Mainstream Media In Mainstream Media

Journalistic integrity is critical to a well-functioning free society. It monitors power and safeguards democracy. But is it working? Matt Taibbi teamed up with Douglas Murray to debate Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg in the Monk Debates. The organizers framed the theme as: “Be it resolved, don’t trust mainstream media.” Taibbi and Murray were speaking for the resolution. They mopped the floor with Gladwell and Goldberg. Prior to the debate, the audience split evenly. After the debate, 40% of those who had trusted the media changed their minds.It was the largest swing in the history of the Munk Debates. This wasn’t because Taibbi and Murray were superior debaters.

They just cleared the fog and let truth prevail. The takeaway? Do not trust mainstream media.

Our government subsidizes the CBC (the national broadcaster in Canada) to the tune of 1.4 billion.This subsidy unquestionably shapes what news organizations choose to report—and what they leave out . Journalists, in effect, become state journalists. One only has to look at the coverage during the pandemic to realize that no actual journalism is happening at the CBC. They were reading from the same script that every other mainstream global outlet was reading from. To give but one example:

Masking

Most of the world happily wore a mask during the pandemic. Who can blame us? The state required it of us. The media dutifully drilled it into to us, equating citizenship with the duty of mask-wearing. The public wants to be seen as responsible citizens. Strangely, not a single mainstream journalist bothered to ask if they are effective against viruses. Truth-telling is the job of journalists. Yet, the following truth was ignored:

Toni Fauci, the self-appointed Czar of public health, who ran the NIAID (National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases in the U.S.) for the past four decades (recently resigned), came out early in the pandemic and issued a statement that masks are ineffective with the coronavirus.

Very clear. That is actually what the vast majority of the science tells us, as we’ll see below. Then he changed his mind, without ever actually saying he changed his mind, and without a single North American or European news outlet noticing his flip flop.

The mainstream press concluded, well, science changes. Really? In the two weeks it took for him to change his mind?

Daring to Speak Out 

Dr. Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University, did notice. He teaches students how to differentiate between propaganda and actual news in the media. He’d been doing it for 20 years. Crispin asked his students to question what the media reported and what it left out. This was his job. He asked them to hunt down scientific research about masks. The students who actually did their homework would have discovered that there are far more studies that show masks don’t work than that they do. If you click on the above link you’ll find 167 of them to be precise. Have you ever heard about them? Why not? Why is this research withheld from the public? How is that mainstream media outlets in North America chose to ignore this? I mean, you’d think at least one of the networks would investigate. Dr. Miller, of course, was reported by his “progressive” students for assigning the homework and viciously attacked and defamed by his colleagues for his temerity.

Dr. Crispin was truth telling and he got silenced for this troubles.

“There’s Still No Evidence”

Or I might have visited the website of the Cochrane Library. Of course, Dr. Miller’s “progressive” students reported him for assigning the homework, and his colleagues viciously attacked and defamed him for his temerity.

The researchers failed to find even a “modest effect” on infection or illness rates from any type of mask. If you want to hear an actual epidemiologist summarize their most recent meta-analysis of the Cochrane reviews latest summary of the evidence check out Vinay Prasad’s video.

The lead researcher on masks for the Cochrane Review, Tom Jefferson, had this to say in an interview with Maryanne Demasi, PHD: “There’s still no evidence that masks are effective during a pandemic”. When asked by Demasi, “And yet governments from around the world implemented mask mandates…”Jefferson replied, “Yes, well, governments completely failed to do the right thing and demand better evidence…” Another example of truth-telling.

Now, just because there’s no evidence that masks don’t work, doesn’t mean that at some point in the future a better designed research protocol could show that masks do work,. I’m open to that possibility. But as it stands, this is the best science we have. The media trots out mantra “follow the sciencew” ad nauseum. But which science? Who is telling these “journalists” and anchors not to tell the whole story? And why are these reporters obeying? The good ones get fired or walk away.

The Trusted News Initiative

When did it happen that the media started to align so seamlessly with the state, the health authorities, and with the corporate agenda of Big Pharma? It’s not the job of the fourth estate to represent these groups, unless you live in Russia or China.

Media has antagonistic relationship with power, when it is functioning properly.

Mainstream media outlets formed the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an international consortium whose mission is to safeguard the public against “misinformation” and “disinformation.” This raises the question: Why would a bona fide news organization choose to act collectively like this if it’s truly committed to investigative research? It used to be that they were competing with each other for the scoop. They challenged experts and authorities with alternative facts and then watched them squirm. When the representatives of the consortium get together who gets to determine what is misinformation?

This is not journalistic integrity.

Breaking news.

That’s your job, not the government, not the think tanks funded by the government, or private interest groups. It’s difficult to imagine true journalists getting together without a single one asking the question, ummm…do we know if masks even work? To my mind, this is the very definition of a conspiracy, a breathing together to conceal inconvenient data. They came to consensus that all those “anti-maskers” are a fringe group – no need to report on all that other annoying research or check in with the Cochrane Review.

The real agenda behind the consortium is to establish a monopoly on what is news because they are losing market share, fast, to independent journalism (Substack, podcasters, etc.) who are still digging for the story. Journalists like Seymour Hersh, the same guy who broke the story that almost single-handedly ended the Viet Nam war by exposing the truth of what U.S. soldiers were doing over there. On his Substack column this past week he described, in startling detail, how the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline. The best the legacy media (and the TNI) could come up with was that Russia blew up their own pipelines, along with half their annual GDP. They now cast this courageous Nobel laureate as a disinformation-spreading conspiracy theorist.It’s predictable and actually getting boring.

The vitriol directed against alternative sources of informationm, like Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger, by mainstream media reveals an underlying insecurity as the public increasingly is seeing through the fog.

The Public Knows

CBC Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon wrote an article citing a poll that showed over 49% of Canadians believe the media are purposely trying to mislead the public.

He reported that 52% agree the news is ideologically driven and politically motivated, and another 52% believe the news lacks objectivity.

The fog is lifting.

But then, in an attempt to reassure mistrusting readers, he ends by telling us we can trust the CBC—because they signed on to the Trusted News Initiative (TNI). Well, that is reassuring.

Control of the narrative through mainstream media has long been a goal of the fog-generators. During the pandemic the British government employed an entire department to use “nudge” strategies on the population – essentially deciding what is true for the people and then deploying behavioural psychology techniques (without people’s consent) that aim directly at their subconscious, to increase compliance.

(You would think that mainstream media would express just a little concern about state overreach. Again, nope.) The CIA has been perfecting mind control for decades, including infiltrating mainstream media with journalist operatives. They called in Operation Mockingbird. Not a conspiracy.

Journalistic Integrity and the CIA

Independent journalist, Matt Taibbi, a left-leaning journalist who actually remembers what it is to be a journalist, reminds us that the media are now welcoming this infiltration by intelligence agencies in the U.S.

“Both MSNBC and similarly foundering competitor CNN (which lost 19% and 27% of their audiences, respectively, last year) have been open for years now in their desire to serve as final revolving door destinations for the shadiest conceivable military and security officials. While MSNBC went after Brennan (former Director of the CIA), Figliuzzi (former assistance Director of Counterintelligence at the FBI), and Bash (former Chief of Staff of the CIA), CNN scooped up James Clapper (former Director of National Intelligence), Michael Hayden (former Director of the National Security Agency), and Steven Hall (CIA), among many others. The lists are so long, only an exceptional mind could keep track of them all. How many spooks fled to the Peacock?”

Media literacy is more important than ever, especially the discipline of sorting out state-driven propaganda from actual journalism. If mainstream media is turning to authorities who are masters at the art of deception, and they have themselves stopped actually investigating, why should we believe them? It’s clear from the above poll, fewer and fewer are believing them. Viewers and listeners are leaving in droves.

Trauma’s Impact

Psychologist Dr. Gabor Maté, widely regarded as a trauma expert, spoke out early in the pandemic and claimed that people who refused to wear masks were acting from unresolved trauma.

“It has nothing to do with the issue itself,” he said. “It has to do with the issue acting as a flash point for their own unresolved traumatic imprints.”

Maté argued that conspiracy theorists—like the truckers—react out of deep trust issues.

He claimed that if they weren’t traumatized, they would trust the health authorities, the government, and the media. They would stay rational. But because trauma disrupted their access to reason, they sought belonging in fringe groups instead.

Really?

But is it unreasonable that a small percentage of citizens started to doubt the Covid Consensus? We’ve seen what happened with masking. That is, we’ve seen how mainstream media now functions as the propaganda wing for state and private interests and the narrative of their choice. Is it an unreasonable choice to question the dominant narrative as it relates to the pandemic? Journalistic integrity demands that we ask these hard questions.

Big Pharma’s Criminal History

Let’s break it down. People refused to take a vaccine that doesn’t function like any other in history—it doesn’t prevent infection or transmission. Pharmaceutical companies, already fined tens of billions for falsifying research, hiding negative results, and fraudulently claiming safety (think OxyContin and Purdue), aggressively promoted it. They introduced an experimental mRNA platform never before used in humans, except on those injected during the pandemic. They skipped randomized control trials—the gold standard for research—and still haven’t conducted them. The vaccine caused more reported adverse effects than all other vaccines combined.

You would think that journalistic integrity might involve considering the possibility, given the history, that Big Pharma just might not be trustworthy.

It seems like a reasonable choice to refuse this injection. Although I understand why most people chose it. I’m all for freedom of choice and bodily sovereignty. But the playing field wasn’t exactly even. Mainstream media now acts as the delivery system for the most comprehensive experiment in mind control in history.

Yes, one of the impacts of trauma is distrust and yes it could result in an anti-authoritarian stance. But trauma can manifest in different ways. It is equally possible, and I would say more probable, that childhood trauma generates powerlessness and helplessness, resulting in a lifelong attitude that you had better not question authority or else.

In his case, Gabor Mate was flat out wrong. To this date, I haven’t seen a retraction or apology. And to be fair, he is just one of a plethora of progressive thought-leaders who refused to question the dominant, media-supported narrative.

A Different Take on the Impact of Trauma

When trauma remains unconscious, it continues to shape our lives. We live under its influence, unable to dismantle the early setup that made being true to ourselves feel unsafe.

This fog of mystification begins in our families. As children, we had to make an intelligent concession—to trust the big people, even when they hurt us or distorted reality to protect themselves.

Later in life, we project this strategy onto other authority figures. Governments, institutions, and leaders become the new “big people.” We fear punishment or rejection if we question their worldview or refuse to conform.

Punishment alone can drive obedience. But when paired with unconscious fear rooted in childhood shame and threat, it becomes even more powerful.

In my book Dismantled, I explore the idea of the family as a kind of cult. When trauma remains buried, the family sets us up for later submission to the State—an authority that claims to protect us while often betraying that promise through its actions. Without making this trauma conscious, we risk a lifetime of blind conformity.

Living your own life requires more than sorting out your inner world. Once you clear that terrain, the next step is recognizing and resisting the fog produced by those who want your obedience, not your freedom.

I want to believe journalistic integrity is resurging. But right now, mainstream media appears captured by powerful interests. My best advice: seek out trustworthy, alternative sources of information.