I’ve written a piece for Mail+ today about one of the overlooked aspects of Dominic Cummings’s testimony. The reason he was able to dominate the news headlines is because the broadcast media hasn’t uncovered most of the scandals he revealed before. We’d heard about a few of these stories, but the sheer depth of incompetence he revealed at the heart of Government last March was genuinely shocking. Okay, he was protected by Parliamentary privilege and it might have been difficult for television journalists to broadcast some of these stories – to accuse Matt Hancock of being a serial liar, for instance – but that’s surely not the main reason we hadn’t heard any of this stuff before. So what is the reason? I think Ofcom has a lot to answer for, as I explain in my article.
On March 27, 2020, four days after Boris announced the first lockdown, Ofcom sent some “important guidance” to its licensees, cautioning them to take “particular care” when broadcasting “statements that seek to question or undermine the advice of public health bodies on the coronavirus, or otherwise undermine people’s trust in the advice of mainstream sources of information about the disease”.
Was this a shocking attempt to muzzle the free press? Three weeks later, the regulator showed it meant business by reprimanding Eamonn Holmes, presenter of ITV’s This Morning, for breaching this guidance. His sin, according to Ofcom, was to say he didn’t think people expressing unorthodox views about the virus – such as the one linking the symptoms of Covid-19 to 5G masts – should be vilified by the mainstream media. He didn’t say he thought that particular conspiracy theory was true. In fact, he described it as “not true and incredibly stupid”. He merely said it ought to be discussed.
For that heresy, Ofcom gave him a stern ticking-off, telling him he “could have undermined people’s trust in the views being expressed by the authorities on the coronavirus”.
After that, we barely heard a squeak of criticism from broadcast journalists about the Government’s handling of the crisis. Whenever a dissenting voice popped up on the BBC, it often felt like a mistake, as though the person had only managed to slip past the official gatekeepers when they were looking the other way.
For instance, on October 14th, 2020, Professor Sunetra Gupta, a prominent critic of the Government’s approach to the pandemic, appeared on BBC News to talk about the local lockdowns that had been imposed in the north of England. It is claimed that just before she went on air, one of the producers told her not to mention the Great Barrington Declaration, a document signed by eminent scientists setting out an alternative policy. Where did that instruction come from?
Another example: At the end of September, Professor Susan Michie, a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, tweeted that she’d been invited on to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to discuss the lockdown on the understanding that the scientists who opposed it would be portrayed as beyond the pale, only for Prof Gupta, who appeared alongside her, to make a compelling, logical argument. The SAGE panjandrum was furious.
“I’d got prior agreement from R4 about the framing of the item,” she harrumphed. “I was assured that this would not be held as an even-handed debate.”
Luckily for the BBC, it managed to avoid being censured by the state regulator for this momentary lapse.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“Why Haven’t We Heard Dominic Cummings’ Shocking Revelations About the Chaos in Downing St Until Now? Was it Because of Ofcom’s 1984-Style Diktat that Muzzled the Broadcast Media?”
I think his intervention was specifically aimed at derailing the plan to end lockdown on June 21st, as well as cementing in the population’s mind the narrative that lockdown was the correct thing to do but it should have been done earlier, and concentrating the debate on “what more the government should have done”. When the real questions are: should lockdown have been done at all, and has any government action anywhere in the world made any positive difference to the progress of the virus?
Why wasn’t his intervention done earlier? Because if it had been done earlier, people would have forgotten about it by the time June 21st came around
https://twitter.com/zoeharcombe/status/1397810018297298946
Spot on! In essence it was a ‘love-in’ for the ‘lockdown luvvies’. Sage must be orgasmic.
I think Item 3) should read “Paving the way for Gove to replace Bojo with another puppet…” I genuinely don’t think that Gove (or Cummings) are comfortable operating in front line politics, but see themselves pulling the strings of a weak and malleable puppet.
I agree – this is just the next set piece to distract the plebs from what is really happening
A liar calls a liar a liar. Nothing to see here. Look over there, a moth!
Ofcom is staffed by several ex-BBC people, the whole thing is incestuous, nepotistic and riven with groupthink mentality.
Agree …
“I’d got prior agreement from R4 about the framing of the item,” she harrumphed. “I was assured that this would not be held as an even-handed debate.”
The authentic voice of the typical SAGE bureaucrat-tyrant! Can’t risk a debate with someone who actually knows what they are talking about. These people just can’t help implicating themselves.
The likes of Cummings, Johnson, Hancock, Gove, Whitty, Vallance, Ferguson and the rotten system that supports them, are an affront to the noble and brave people of this nation.
Enough of your lies, deceit and manipulation – be gone! It is time to start anew.
In March 2020 MP’s passed legislation authorising crimes against humanity
The MP’s are having an inquiry so they can exonerate themselves from the crimes they committed
Yesterday was a farce
Cummings was wheeled out to say the lockdown was justified ipso facto the MP’s is innocent guv
The mad monk in his rush to stab the pig dictator and Ted Bundy engaged in a frenzy of stabbing himself
This will be over when all the MP’s who voted for this illegal legislation are in jail
OFCOM as it is currently constituted is certainly not a body independent of government. This Cummings episode is just a slideshow and confirms what most of us already knew and suspected. An incompetent government and parliament run for the most part by also rans.
If you’re not out-Cumminged quite yet, here’s another take, from outside the MSM bubble:
https://independencedaily.co.uk/your-daily-betrayal-thursday-27th-may-2021-a-very-fine-performance-in-the-political-theatre/
I can believe Cummings statements about incompetence. There’s a fair chance that the politcians who make it to cabinet have enormous egos and grasping hands willing to do anything to climb the greasy pole. The civil service, is a huge bureaucracy of administrators. Doesn’t take much imagination to guess how effective they are!
That the media has effectively been censored from allowing any views that question government policy – by the very body that is supposed to ensure media impartiality and fairness – is shocking and demonstrates how rapidly we are descending to a one party totalitarian state.
“Whenever a dissenting voice popped up on the BBC, it often felt like a mistake, as though the person had only managed to slip past the official gatekeepers when they were looking the other way.”
Indeed, a couple of weeks ago, when the “horrors” of the “Indian Variant” were big news on the BBC “Today” programme, an Indian doctor was interviewed. I was amazed to hear him say (on the BBC) that it was a complete distraction to talk about an “Indian Variant” because it was no worse than any other variant. He went on to say that the real problem was the appalling Indian Health Service that couldn’t even get it together to order sufficient supplies of oxygen. He added that many people were being misdiagnosed, and that it seemed to have become a status symbol for middle class Indians to be admitted to hospital with the “new” virus. This is what was putting a strain on an already struggling health service.
Needless to say the arsehole Nick Robinson was left speechless, and quickly moved on to the next article. I would love to have heard the behind-the-scenes conversations that followed that interview.