Alternate Sources of Information

Our modern culture is informed by mass media and as a result we have been conditioned to accept a certain standard. We take our cues from award shows and are taught what is good, bad, or ugly by the ratings and what is renewed or cancelled at the end of each season. I was never a big TV watcher but I was always one who would enjoy watching the news at least once a day. When you get used to the bright lights of a fancy studio, well groomed anchors, slickly edited video, and high quality audio, you begin to take it for granted and when a piece comes on with less than stellar quality you grimace and almost wonder if it is trust worthy.

And that is the problem with alternative sources of information. In order to hear something about COVID that did not follow the standard narrative, one had to resort to podcasts, smart phone videos, and interviews taking place in someone's home or in a doctor's office between patients. Upstart news services did not have the big dollars and big sponsors to compete with the mainstream so they often looked hokey, home made, and slapped together. But did that make any of the information untrue? And so, one had to sort through the various sources and try to make a determination as to who was trustworthy and who was not. Of course, anyone addicted to the mainstream immediately would say, "that is an unreliable source. If it was true I would have seen it on CNN or CBC or ....." (fill in the blank). 

 

It would eventually get to the point where a piece from some obscure journalist would quote statistics and data from a very reliable source and because the reporting was not from mainstream media, the piece would be debunked. Had the very same information been presented on the mainstream, people everywhere would have sat up and taken notice. 

And then, to protect the masses from false information, the censorship and fact checking started in earnest. The first time I was aware of censorship on the internet was when Prager U put out a series of videos on the 10 commandments. Prager U is a conservative organization that is dedicated to espousing traditional, conservative views in an age of socialism and deteriorating social mores. What was censored? The video on the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Apparently it incited violence. Yes, that is how silly censorship and fact checking became, and that was in the early days. 

I recall another example where a blogger claimed that the NIH got more than 50% of its funding from  big pharma. He was fact checked and then taken off his internet platform. I mean, this is pretty big news and would explain why the vaccine was given a green light before proper testing. The fact checker stated unequivocally that only 40% of the funding of NIH came from big pharma. Still a problem, no? So the blogger struck back and fact checked the fact checker and it was true that the arm of the NIH which gives approval to drugs, whether final approval or emergency use approval, did indeed get most of its funding from big pharma. Was there a retraction from the fact checkers? Not to my knowledge. 

All this to say that an information war was beginning to take shape and blatant lies, misinformation, and withholding information was taking place on both sides, and it was becoming confusing. Those who watched only mainstream were getting only one side of the story while those who were digging for truth were getting the missing pieces that would fill in the story. And what we were discovering was shocking to say the least.