The Trusted News Initiative – A BBC led organisation censoring Public Health experts who oppose the official narrative on Covid-19
Fri 10:29 am +01:00, 25 Nov 2022FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH, 2022|
They have all been censored by a repressive media network that most people have never heard of. This network has outrageously conceived and conveyed a “monopoly of legitimate information.”[i]
Exposing this uncanny censorship of eminent voices is especially vital to the fate of children and youth, who are being aggressively targeted for low-benefit, sometimes lethal, inoculations.
Since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, which according to the World Health Organization kills only 0.23% of those infected[ii], enormous fear and panic have been fuelled by the hourly drumbeat of a “one-voice” media.
An international process of editorial standardization has delivered unprecedented news coverage of the monopolized message:
- The pandemic threatens the survival of all humanity
- There is no therapy to cure the sick
- It is necessary to confine the whole population, and
- The delivery will come only from a vaccine.[iii]
Many people have been dismayed by the singularity of this propaganda, and how it could possibly have been achieved. That is the subject of this study.
Introduction: How the TNI Got Started
On June 24, 2021, a report from the Oxford-based Reuters Institute revealed that trust in the US media – ranking last among 46 countries – had descended to an all-time low of 29%. Meanwhile, Canadian trust in media has sunk to 45%.[iv]
This downward spiral can only mean that people are going elsewhere for their news – a trend that has likely been accelerated by the emergence of a shadowy global censorship network called the Trusted News Initiative (TNI).
In July 2019, before the pandemic, the UK and Canadian governments hosted the FCO Global Conference on Media Freedom,[v] where then BBC Director-General Tony Hall announced:
“Last month I convened, behind closed doors, a Trusted News Summit at the BBC, which brought together global tech platforms and publishers. The goal was to arrive at a practical set of actions we can take together, right now, to tackle the rise of misinformation and bias….I’m determined that we use that [BBC] unique reach and trusted voice to lead the way – to create a global alliance for integrity in news. We’re ready to do even more to help promote freedom and democracy worldwide.”[vi]
The initial Trusted News partners in attendance were the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google, The Hindu, and The Wall Street Journal.
This was the embryonic start of a soon-to-become global media-wide Early Warning System that would rapidly alert members to “disinformation which threatens human life or disrupts democracy during elections.”[vii]
Where did the idea come from?
The BBC had earlier responded[viii] to a call for evidence from the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technology, citing in its first footnote a June 3, 2019 BBC blog entitled “Tackling Misinformation.”[ix]
The first point of that blog referred to a pre-pandemic March 3, 2019 BBC news report that anti-vaxxers were gaining traction on social media as part of a “fake news” movement spreading “misleading and dangerous information”.[x]
The June 3 blog also claimed a “mammoth” online scale of deceitful business practices and hate speech as problems needing “algorithmic interventions”. The online “information ecosystem” was “polluted”; the size of the problem “unprecedented.” The BBC and other organizations would be looking at interventions “to address misinformation across the media landscape”.
Looking back at this perception of pre-Covid problems, the motives of the TNI network appear to have been constructive and reasonable. However, there was no inkling at the time of how vast, repressive, and darkly persuasive these interventions were soon to become.
The action started. CBC/Radio-Canada publicly announced its participation in the TNI in September 2019, saying “this includes a commitment to collaborate on source authentication, civic information, media education, and other responses to disinformation.”[xi] The Hindu announced the Indian program simultaneously.[xii]
Two weeks after WHO announced the Covid-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, Canada’s CBC reported that the Trusted News Initiative had announced plans “to tackle harmful coronavirus disinformation.”
“Starting today, partners in the Trusted News Initiative will alert each other to disinformation about coronavirus, including ‘imposter content’ purporting to come from trusted sources. Such content will be reviewed promptly to ensure that disinformation is not republished.” [xiii]
The media partners had now expanded to include Twitter, Microsoft, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The TNI next agreed to engage with a new verification technology called Project Origin, led by a coalition of the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, Microsoft and The New York Times – with a mandate toidentify non-authorized news stories for suppression.
In July, 2020, Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer for Microsoft, remarked about authorizing the news: “We’ve forged a close relationship with the BBC and other partners on Project Origin, aimed at methods and standards for end-to-end authentication of news and information.”[xiv]
By December 2020, the BBC had reported that disinformation was “spreading online to millions of people,” and included minimizing COVID-19 risks along with impugning the vaccine developers’ motives.[xv]
In a June 25, 2021 summary article by investigative staff, TrialSiteNews asked the question, “COVID-19 Censorship: Trusted News Initiative to Decide the Facts?” and began its reply with:
“Since time immemorial, those with power have used it to control those without. In the modern world, big government and big tech represent the seats of power when it comes to who is allowed to say what. Of course, many think that “private companies” can regulate speech in any way they see fit. But from either an ethical or legal point of view, this is false. The argument from the societal benefits of free speech works equally for posting YouTube videos and handing out flyers on a corner.
Legally, the [U.S.] Supreme Court has long held that when a private company creates something that functions as a public square (think of a company town), the First Amendment comes into play. Way back in April 2020, it was already clear that the then-existing online socio-political censorship was going to expand into the world of science, medicine, and academia in the new COVID-19 era.”[xvi]
What is Disinformation?
This question has been sloppily handled by the mainstream media, which often confuses “misinformation” (unintentionally misleading information) with what they mean, “disinformation,” which is deliberate.
Several dictionary definitions agree on that point:
American Heritage: “Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation.”[xvii]
Merriam-Webster: “False information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.”[xviii]
The OED (Oxford English Dictionary): “The dissemination of deliberately false information, esp. when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign power or to the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it.”[xix]
Given that these definitions specify deliberate government action, it seems odd that the TNI has identified a scattered online public as the source of intentional false information and propaganda – especially concerning elections and health policy.
What are the TNI’s Public Health Sources? Are They Trustworthy?
The TNI reports Covid-19 health policy from the world’s major public health agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This policy is passed down through national and state governments, who convey it to the public via their media and websites, along with local case reports (based on the questionable PCR test) and deaths.
Unfortunately, this top-down leadership has at best been illogical and inconsistent, and at worst corrupted by the vast profits of the vaccine industry.
Examples of either incompetent or corrupt public health leadership include NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s extraordinary contradictions concerning the protection offered by masks.[xx]
More astonishing is the fact that on July 21, 2021, the CDC quietly recalled the use of the WHO-supported PCR test, which since February 2020 has been the global standard for measuring Covid-19 case numbers. This recall was eventually reported about a week later, yet it had appeared on the CDC website[xxi] the first day after the news that George Soros and Bill Gates had acquired the UK Covid test company, Mologic.[xxii]
The PCR test had already had a checkered history: Its recommendation had been very suddenly approved by WHO after being hurriedly rushed to publication in Eurosurveillance,[xxiii] one day after its submission date of January 22, 2020. Incredibly, it lacked peer review – an irregularity that was formally challenged by 22 scientists seeking its retraction.[xxiv]
Worse yet, this global PCR test, which amplifies fragments of live or dead virus found in nose swabs, shows many false positives (which are officially deemed “cases,” regardless of symptoms). A study conducted last year by the Infectious Diseases Society of America found that at 25 cycles of amplification, “up to 70% of patients remain positive in culture” tests. Fine, but at 30 cycles culture verification dropped to 20%, and by 35 cycles, less than 3% of cultures remained positive.[xxv]
Misleadingly, most European and US labs have been basing their frightening “case” numbers – published 24/7 through the TNI – on 35 cycles or higher.[xxvi]
The most shocking – if not criminal – Covid leadership failure of all is that the WHO, NIH, CDC, and FDA have consistently denied the existence of the 85%-effective, cheap, safe and abundant early treatments for Covid-19.
Their only recommended option until November 2020 – a month before the vaccines arrived – was to sicken at home until you couldn’t breathe; then go the hospital. (In November the FDA and the NIH allowed anti-SARS-2 monoclonal antibody products for mild outpatient disease in high-risk patients – but nothing else.[xxvii])
There was to be no government-sanctioned cure until a vaccine arrived.
The obedient TNI – not into investigative journalism – followed suit. In spite of extensive evidence supporting early treatment efficacy,[xxviii] and although 56 countries have adopted early treatments,[xxix] there have been no TNI-approved media statements that any early treatments, including hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), ivermectin (IVM), quercetin, zinc, budesonide, or Vitamins C and D, are effective in treating Covid-19 outpatients during the first 5-7 days of flu-like symptoms.
The denial has been so strong that in early 2020 many US state pharmacy boards –in unprecedented disrespect for the authority of physicians – banned pharmacies from filling HCQ prescriptions to treat outpatient Covid-19.[xxx]
In August 2020, it came to light that pre-licensure Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for the mRNA vaccines could not be legally approved if there was an available alternative – that is, if the FDA had already issued an EUA for outpatient use of HCQ, as shown in the final item of this in-house FDA slide.[xxxi]