Some news networks were forced to adhere to the government’s pandemic narratives or risk serious consequences
by Kyle Becker, Trending Politics, March 28, 2022
The Covid pandemic response beginning in 2020 was one of the most sweeping cases of media propaganda in world history. Governments not only lied to the masses (“15 days to slow the spread,” e.g.) and made dubious claims based on poor evidence (“mask up” to end the pandemic), but it censored even civilians for doubting the mainstream narrative.
Now, a former news executive at international network Sky News, as well as a veteran of ITV, has come forward to reveal what news audiences have only previously been able to surmise: Some news networks must have been ordered to adhere to the government’s pandemic narratives or risk serious consequences (such as losing broadcasting licenses and other reprisals).
Mark Sharman revealed his disturbing insights into the astoundingly coordinated media coverage of the Covid pandemic in a sit-down interview on British channel GBN’s “The Lockdown Inquiry” with host Dan Wootton.
“I know this is quite a big deal for you to come out from behind the camera where you’ve been an executive in the industry for so long,” Wootton began. “But I know you want to do it because you have been so disturbed by the coverage of many of your former colleagues, the organizations that you to work for over the course of the pandemic. So can you just start by explaining this chilling warning that Ofcomgave near the start of the pandemic and how you think that may have impacted the coverage?”
“I, well, I definitely think it impacted, it’s not so much an Ofcom regulation,” Sharman said. “It was advice or a warning actually.’
“Like a little bulletin, wasn’t it?” Wootton said.
“Yeah,” Sharman said. “It was a warning to basically say, ‘do not question the official government line.’ Now to be fair to them, they said, you can have opposition voices on, but you must present as ‘must intervene’ if there’s any danger of harmful or misinformation.”
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“So did that essentially turn presenters at the BBC, Sky News into, essentially, representatives of the government?” Wootton asked.
“I think it did,” Sharman answeed. “Not just on-air talent. I think, I think that warning affected all broadcasters. Most of the major broadcasters followed it and actually it was only the one or two little smaller ones who wouldn’t have that backup power who got caught.”
“I mean, a field community radio was censored for putting something out,” he added. “But actually, I think what it’s led to, I think it’s created an environment which will lead to the biggest assault on freedom of speech and democracy I’ve known in my lifetime. I’ve never seen a warning from Ofcom like that. I’ve never seen the broadcasters toe the line and rather than question the government, they became cheerleaders for the government.”
“And why, Mark, why?” Wootton pressed. “That is the question I always ask myself because surely the job of the BBC, ITV News, Sky News to have, you know, the places where you used to work, surely, the first job as a journalist is to question the government and to question the official narrative. So why did they not do that? When it came to lockdown in process.”
“It is the first job,” Sharman responded. “I mean, we’ve all been trained to ask, give both sides of a story and let the viewer decide. But clearly all the way through the pandemic, only one side of the story was given and the media, actually broadcasters and newspapers, picked up the thought that had been created by these behavioral psychologists and created this fear. The broadcasters picked it up with relish and that they really were spreaders of panic and fear.”
“They bought into the propaganda,” Wootton remarked.
“They did, they bought absolutely into the propaganda,” Sharman replied. “And I think it was very dangerous, but I think you have to probably look beyond Ofcom and beyond this country, because as you said this was a worldwide lockstep occurrence. And in parallel with media, you had big tech, new media who were censoring everything.”
In December, scientists who were implemental in spreading Covid hysteria around the globe –nearly as fast as the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself – came forward to express regret for furthering the ‘totalitarian’ agenda.
The members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour, a group of British scientists, confessed that public health authorities were pursuing an agenda to control populations with fear.
“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behaviour during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was ‘unethical’ and ‘totalitarian’,” the Telegraph reported.
“Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) expressed regret about the tactics in a new book about the role of psychology in the Government’s Covid-19 response,” the report noted.
One scientist warned that “people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise… We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in.”
In the United States, this process may have been different than what was experienced in the U.K. The U.S. government paid millions of dollars to media outlets to run ads that pushed the desired narrative. But the chilling effect on free speech was essentially the same.
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