bramling
Veteran Member
It is probably unofficial, but I cannot escape the conclusion that this country has media censorship (or at the very least obvious bias) going full tilt over this Covid episode.
Has anyone else noticed that you rarely hear anyone on the media stating they think this lockdown and social distancing is all an overreaction and an unwarranted infringement of people's liberty which is probably doing more harm than good anyway ? Whether you agree with that statement or not is not the point, the fact is that many people do think that but their views are not heard.
The requirement for face masks in shops was the most obvious example. When it was announced the BBC had a load of vox pops on their news channels, all said they thought it a good idea and/or had no real problem with it. Nobody said they were really not happy about it and did not want to do it. Again, it doesn't matter if you agree with that or not, but the fact is many people (at least half the people I know) think that, but it is not reported.
Every time they have an "expert" on I'm screaming at the radio "ask them some difficult questions" (like why the death rate kept dropping right through the winding down of the lockdown), but they never do. Every thing they say is just accepted as indisputable fact despite the fact they've been wrong many times in their pessimistic forecasts. In fact I sent the BBC PM programme a list of questions to ask and not only did they not reply they never even acknowledged my E mail despite me asking for a read receipt.
When the death rate (for all causes dropped below the long term average in June it should have been lead item on the news, but it was hardly mentioned !
I've seen on some forums people stating provable facts (with links to the evidence ! ) in posts but the posts being deleted "for not taking the threat of this virus as seriously as we should be doing".
There was a slight relaxation of all this a month or two back (Matthew Parris, he's a big critic of this lockdown policy was on the radio) but since then we've reverted to full throttle censorship or, at the absolute least, bias.
It's worrying but the do say the first casualty of war is the truth.
Not sure it's censorship, just a function of our increasingly useless media. Whatever one's views on what should or shouldn't be being done, there really should have been some sharp scrutiny, especially towards the politicians, to expose the rationale behind their decisions.
The whole thing is a shower, we have a government who is completely clueless on detail ,an opposition who seem to be simply going through the motions (though to give a modicum of defence to Starmer being leader of the opposition is an incredibly difficult tightrope at this moment), and a media who just don't seem able to cut through.
Much as I despise her for other reasons, Sturgeon has at least demonstrated accountability through this, and has taken the trouble to explain the rationale behind her decisions. The Scottish news conferences do seem to have been slightly more effective in achieving that.