Mind Control

Why we urgently need to reconsider our approach to “news”

Montage by the author

On the morning of 28th January 2021, British people woke to find every newspaper and online news site pretending that the European Union was trying to “steal” supplies of “British” SARS-COV2 vaccine. While this absurd pseudo-nationalist post-Brexit sensationalism was eminently predictable by anyone with an IQ larger than their hat size, it is nevertheless extremely effective and thus extremely toxic.

Ironically, the truth — as is so often the case these days — is the opposite of what is presented in the news media. In reality it was the British who, a couple of weeks ago, were begging the EU to safeguard deliveries of the Pfizer vaccine, which is manufactured at Pfizer’s Puurs site in Belgium. The EU, true to its principles, confirmed that vaccines bought in advance by the UK government would indeed be delivered to the UK as intended. At no time has the EU sought to propose that vaccines intended for the UK be redirected to EU member states instead, despite how appallingly the British have behaved throughout the Brexit process.

But who in the UK is going to make the slightest effort to look at the publicly available records that flatly contradict the media claims when there’s a nice juice headline to believe instead? And because all the UK news organizations are pushing the same lie, it therefore must be true! So why bother looking for mere facts?

These are the same media organizations that reliably repeated Brexiteer lies about £350 million per week going to Europe instead of to the British National Health Service, as well as countless other lies about how easy Brexit would be and how the giant EU would automatically capitulate to the totally unrealistic demands of the minnow UK. Incredibly, the British news media is still regarded by many as moderately reliable — which is little different from believing that Правда and Известия are moderately reliable sources of information also. I suspect we’re not far off from the day when the two Kremlin-controlled newspapers will in fact be more reliable than British rags.

Perhaps UK newspapers should consolidate and then rebrand as The Daily Scrotum, because all they contain is bollocks.