By Roger Watson
In another triumph for the mainstream media, a massive anti-lockdown protest—possibly of 100,000 people in London on Saturday 15 May—has not generally been reported. My eyes lit up when I opened my copy of The Sunday Telegraph and they fell on an article reporting about ‘hundreds’ of lockdown protesters rallying prior to easing of restrictions only to find that this referred to a protest in Manchester. This was a clear case of misdirection. It took four reporters in the by-line to produce a couple of hundred words on this. No wonder they missed the London rally, they were all in Manchester. Of even greater interest to me, and I stand to be corrected, this article was nowhere to be found online by any combination of relevant search terms or by visiting the Telegraph webpage.
So, who did report it? Quick off the mark was Toby Young in Lockdown Sceptics. In a piece by Young himself, he reported that the protest was taking place, lamenting that the Ministry of Truth (aka the BBC) had failed to mention it. The only reports I could locate after searching online were in Yahoo News (not exactly mainstream) and, of all places, WalesOnline. The Guardian, true to its left-wing, bleeding heart form reported on a pro-Palestinian protest but failed to cover any lockdown protests. Wikipedia have been cataloguing the anti-lockdown protests in the UK but the protest on 15 May is not yet included. A protest, such as one in my home city of Hull was reported and, moreover, was reported in the local newspaper as ‘peaceful’ (they always have been) as if this was unusual. This was much to my surprise as the Hull Daily Mail have been at the forefront of the local opprobrium against lockdown protesters, including yours truly. My guess is that, like some of our politicians and others in the mainstream media, they see the way the pandemic wind is blowing. By this time next year, we may all be claiming to have played our part in the anti-lockdown movement. The Hull Daily Mail recycled exactly the same article under a different headline as a piece on a local pro-Palestinian protest as both protests were mentioned in the same article. We have grown accustomed to this cutting-edge journalism here on Humberside.
Lest anyone was ever in doubt about it, the reporting—or lack of it—over the past year on lockdown protests by the mainstream media is a glaring example of how biased it is. If we only had the occasional example in the past, we now have it in abundance. Not only has reporting been biased and ostensibly controlled by the government as it has, unashamedly been during the pandemic, we have entered a phase where what goes against the grain of the pandemic panic and COVID-orthodoxy is simply ignored. When the history of the pandemic is written the role of the alternative media, exemplified by such outlets as Unity News Network and Lockdown Sceptics deserves to be included. As for the role of the mainstream media? Perhaps they should not even feature.
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