Mainstream Journalism: Substandard and Repressive
"When media organs serve as ideological gatekeepers, a condition of widespread ignorance becomes unavoidable." -Ron Unz
If it's true that mainstream media has lost the public trust, one might look at what schools of journalism teach. And, for that, perhaps Sam Woolley, a professor of journalism at the U of TX, provides some insight. Here he is in a January 31, 2022 interview on the PBS News Hour (minutes 21-26). The subject is "extremism" and "misinformation" on Joe Rogan's podcast on Spotify. Rogan's perceived sins were interviews of Robert Malone and Peter McCulloch, two pre-eminent medical researchers whose views are out of step with official narrative.
Woolley: "While yes, he [Rogan] does host reasoned voices on his podcast, he also hosts extremists and people who spread misinformation, and that misinformation can be very harmful ".. where you have millions of people listening, thinking they're getting open-minded content, or critical content, when in fact they're getting skewed, problematic content that can lead to people not getting vaccinated and, frankly, to death."
Truth is, there's an immense and valid countermovement within the medical world against the official Covid "narrative" that is rigidly protected by governments, the pharmaceutical industry and the highly-paid members of the journalistic profession. One could find no better summation of that countermovement than this 38-minute distillation of a 5-hour long hearing held by a US Senator. Medical personnel giving testimony represent the pinnacle of medical expertise.
A revelation of the hearing is the extensive threatening of doctors who fail to conform to governmental dictate regarding treatment of Covid19. Dr. Pierre Kory, an ivermectin authority, notes that ivermectin, over-the-counter in much of the world, is famously safe and has stopped Covid "in its tracks" in many parts of the world when taken early in an infection. Kory is enraged to the point of tears at the "corruption" that threatens the right to practice medicine for doctors who prescribe it.
Regarding "misinformation" that can lead to death, consider an August, 2021 "hit piece" article in Times: "How 'America's Frontline Doctors' Sold Access to Bogus-19 Treatments ". Journalist Vera Bergengruen writes that "AFLD has been a leading promoter of ivermectin, a medication typically used to treat parasitic worms in livestock, as a "safe and effective treatment" for COVID-19". She quotes a pediatrician named Irwin Redlener who refers to America's Frontline Doctors as --.the 21st century, digital version of snake-oil salesmen" and ivermectin as "".extremely dangerous".
Redlener is militant in his support of the official Covid19 narrative, as his website indicates. He is a medical doctor heading a disaster preparedness organization at Columbia University, and he seems totally unaware that ivermectin is a safe, inexpensive medicine that won its creators the Nobel Prize and is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. That amazes me even as I write it.
The medical community is divided. As counseled by Event 201, medical officialdom, governments, and media centered early on a specific narrative regarding Covid-19 and its treatment. Inexpensive antivirals such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were damned, so that early treatment was made unavailable toward the day when a genetic product called a "vaccine" could be "rolled out". This is the the environment to which the majority of medical practitioners have conformed, largely for fear of career-threatening repercussion should they contradict official protocol, as Senator Johnson's hearings have made clear.
Dissenting medics, as revealed by Johnson's hearings, and the likes of AFLD, FLCCC, Doctors for Covid Ethics, et al., are not misinforming. They are beyond the simplistic "safe and effective' sound bite mentality, are trying to expand the public's understanding of a complex and potentially deadly issue, and are being censored by every means available to a form of journalism personified by Professor Woolley, who argues for "". content that helps people to understand what's going on from experts."
As to what is "misinformation", and to what "experts" one should look, professor of journalism Woolley designates himself among the decider class. His unstated premise is that the public is not intelligent enough to see all sides and then judge soundly. But those who would control information have been found within societies throughout history, which is why the framers of the U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom from their control by the First Amendment.
