Lie Number 4 – The Media represents our interests

Our media is regurgitative not investigative.
There is an astonishing uniformity in the reporting by our journalists; in the terms they use and don’t use, the questions they ask and don’t ask.

An excellent example is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and its role in reporting events surrounding Covid-19. In the last few days, a major public revolt in Melbourne over lockdowns and looming mandatory vaccinations brought people out into the street.

The ABC used its considerable resources, radio, television and online media to “flood the zone” and made sure we drew the right conclusions.

We were told that these events were ultimately nothing more than adolescent outbursts from right wing nutters. This report from evening program “The Drum” is an excellent example of the ABC at work.

The Drum is the sort of program that thinks the class war will be won when transsexuals can choose their own toilets. There is no subject too important for it to trivialise.

Let’s start by looking at the contributions of four guests: a public relations flak, a GP, an academic and a politician who can’t take a hint.

Toby the Hatchet Man

It was Toby Ralph that Bill Hicks was thinking of when he asked who in the audience worked in advertising or marketing. It seems he is on the celebrity speaker circuit which must be a struggle in the age of Zoom. In the clip above, Ralph made reference to a “punch the horse” incident. It was a media lie similar to the recent Oklahoma hospital Ivermectin beatup.

Neither event happened but in media terms it did. You can’t unremember something and people who didn’t hang around to find the truth still think a Sydney protester punched a police horse.

Watch the skill with which Ralph moves from people with valid concerns to “It’s not a freedom march. It’s a march of morons….to see these idiots breaking and extending the lockdowns is endlessly frustrating”. Toby’s patrician utterances carry the dank odour of entrenched privilege

Doctor, what happens after isolate?

We then moved to Doctor Mariam Tokhi from Victoria who picked up the theme remarkably quickly.

She told us: “We’ve been working so hard to protect people and save lives and it feels like these riots are really self-centred acts of rebellion and the people who do this sort of thing are going to end up killing other people”.

Great, doctor, tell us about the treatment policy you’ve introduced to your practice? What you actually do for Covid infected patients would be a great start. Do you give them Vitamin C or D? Anything?

If you follow NSW health practice, you wouldn’t have much to do at all other than flick the gasping patient an occasional Panadol as they seek to abate flaring inflammation before rushing to the nearest ICU. This policy has killed people in New South Wales. Tell us about Victoria.

Your website suggests a deep concern for people’s mental health. How was this reflected in your judgmental cameo on The Drum? Doctor Mariam was on surer ground when she reflected on the counter-intuitive notion of “showing love for each other by staying apart and wearing a mask”.

That’s right, none of it makes any sense. And judging people as “adolescents” without taking the time to learn their concerns makes even less.

Jenna on Industrial Relations

Next we entered the genteel world of Doctor Jenna Price where the appearance of a needle is more terrifying than what is in them. Jenna does some sort of research at ANU. We’d tell you more but her profile page is discreet.

We learned from her what a wonderful job our union leaders like Sally “Sellout” McManus are doing. This is despite the fact it was the betrayal of these union leaders, especially John Setka, that drew thousands of construction workers onto the street on Monday and Tuesday.

This was the leadership whose energetic management team consulted with members on Monday and ultimately repelled their challenge.

Jenna wants union leaders doing what they are already doing which is calling for people to be injected. They are right on track. Its the rank and file that’s the trouble. You know, the people who pay the money for union management to represent their interests.

Thanks, Jenna. She seems to miss that these same leaders have done deals with governments to make injections mandatory without consulting members. This might pass for unionism in Dr Price’s gentrified Chippendale but it is a long way from what I grew up understanding it to be in working class Narwee.

This might pass for unionism in Dr Price’s gentrified Chippendale but it is a long way from what I grew up understanding it to be in working class Narwee.

Jenna rounded off by attacking the Liberal Party for allowing dissenters in its ranks to speak up. The “nice” left doesn’t like the Liberal Party. They prefer Labor and the Greens. Labor’s only differentiation from the Libs is in wanting us locked down longer, sooner and vaccinated faster. The Greens are invisible.

Yes, this is the so-called left in Australia. No, you don’t get away with calling them dumb. That won’t do. Venal is a better description.

The generous and rounded assessment of this week’s protest was presided over by the delightful Julia Baird, the Queen of Identity Politics. This cute little program solves 7 or 8 of the world’s problems every night without challenging the economics or any of part of the power structure. It is truly a miracle. This is our ABC.

Meet Patricia Karvelas – the ABC’s attack dog

Another of its stars is ex-Murdoch product Patricia Karvelas who runs the 4pm “Afternoon Briefing”. If you can’t see Patricia’s sneer you can hear it. Whereas people like Julia Baird find working class people’s misfortune an opportunity for superficial voyeuristic empathy, Patricia is determined to keep them in their place.

Any action that might challenge the natural order of things gets the full pejorative treatment. She defends the right of the powerful to dismiss the quibbling of the great unwashed. Here we contrast Julia’s relative restraint to Patricia’s love of punching down.

In this clip, we meet long time reporter Ben Knight. Now, while ABC reporters have always been pretty middle class comfortable, even they have had to make adaptations to the ferocity these times demand. Ben seems to have achieved this well enough in describing the restraint police had shown the protesters. This was about an hour before they shot them with rubber bullets and finished arresting 200 of them.

We also learn Melbourne is to be a no-fly zone until the end of the week. This is the sort of thing the US military installs in countries. This allows the US to bomb these people without interference from local planes. Here, we assume it is to stop people filming from the air. Presumably, the ABC can get footage directly from the police. That should guarantee balance. Yet, I wouldn’t rule out bombing.

By chasing people to the Shrine of Remembrance, police gave Patricia and Ben the opportunity to tut, tut over the desecration of this sacred Australian symbol. This is despite the fact that the sympathy of any Australian soldier worthy of the name should have been with the protesters.

The list of demands below turned up regularly throughout this week’s protests and seems to have come from the construction workers. Do you think someone in media might have wanted to discuss its content? Not our media. These protesters must be depicted as inhuman, controlled by extreme right wing forces and in collaboration with the devil.

The game of ridiculing dissent continued throughout the program with control over the instruments of torture handed on to Sharon Lewin of the Doherty Institute. For some reason, Karvelas thought it was a good idea to ask an expert in diseases what she thought of the protests.

She didn’t like them: “I really understand Melburnians’ frustration but this is not the way to deal with frustration”. Great, Sharon, we’re getting somewhere. How should we deal with it? All the while Patricia coached her guest: “Kick here and now here”. Sadly, we lost Sharon’s unique insight.

We’ll close this segment with one last guest. Amanda Stoker is a Liberal Party member who can’t follow a script. Patricia repeatedly invited her to lament the “desecration of a public symbol” by protesters gathering at the Shrine. Cue after cue she missed.

After the interview, someone in Stoker’s office must have told her you slipped up big time there. Back she came and the kicking protesters thought they’d escaped was duly delivered.

Typically, guest after guest on Patricia’s show is invited to agree with her and respond to her invitations to attack the day’s victim. The only break in this is when guests from cosmetically differing political parties are invited to attack each other. Patricia only steps in if a slippering opportunity is overlooked.

That’s our public broadcaster. A similar pattern runs across its huge program offering. No-one breaks script by discussing alternative treatments, as opposed to vaccines, without vomiting over them.

Media diversity? Not in Australia

I don’t mean to ignore the commercial media, it is just that its advertising makes me jumpy. Anyway, many of our media stars drift regularly from commercial to public media flogging the same views without a hint of embarrassment. No-one seems to mind. We are all neoliberals now.

Unlike breakthrough infections from the increasingly familiar failed Pfizer injections, no breakthrough infections of public opinion are evident from either commercial or government outlets. It is as though there is something called the Trusted News Initiative to offer them guidance.

They all use the cute term jab rather than experimental vaccine or potentially dangerous gene therapy. Media doesn’t question whether lockdowns are necessary but whether they should be harder.

As I write, the ABC announces, though vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds only opened up 10 days ago, already 28% have had their first injection. I weep.

As I write, the ABC announces, though vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds only opened up 10 days ago, already 28% have had their first injection. I weep.

Don’t wait to get your vaccine

A few minutes later, another jingle tells me: “Don’t wait to get your vaccine”. Another story tells me there is anger about protesters using the Shrine of Remembrance yesterday. The social control program is relentless.

Media doesn’t ask whether masks are necessary but whether they should be worn in bed or whether they should be extended to toddlers.

They don’t ask whether vaccinations should be made mandatory for you but when.

They don’t ask whether unvaccinated workers should be excluded from worksites but rather how soon.

It is as though our politicians, journalists and celebrity medics live in a big commune presided over by a messianic figure who controls their thoughts and actions. This messiah demands nothing be listened to or watched other than his daily briefings. Our media dutifully broadcasts his dictums to the public on a 24 hour cycle.

Further, these disciples show their love through obedience and seek to inculcate conformity in the larger community.

They reach for a glorious time untouched by conflict, dissent or doubt where all agree that vaccinations will give us the best of all possible worlds. Here, a permanent cycle of vaccines, lockdowns and upgraded passports will lead to freedom. Rights will be usurped by responsibilities. Herd immunity will be supplanted by herd mentality.

A country that likes a bet seems to like a bribe

One of recent drivers of debate in Australia has been the Doherty Report (see Sharon above). This report has proposed that lockdowns continue until 70-80% of adults in the country have been vaccinated. There are even calls for 90%.

This has already resulted in an extraordinary number of rules that will grow exponentially to meet the division between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, the partially vaccinated and the fully vaccinated and eventually the 2 time vaccinated from the 3 time, the 3 time from the 4 and so on ad infinitum

Graded bribes have already been announced and others are being drawn up. Soon children will be allowed to have two identified friends visit but only if their parents are vaccinated. It’s called the “Friends Bubble”.

What makes this even more interesting is there are clinicians and experts who think the Doherty report is more than a little misguided. We simply don’t listen to them. You can read the report and form your own opinion as long as it conforms. Conforms to what? Don’t ask.

The Covid Medical Network offers a wonderful critique of the Doherty report.

Soon children will be allowed to have two identified friends visit but only if their parents are vaccinated.

Gladys Berijiklian’s “Friends Bubble”

Pre-Doherty, we seemed to lack a finishing line. This report has given us a target, a quest, and a justification for coercion.

At last, our society has a purpose. Just as long as we continue to ignore all the issues listed below. Our media will help with that. Meanwhile, the dissenters shrink day by day and are replaced by rolled up sleeves and fading memories of resistance. This will be a bright new world if we can only forget the old.

At Shrines of Remembrance across Australia, prominently displayed, is the message “Lest We Forget”.

In adapting to this new world, we need a new phrase in keeping with the times.

May We Forget

To live comfortably in this new world, there are a number of questions and doubts we will need to set aside. A list is provided here to assist you in this process. May We Forget. May We Forget.

• Do we really need these experimental vaccines?
• How effective are these experimental vaccines?
• How effective are the PCR tests?
• How realistic is the threat Covid-19 poses?
• What is the potential harm from vaccines to children, short and long term?
• How big a threat is Covid-19 to children?
• Is there no alternative to vaccines?
• If they exist, are treatments like Ivermectin dangerous?
• Is there an alternative to test …. isolate?
• What happens after isolate?
• Are the unvaccinated killing people?
• Are there any reports of adverse reactions and deaths from the vaccine?
• Is there any erosion of workers’ rights by vaccine mandates?
• Do these mandates pose any questions for women’s rights?
• Has union management betrayed workers by supporting mandatory vaccination?
• Have current policies destroyed businesses?
• Was that their purpose?
• Have current policies destroyed the economies of towns and suburbs?
• Was that their purpose?
• Have contracts with Big Pharma robbed us of national sovereignty?
• How do we measure lockdown effectiveness?
• What is the impact of current policies on suicides and mental health?
• Are passports designed to bring in a new totalitarian age?
• Is the social division and unrest caused by these policies part of a plan?
• Is growing surveillance by Big Tech part of this plan
• Can we discuss the surveillance / medical interface?
• Are the rights of Big Pharma more important than ours?
• Where are the games being played by behavioural scientists in promoting fear leading us?
• Is growing authoritarianism from all parts of government, notably the police, a good idea?
• Why is Peter Doherty promoting Molnupiravir?
• Why is Peter Doherty attacking Ivermectin?
• Why are we slavishly following the the Doherty Report vaccine thresholds?
• Is the Doherty Report being used as a propaganda tool?
  
  More questions will be added as they come to me or as people offer them.
  
  Warren Ross

This is part 5 of a 6 part series
A new set of lies – Part 1 – What happened to the surplus?
A new set of lies – Part 2 – The vaccines are for your own good?
A new set of lies – Part 3 – There are no safe and effective treatments
A new set of lies – Part 4 – There are no adverse reactions

Warren Ross
email: katwlr@protonmail.com