are saving more lives from Covid than they are causing from adverse reactions to the vaccines, then the all-cause mortality rate in the vaccinated would be lower than in the unvaccinated. Hence, all-cause mortality is the most important and objective statistic; it completely avoids the many concerns about what constitutes a ‘Covid death’. It turns out that, in most age groups, the all-cause mortality rate was higher in the boosted than the unboosted. And, once we take account of systemic biases in the data, all-cause mortality was higher in the ever vaccinated than the never vaccinated in every age group.
- Hence, once the systemic biases in the relevant UKHSA (and also the Office for National Statistics) datasets are accounted for, they show a consistent lack of efficacy for the vaccines. Ofcom, in its ruling against Steyn, has encouraged the suppression of this critical information while the public has continued to be offered booster vaccines, exposing them to risk and thereby subjecting them to harm.
- If Steyn missed addressing the effect of age confounding, Ofcom’s omission was much more serious and fundamental. It is guilty of using this narrow point to ‘disprove’ a thesis which in every other respect stands up. They are, in fact, guilty of the blowfish fallacy. This is the technique of laser-focusing on an inconsequential methodological aspect of scientific research, blowing it out of proportion to distract from the bigger picture. If you persuade people to focus hard enough on specific details, they can miss the gorilla walking through the room.
On its website Ofcom states:
OFCOM’s principal duty is: (i) to further the interests of citizens, and (ii) to further consumer interests in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition.
Ofcom is supposed to be independent and dispassionate. It is neither their role to endorse Government policy nor to prevent criticism of it. In contrast to their ruling against Steyn, Ofcom did nothing about the multiple instances of ‘TV doctors’ making false claims about vaccine efficacy. For example, in one especially infamous programme segment screened on ITV, Dr. Sara Kayat claimed that the (subsequently withdrawn) AstraZeneca vaccine was “100% effective against hospitalisation and death”, with no interrogation from the presenters about risk, at great potential harm to the public. Ofcom did nothing despite hundreds of complaints to them about this segment.
Until he retired last year, Norman Fenton was Professor in Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London. Subscribe to his blog.
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Ofcom should be abolished. The state should not regulate media content. We’re all adults or in the care of adults, and we know where the “off” button is.
It may be of interest that Mrs.Justice Farbey who ruled in favour of Ofcom against Mark Steyn also refused a JR application contesting the Health Officers allowing the jabbing of children overruling the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Vaccination against this
You can’t be seriously insinuating that one of HM’s Judges may be captured or even maybe a little bit biased?
Maybe, if she has kids, they’ve been jabbed.
For more on this see Dr. Peter Hotez.
Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Farbey is clearly a bent one.
British justice eh? She must be terribly proud of herself.
“is neither their role to endorse Government policy nor to prevent criticism of it”
Not in today’s Britain it isn’t.
In today’s Britain it is all out war (fortunately nor at present too violent), between the state as typified by the useless next Tuesdays at ofcom, and their true paymasters, the tax payer. It is absolutely ofom’s official role to push the parasite class line.
This horrendous situation is worsening rapidly under 2tk, so hopefully some energetic pushback will commence interfrastically.
Whatever the initial intent of OFCOM, its role now is to endorse government policy and prevent criticism of it.
It has way too much power, does not serve the public (BBC get passes on everything) and should be abolished.
The judge that found against Mark Steyn is not fit to preside and should be removed from the bench.
Ofcom should be abolished of course, and the beeb should be broken up and sold off to the highest bidder.
Ofcom sorry, f@cking spellchecker.
Only huge numbers of people refusing to pay the propaganda tax (as I do) can bring the BBC to its knees. No establishment government will dismantle the BBC. The Tories may talk about BBC bias and defunding when seeking the vote of their credulous supporters but have absolutely no intention of doing so.
They also get funding form elsewhere though, like Gates etc
In return they crawl up his arse whenever he makes public appearances instead of being critical of him which they should be.
Gates seems to have stopped making PAs probably because his PR people told him he was damaging his own image just by being himself.
The licence fee enables the BBC to run a huge number of radio and TV channels far in excess of what any single TV channel can achieve.
It has a monopoly over its funding and wastes vast amounts of the licence fee levy by doing too much broadcasting.
And then you have to factor in iPlayer and the huge burgeoning BBC worldwide websites.
It has more channels than any licence fee payer can ever listen to watch or read in a lifetime.
It needs to be reined in.
Worse still lots of people have to pay the licence fee who never watch or listen to the BBC or use its website.
It is a total waste of money.
It should have one radio channel and two TV channels and leave it to the commercial sector to fill in the blanks.
The BBC disgusts me.
I remember years ago during Director General John Birt’s pogroms of staff one of the commercial stations was advertising vacancies and included “ex BBC need not apply’.
Hilarious. That is what stations which have to make a profit thought of the BBC and its staff then.
Vote for Reform.
“The judge that found against Mark Steyn is not fit to preside and should be removed from the bench.”
Absolutely.
Which is also what I concluded re the Appeal Court ‘judges’ in the Lucy Letby case. Far too many of the judges in the British courts are corrupted.
Hux, you overlook the elephant in the room. Don’t concentrate on Lucy’s case alone.
Lucy’s case has not yet been declared a miscarriage of justice but I am sure hers will be – it stank from the outset.
The Post Office scandal is acknowledged to be a massive series of miscarriages of justice.
But no one is pointing the finger at the English Bar and Judiciary.
With hundreds of cases IMHO there is a snowball’s chance in hell the solicitors, barristers and judges involved did not know there was a problem.
Like much else in this country we have a corrupt third world banana republic judicial system fed by an English bar tainted by one too many bent barristers who go on to become judges.
Don’t ask how I know. And by ‘bent’ I include those “only a little bit dishonest” as one might “only be a little bit pregnant”.
But what I do suggest you check is what mechanisms exist to investigate and remove bent judges.
There are none.
The Office for Judicial Complaints only deals with judges’ behaviours outside court. What they do in court is untouchable. So if you are a victim of a bent judge and cannot afford to appeal you are screwed.
How many bent judges are there? Do an FOI request on statistics and you won’t get any. Officially they are all as pure as driven snow.
How many bent judges bend the rules just for fun and how many do it for favours I cannot say.
What I can say for sure is one too many a judge is as bent as a nine pound note. It might only be the one but I have come across more than just the one.
Of course like anything else I am sure there are a great many judges and barristers who try to do their job to the best of their ability even if their ability in some cases is not too good.
Mark Steyn is brilliant: our times’ H.L. Mencken.
Interesting that Mrs. Justice Farbey is married to experienced civil servant and former UK government analyst Prabhat Vaze, founder and Director of the Belmana company, which advises the government on various policies, one of which is this:
Community Vaccine Champions Evaluation Report – Belmana | Analysis for Policy
When I typed in the company name on Google, it listed various tragic explosions at Indian Pharmaceuticals companies resulting in terrible injuries and loss of life. However, I could find no link to the Belmana company, so it is a bit of a mystery why Google suggested all those links.
Let’s face it. We just have a crooked biased judicial system and government agencies which props up a crooked health/medical system.
Modern pharmaceutical drugs are a leading cause of death in the western world.
Our prescription drugs kill us in large numbers
Richard Smith: Is the pharmaceutical industry like the mafia?
“Ofcom is supposed to be independent and dispassionate”. So are judges.
Ofcom just another arm of the thought police
When mainstream media endlessly use the term “climate crisis” based on NO EVIDENCE Ofcom have nothing to say. It is clearly a body designed to protect the establishment world view on everything
It’s pointless expecting any Government Agency/Quango like Ofcom to be independent, impartial and NOT to support the Establishment’s propaganda.
Ofcom supports Two-Tier broadcasting:
Anything the BBC says or broadcasts is acceptable no matter how biased, unscientific and inaccurate.
Any broadcaster, say GB News, which allows genuine debate around a subject which provides “unapproved” information …. ie the Covid Tyranny, the Net Zero lunacy and trans-issues to name just three, is unacceptable.
The problem is, GB News got rid of Steyn themselves and has not been the same since.
In the latest analysis of All-Cause Mortality (ACM) data, denisrancourt.ca and his colleagues analysed ACM data from 125 countries, leading to the following conclusions:
– The spatiotemporal variations in national excess all-cause mortality rates allow us to conclude that the Covid-period (2020-2023) excess all-cause mortality in the world is incompatible with a pandemic viral respiratory disease as a primary cause of death. In other words, there was no viral disease which we call COVID-19. This is clearly shown by the Near-synchronicity of onset, across several continents, of surges in excess mortality occurring immediately when a pandemic is declared by the WHO (11 March 2020), and never prior to pandemic announcement in any country.
– Medical interventions (other than COVID-19 vaccination, including denial of treatment) were a primary cause of death significantly contributing to the measured excess all-cause mortality.
– There is No evidence of the large vaccine rollouts ever being associated with reductions in excess all-cause mortality, in any country. On the contrary, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout campaigns are significantly associated with excess all-cause mortality.
The paper concludes that the three primary causes of death associated with the excess all-cause mortality during (and after) the Covid period are:
1) Biological (including psychological) stress from mandates such as lockdowns and associated socio-economic structural changes;
2) Non-COVID-19-vaccine medical interventions such as mechanical ventilators and drugs (including denial of treatment with antibiotics);
3) COVID-19 vaccine injection rollouts, including repeated rollouts on the same populations.
Furthermore, the authors use the ACM and (WHO-provided) vaccination data from the 125 countries to calculate corresponding global values as follows:
– Excess deaths over the 3-year period 2020-2022 from all causes of excess mortality were 30.9 ± 0.2 million,
– Of which 16.9 million were COVID-19-vaccine-associated deaths.
We probably shouldn’t be surprised. The judge was not able to break out of the groupthink that has paralysed all rational thinking in the blob. This despite Naomi Wolf being able to present thousands of pages of evidence about the American vaccines, to support the claims she made on GB News…in addition to Pro Norman Fenton’s analysis.
IMHO it can be put a little more directly than you are prepared to.
See prior comment.
A corrupt judicial system.
Very good work by Professor Norman Fenton. With the tenacious dedication and determination exhibited here, these foul and dangerous organisations like Ofcom will be brought to justice. They are the enemy of the truth and integrity and utterly fail in their responsibilities.
Sadly not so.
History does not favour that POV.
In my last year at Secondary School in the 70s, members of the sixth form had a debate on how to change and/or run a country using your ideas and your ideas alone.
I spoke and said in my opinion there are two ways.
1) Civil unrest and disorder culminating in a Civil War, and
2) A less violent option but equally or perhaps even better long term is to control Education, the Media and Advertising. I said I believed the left, i.e. socialist’s and communists would implement this in the coming years. Here we are 50 years later and they without doubt control all three. Their brainwashing in Education starts with the very young and just does not let up. Their control of the Media likewise is relentless and lies to and fools the majority in this country as does the one sided and incorrect portrayal of life in Advertising.
GB News started off as a breath of fresh air with the likes of Mark Steyn, Neil Oliver and Nana Akua and many others who told the truth and highlighted the BS in the three groups mentioned above. Certain elements that were being highlighted as the devious lieers they were got rid of Mark Steyn and Calvin Robinson and moved GB News further and further to the left. It is now riddled with leftwing, woke idiots. Apart from Neil and Nana it is switched off.
I wish Mark all the very best for the future and one day would like to meet him and the guests he had on his show.