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The corporate media manufactures consent for the sins of the owning class. To truly control a narrative the right news must be created to order. Yesterday provided the perfect illumination of how this all works.
A BBC ‘Panorama’ documentary detailed the lies and incompetence behind the PPE scandal in the UK. The conclusions were devastating:
No gowns, visors, swabs or body bags were in the government’s pandemic stockpile when Covid-19 reached the UK – none. With breathtaking chutzpah, Dr Jenny Harries had previously scolded journalists from her pulpit at the government’s daily sermon, stating that the UK:
“Has been an international exemplar in preparedness”
The government ignored warnings from its own advisers to buy missing equipment and suppressed the findings of Operation Cygnus.
The committee that advises the government on pandemics (Nervtag) warned about the lack of gowns in June 2019 but nothing was ordered.
Millions of FFP3 respirator masks are unaccounted for and the government refuses to explain why. Have they been shipped abroad? ‘Use by’ dates were falsified on masks shipped to hospitals.
Unable to meet statutory requirements, the government removed Covid-19 from its list of serious diseases and amended its guidelines to reflect the stock they had. Dr Jenny Harries (a chief supplier of bromide for the Tories) said this followed WHO guidelines: but that this was only true because the UK now stood as a global pariah by de-listing Covid-19 as a serious disease.
Panorama showed that Matt Hancock (the Swiss Tony of healthcare) was lying repeatedly about the amount of PPE it had delivered and lying when it said the real problems were logistical (it’s not hard to deliver a stockpile of zero gowns).
Hundreds of UK PPE companies approached the government but were either rebuffed or ignored: they are now sending PPE abroad.
All this scandal and incompetence has cost lives: over 100 NHS staff are now dead and the situation continues to deteriorate.
This death toll pales beside the loss of life in care homes, as government policy and the lack of PPE has killed care workers and thousands of residents.
In any sane society this litany of lies, incompetence and death would bring down the government. It would prompt a firestorm of media criticism and public outrage. The superb Jonathon Cook said after Panorama was broadcast:
“The wrath about to be unleashed on the BBC [from the government] is going to be terrifying to behold.”
But there was no need for the government to unleash its wrath against Panorama because… the corporate media quietly buried the story for them.
The media silence about this Panorama documentary was deafening. The news blackout was so total that visitors to Sodium Haze’s Facebook page had no idea that the documentary had even aired!
Now contrast that with another episode of Panorama: the target being Jeremy Corbyn and manufactured smears of antisemitism. Coverage of this was not hard to find! It was the lead on BBC News and all the mainstream media portals and was subsequently referred to endlessly. You can view just a very small selection of it: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
This is how the game is played folks. When the establishment wants to get rid of a political opponent, the corporate media manufactures lies and then amplifies them in a feeding frenzy of hatred.
The faux distress splashed all over the media about antisemitism in the Labour movement was propagated by people who knew it was a lie. Contrast that urgency and mendacious shock/horror with their indifference about a PPE scandal that has left thousands dead.
How can we explain this grotesque disparity – this tale of two Panoramas? The answer is simple: the UK is a dictatorship in which control is maintained by the establishment media. The role of the modern day ‘journalist’ is not to inform but to hypnotize; not to seek truth but to hide it. Corporate hacks do not hold the powerful to account, they protect them – from you.
Waiting for the mainstream media to develop some zest for the truth is a long shot to put it mildly. If the deaths of 130,000+ from austerity didn’t motivate them, then why would a football stadium full of dead bodies from Covid-19? You shouldn’t put up with it though – demand better and hold our amoral and dysfunctional media to account.
Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
An excellent analysis that exposes the fact that we are witnessing a sophisticated PR operation that has been going on ever since the Labour Party dared to elect a Leader who they knew could change the status quo. Now they can relax as the present Leader will not threaten the cosy relationship between the Conservative Establishment and the main stream media as illustrated by his present stand on the NHS personal equipment shambles that has led to many needless deaths. Starmer should be knocking hell out of this inept arrogant government for wasting precious weeks not offering support from the sidelines.