Media and Government tried to sell us mass infection, then pretended they hadn't
Academic study and leaked messages shed light on March 2020
A newly published study analysing news content from the BBC and ITV in March leading up to the UK’s first lockdown has found that criticism of the initial herd immunity strategy was disproportionately under represented. Public news broadcasts created the impression gaining herd immunity through mass infection without a vaccine was generally supported by the scientific community and when criticism was raised it was often bookended with reassuring statements supporting the government strategy.
See the Byline Times coverage for full details of the academic paper.
On the same day the Guardian has published leaked emails revealing how the government pressured the BBC to be more positive about its pandemic response.
However the government has since claimed that it never had a herd immunity strategy, and after the strategy U-Turn which came too late much of the media suffered from collective amnesia and supported the government’s claims herd immunity had never been the strategy.
These revelations will get little traction in much of the UK media which is busy promoting the Telegraph's Lockdown Files claiming support for a strategy of infection acquired immunity was deliberately supressed.
Yet the Telegraph's claims that support for herd immunity was supressed and censored is contradicted by their own headlines from that time period, in fact it was criticism of mass infection that was supressed.
Dominic Cummings has even commented on the media's whitewashing of the herd immunity scandal.
The selective reporting from March 2020 is not an isolated event, reporting on transmission in schools, long covid and the recent decision to end the vaccine programme for the majority of the public has not provided the scrutiny required for the public to be properly informed about the issues.
For example in October 2020 the BBC removed schools from the breakdown of outbreak locations.
There has been almost no discussion in the media regarding the decision to never offer vaccination to younger children at the same time the CDC in the US has added covid to it's list of standard immunisations.
With large sections of the media supporting a sceptic narrative, the failings of public broadcasters to provide adequate balance of scientific opinions has done a disservice to the public.
The BMJ inquiry series also provides peer reviewed papers highlighting failures of government policy and media reporting.
