Articles of Inquiry: The Role of Media

The strange way in which Big Media and Big Tech fused with government to become propaganda organs for lockdowns and mandates, censoring independent and dissenting voices along the way.

Two months ago, Brownstone Institute assembled top media experts, economists, and public health scientists to examine what a template for investigation might look like in the coming months and years. The purpose: to get to the bottom of the dramatic policy actions that cause so much wreckage of free speech, the economy, and to traditional public health practices. 

The first report is now issued: Articles of Inquiry: The Role of Media. It is linked here for distribution to all interested parties. It is just a beginning but what it addresses concerns the strange way in which Big Media and Big Tech fused with government to become propaganda organs for lockdowns and mandates, censoring independent and dissenting voices along the way. 

This is the first of three reports Brownstone will issue in time. 

In addition, here is some content from this week:

Covid Death Comes to New Zealand BY WILL JONES. Once held up as evidence that it is possible to suppress the virus, New Zealand’s swift response to the pandemic and its geographic isolation allowed it to escape the wrath of the pandemic.

Will Rochelle Walensky Correct Her Mistake? BY PAUL ELIAS ALEXANDER. The concern is that the CDC Director actually referred to this study and pointed to the incorrect initial data, as she lobbied (FDA etc.) for the vaccination of children under 5 years of age (in meetings and a reported press briefing). 

The US President Finally Gets Covid  BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. Despite every mandate, closure, and imposition – despite the destruction of rights, liberties, and law – the virus would have its way. No class would be protected. No profession was immune. No amount of power or pomp would make a difference. Covid would come for everyone. 

Despite Total Collapse, Sri Lanka Brags of Zero Covid Deaths BY LIAM COSGROVE. Bad governance is to blame (or too much governance), namely an ill-advised fertilizer ban which stoked a severe food shortage and export drought. Combined with the debt servicing pains as central banks around the globe tighten policy, it’s nothing short of a disaster.

As Predicted, Masks are Coming Back BY IAN MILLER. It’s even more important now to continue to document how useless masking is at preventing the spread of COVID. The longer institutional misinformation goes unchecked, the more ingrained it becomes in the minds of decision-makers across the country.

The Talented Mr. Pottinger: The US Intelligence Agent Who Pushed Lockdowns BY MICHAEL SENGER. Pottinger may have simply been overly-trusting of his sources, thinking they were the little people in China trying to help their American friends. But why did Pottinger push so hard for sweeping Chinese policies like mask mandates that were far outside his field of expertise? Why did he so often breach protocol? Why seek out and appoint Deborah Birx?

The Case Against the Physician Gag Order BY AARON KHERIATY. Advances in science and medicine typically occur when doctors and scientists challenge conventional thinking or settled opinion. Fixating any current medical consensus as “unassailable” by physicians will stifle medical and scientific progress.

Are We Free By Right or Not? BY DAVID BELL. Fundamentally, human rights cannot be dependent on compliance with public health officials. Or politicians. Or the whims of philanthropists and their favorite corporations. These rights must be an intrinsic part of being human, irrespective of the circumstance, irrespective of age, gender, parentage, wealth, or health status. Or we are, indeed, just complex chemical constructs with no real intrinsic value. Society, and each individual, must decide.

Short-term Fatality Rate in Israel of a Third Dose BY EYAL SHAHAR. A vaccine with a mortality rate on such a scale is not “safe” – at least according to public health standards that had been applied to the flu vaccine and other vaccines. Nor is it “safe” according to estimates of serious adverse events.

The 1968-69 “Hong Kong Flu” Pandemic Revisited BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. What happened between then and now? Was there some kind of lost knowledge, as happened with scurvy, when we once had sophistication and then the knowledge was lost and had to be re-found? For COVID-19, we reverted to medieval-style understandings and policies, even in the 21st century, and at the urging of the media and myopic advice from governments. It’s all very strange. And it cries out for answers.

Djokovic and the US Open: Let Him Play BY RAMESH THAKUR. The international humiliation inflicted so publicly on Djokovic in pursuit of vaccine apartheid was morally corrupt. It lacked both scientific justification and hard data in support. It indulged a government’s every illiberal instinct to control information and bully people into compliance. 

The Never Ending Medical Emergency BY ROBERT MALONE. Is this medical emergency justified, or does it reflect yet more mis- dis- and mal-information from the HHS Administrative state acting in coordination with corporate media to propagate Fearporn?

The Culpability of the New York Times: Then and Now BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. The whole sorry episode speaks to a much larger and more entrenched problem: the symbiotic relationship between Big Media and the administrative state. It’s the permanent bureaucracy that serves the journalists’ primary and most credible source material. The higher the journalist or the bureaucrat rises in the profession, the fatter the rolodex grows on both ends. They maintain constant communication, as the FOIA’d emails about the pandemic have repeatedly shown. 

The Lockdowns Unearthed American Cultural Rot BY MARK OSHINSKIE. Many Americans believed the government because, well, they were the government, and were therefore official and legitimate. Because bureaucrats wore business attire— plus scarves—and stood behind seal-bearing podiums, people thought the bureaucrats wouldn’t lie; but they did lie, repeatedly. The Faucist clown show continues, with the Misinformer-in-Chief now ludicrously crusading against “misinformation,” at least when he’s not too sick—after being quadruple-jabbed and double-Paxlovid-ed—to appear in public. 

Dr. Birx Praises Herself While Revealing Ignorance, Treachery, and Deceit BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER. The story of the lockdowns is a tale of Biblical proportions, at once evil and desperately sad and tragic, a story of power, scientific failure, intellectual insularity and insanity, outrageous arrogance, feudalistic impulses, mass delusion, plus political treachery and conspiracy. It is real-life horror for the ages, a tale of how the land of the free became a despotic hellscape so quickly and unexpectedly. Birx was at the center of it, confirming all of your worst fears.

Serious Side Effects Exceed the Risk of Hospitalization with COVID-19 in the Swedish Population BY SVEN ROMÁN.  In the interests of public health, we implore the authorities to conduct a fully transparent and independent expert review of the available data to provide accurate morbidity, mortality and risk-benefit analyses.

The Speakeasy Churches of 2020  BY CHRISTINE BLACK. They were meeting; I did not have to wear a mask. They even had Bible study on Wednesday nights, where I could sit with others, all unmasked, and listen to talk of Biblical stories and themes that had sustained people for centuries – stories of mercy and perseverance, of holding onto hope in terrible times, when such hope seemed impossible; stories of miracles arriving through the darkness.