Part 3 – Beware Bad Actors
In parts 1 & 2 I’ve shown two things. Firstly, an alarming majority of people hold the view that a perfect solution exists to Covid. Secondly, that this mass delusion has distorted and dictated our response to Covid resulting in an outcome that is a catastrophe by any objective measure. An outcome that has cost a staggering amount and will almost certainly kill more than the virus ever could globally. Money wasted that could have been used to more effectively combat a plethora of existing global issues more real and deadly than Covid.
How can this be true though? Shouldn’t the media be telling us what is really happening? Why is the Government choosing to do things that are wrong? Why is no opposition party making these arguments? After all wouldn’t they want to demonstrate the failure of Government? Don’t they want to do the right thing?
Perfectly legitimate questions you may think. Except each one assumes that what’s in your interest – to be confronted with the truth – is in their interest too. But rarely in life is the truth the best way to achieve a desired outcome.
Does it really need to be said that politicians will be economic with the truth to win your vote? Do you think journalism is about the noble pursuit of the truth or ratings that generate prestige, sales and advertising revenues that pay salaries? Sure, if you can tell the truth and achieve your primary goal then great. But it rarely is the case.
The other problem is that if we feel entitled to realities that don’t exist we don’t want to hear truths that contradict it. So why would anyone bother trying to tell people the truth who simply don’t want to hear it? Not only do they not want to hear it but they they actively seek to ensure they don’t too.
It is no coincidence the term ‘fake news’ has become widely used by people and organisations across the political spectrum. It is deployed to by people to dismiss ‘news’ that contradicts or harms their own position. The inconvenient truths. It rarely is said to identify actual falsehoods.
Not forgetting that if this fails people then deploy outrage next. Outrage that usually abandons the subject at hand and simply becomes personal slurs and attacks against those sharing evidence or ideas they would prefer rather not exist. Not because the facts don’t support their existence. They just think if they scream loud enough the facts will go away and that somehow will make their own position true. It never can. But when does that stop people?
Therefore we find ourselves in a peculiar time. Not content with the opportunity normally afforded to those who are economic with the truth we actually increased the incentive to be less truthful. Today anyone who tries to confront us with truths we don’t want to hear risk their career and reputation. So why risk it? Why take on this herculean battle?
Does that mean they are lying? Not quite. It’s worse. They choose to tell you only part of the truth. It is what John Stuart Mill identified long ago as the “formidable evil”.
When it came to the truth it is “not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend to only one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.”
Governments have embarked on a huge series of initiatives at vast cost that the evidence would suggest are in contradiction to significant scientific theory. To be seen to act, even if wrong, is far better than to admit the acts are unlikely to work.
Looking good really does matter more than doing good. Especially when you’ve got to consider your electoral prospects. It’s easier to play along than try and persuade us otherwise. Even more so when across the world other politicians are ducking the challenge too. Safety in numbers. ‘Build back better’ has been adopted almost universally not because of a grand conspiracy but rather to address a common need. They now need to sell the idea that all of what has happened is actually worthwhile. They want to cover their tracks.
I have some sympathy with the U.K. government who initially did follow the science. However, as we will come to see the Opposition and media made their position unsustainable. At which point they ducked the battle for the truth.
For example, the Flu pandemic planning (which absolutely applies to Covid given its nature is very similar in terms of transmission vectors and level of infectiousness) stated in the event of an outbreak it
“almost certainly will not be possible to contain or eradicate a new virus in its country of origin or on arrival in the UK. The expectation must be that the virus will inevitably spread and that any local measures taken to disrupt or reduce the spread are likely to have very limited or partial success at a national level and cannot be relied on as a way to ‘buy time’.”
It explicitly recognised that as a nation our best approach would demand we balanced our health and economic outcomes. This would mean “preparing to cope with the possibility of significant numbers of additional deaths” and “promoting a return to normality and restoration of disrupted services at the earliest opportunity”.
Further, our response would be governed by principles of precautionary, proportionality and flexibility. Our national lockdowns fail each test. It wasn’t precautionary – we waited as we knew the virus couldn’t be contained. It wasn’t proportional as it applied to all groups. Most under 65 need not have incurred it. And it wasn’t flexible. Twice we have locked down nationally despite some regions having almost no outbreak to contain.
You can read it yourself here. The science had a considered plan. Not perfect by any means. Just a best worst option. We deviated from it because we didn’t like it.
While I can understand why they did deviate I cannot forgive it. I will openly admit I voted for Boris in December. However, for his failure to do the right thing and confront us with the truth I hold him personally responsible.
As PM he has enacted sweeping restrictions of our liberty and squandered vast sums of our money because it was easier to do it than be a leader. The principle of doing what was right was quickly abandoned in the name of political calculation.
When we needed to be told it required ‘blood, sweat and tears’ we were told to believe in fairy tales that will cause us harm. It is unforgivable.
When you hold the levers of power in such momentous times of crisis it is unacceptable to choose political calculation over making the case for the difficult but best path. Duty to people must come first.
However, to think it is a failure of just Government is to overlook the role of the Opposition. Rather than help the government be frank with the truth they have helped increase the cost of pursuing it. Equally unforgivable.
At each and every turn they have helped further the idea in the minds of the public that simple solutions were at hand to solve this problem when they were not.
They have calculated it is in their interest to indulge this idea as it allows them to present every failure to achieve this perfect reality as a consequence of incompetence on behalf of the Government. If only they were in power it wouldn’t have been so. But of course. The French call such a ruse as “Playing the angel”. You’re being played.
Fix test and trace, too slow to lockdown, where is the app, the jobs needlessly lost. The list goes on. Did anyone tell you that mass testing is a huge experiment of debatable merit? Even in the face of a pandemic? Did anyone tell you lockdowns aren’t sensible (even now the view of the WHO)? Contract tracing is fine for sexual diseases where you have limited partners but it’s not great for controlling a highly infectious disease you can pass to a stranger on the bus.
The European Centre of Disease Control states in an update paper about mass-testing the science is far from clear. In a section titled ‘knowledge gaps’ it states the following.
“Future assessment studies of large-scale testing are needed to evaluate the yield of the efforts and to calculate the cost effectiveness of this approach compared to other measures”
They don’t know if mass testing is sensible as a policy. That’s a pretty big unknown wouldn’t you say? It goes even further.
“Information detailing population-wide testing strategies for SARS-COV-2 is largely missing from the peer- reviewed literature, meaning that the evidence available to guide countries in their decision-making is limited.”
The ECDC, the expert body in the EU with disease control in its remit, is unable to guide nations. But Keir Starmer and Labour know how it all works. And perfectly. Which do you think is closer to the truth? Shouldn’t that matter?
You can read the briefing here.
This isn’t unique to Labour. It’s commonplace. Joe Biden happily played the angel in the election campaign. Openly suggesting to Americans that the incompetence of President Trump underpinned the outcome in the US not the nature of the virus and the complex problem it presents. He won’t admit there is a real choice between jobs, cases and potential deaths. Nor will Labour.
They just pretend it should never have got to where we face this choice. They indulge our collective delusion because it suits them to.
If our politicians don’t see fit to confront us with the truth then surely our media would want to? Sadly not.
Nothing more perfectly sums up how compromised journalism is than the story this week about Kay Burley’s 60th Birthday Party. It is reported that 4 journalists, two in extremely prominent on screen roles, openly broke Covid restrictions in the name of a good time. Not even they it seems believe their own narrative. Narratives they have help push as ‘news’.
Let’s be clear. They didn’t accidentally break the rules. They knowingly did so. Not because they believe they operate to different rules to the rest of us, but because they don’t believe the merit of them. Like many other sceptics all they have done is made a perfectly rational calculation in their own minds that they don’t think the restrictions are worth following as they perceive the risk of Covid to themselves as extremely low. Which I would agree it is. I don’t think that means they should lose their jobs. The fact they broke the restrictions is not what is really wrong here.
They should lose their jobs because they have not acted as journalists. Instead of questioning the value of restrictions they themselves don’t plainly agree with they have done the opposite. They have spent months insisting on the value of these restrictions and ruthlessly sought to hold to account anyone who broke them. Activism over journalism. Fiction over fact.
Sky News says in its mission statement that its output is “made by people who dare to challenge. Made for people who want clarity in an uncertain world”. One of their core values is that they “earn trust by behaving with integrity”.
For Kay Burley et al they’ve clearly dared to challenge their own news in private not in public, they have not sought clarity but instead helped sow confusion and this is about as far from behaving with integrity as it is possible to get. They’ve said one thing, presented it as the news, and did another.
That Sky News does not even today (Wednesday 9th December) have a prominent story reporting this breach by its own staff and what is being done is another gross failure in journalism. They don’t want to report the news about themselves. Hardly transparent.
(It pains me to write the above. I have worked on the Sky News Business Desk, I have worked closely with the senior management in my capacity as the Finance Manager to Sky News. They ordinarily do live up to their mission statement and provide high quality news output with passion and a real quality of care. However, on this particular occasion they appear to have dropped the ball.)
The problems Covid has exposed in journalism are not new. Firstly, too much journalism is second hand information passed to journalists by those in power. As we have seen they have their own interest at heart. But a simple conflict exists for journalists who receive this information. If they interrogate it or are too critical of their sources in public, on this or other matters, they risk not receiving future ‘news’. It’s an unhealthy relationship dynamic.
Secondly, the nature of 24hr coverage doesn’t lend itself well to informed journalism. It’s a fast food model and Covid doesn’t fit. It is too complex for it. Newsrooms were woefully unable to adapt to it too as for years genuine investigative journalism and the skills it demands have been whittled away. Real journalism costs money and takes time. In its place are cheaper generic ‘reporters’ who lack any expertise and cover a multitude of stories, sometimes even on the same day. They don’t have time to get to grips with crucial facts, nuance or debate.
Ordinarily, a story only lives for a day or so and this model serves it well. Or at least the story doesn’t persist for long enough for you the public to start seeing how little they actually know. Not so with Covid.
When you reflect on the coverage you can see how it has evolved as their own understanding of the situation did. They’ve learnt on the job. But that means they didn’t know enough at the start but they pretended they did. That’s the problem. The number of things you’ve been told that were certainties but turned out to be anything but.
Sweden was mad. It wasn’t an option worth considering or dictating. It’s not looking so clear now. Masks don’t work but now they do. Ventilator supply was going to be a total crisis but wasn’t. Schools needed to be shut immediately. Then why weren’t they open? Testing capacity needed to be 100k a day and could the government do it? It’s over 300k now and the difference is? Lockdown was too late and that wasn’t for debate. Now we ask first have they considered the cost in jobs before they commit to another?
Not forgetting the debate about herd immunity. Herd immunity is an outcome not a method. We are seeking herd immunity via vaccination right now. Yet even this simple concept was totally misreported.
Too slowly nuance and debate has emerged. That is to our detriment. We needed these debates and this level of honesty at the start of the crisis not towards the end.
In today’s media landscape it feels more often than not like the News takes a position of deliberate opposition to power for the sake of it. It makes for better sales and bigger audiences than to tell the truth. When the facts don’t justify it they do it anyway.
That isn’t what holding power to account means. It demands the pursuit of the truth, which means admitting that those in power can be doing the right thing too. Or at least admitting what they are doing is not necessarily wrong and and perfectly valid given different perspectives exist.
This isn’t to say all journalism is rotten. Far from it. Increasingly real journalists are breaking out of the models that don’t best serve the pursuit of truth through fair and honest debate. They are moving direct to consumer with their own blogs or podcasts.
Some publications and channels are realising that a significant number of people are prepared to pay a premium to read, watch and listen to real news. News they accept is often complicated, uncertain, nuanced and substantial in the detail you need to comprehend to understand it.
The problem though is that too few do want the truth as I’ve explained. For as long as this remains the case, whether it’s politicians or the mainstream media, it serves them best to follow what Elliot Carver (the media mogul in the Bond film Tomorrow UNever Dies) knew only too well. “Give the people what they want”.
One reply on “The Age of Entitlement – Part 3”
We have largely been cordoned into not wanting the truth. Still many cultures exist where truth is a worshipped treasure. The western nations have been carefully misguided from greater truths in science and philosophy and this ‘health crisis’ nonsense is the epitomy of that. Governments have never followed the truth in this scamdemic. From the very beginning they have followed a completely ulterior motive to ‘keeping people safe’. No decision yet made has anything to do with a pandemic. Every procedure has been a psychological mind game. And its working. See Albert Biderman’s Chart and https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/this-is-the-psychological-side-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-that-were-ignoring/