Media

Media articles feature analysis and commentary about mass media, entertainment, censorship, and propaganda.

All media articles at Brownstone Institute are translated into multiple languages.

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Science is

Science Is Not to Be Trusted

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Science is not a belief system, so it’s not something to be trusted. Science is a social process which anyone can join, it is a conversation with evidence to be examined, discussed, questioned, and tested. Science is not limited to Ivory Towers and people with PhDs. Anyone, no matter how anonymous or weird they are (in our idiosyncratic views of “weird”), can examine a paper, question some results, discuss them, and change our perspectives. Or at least, that’s how it should be.

Science Is Not to Be Trusted Read Journal Article

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts

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Interventions rooted in panic, driven by political machinations, and using all the levers of state power to terrify citizens and muzzle critics in the end needlessly killed massive numbers of the most vulnerable while putting the vast low-risk majority under house arrest. The benefits are questionable but the harms are increasingly obvious. The Johnson government in general and Hancock in particular revalidate Lord Acton’s astute observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts Read Journal Article

lockdown files

The UK Narrative Falls Apart with Leaked Messages

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The new leak is the most damning revelation to come so far from the Daily Telegraph’s recently-announced ‘Lockdown Files,’ which are based on an archive of over 100,000 messages sent between Hancock and other officials. Journalist Isabel Oakeshott ostensibly obtained the WhatsApp messages to assist with a book about Hancock, comprising the biggest leak of UK Government data in over a decade and shedding new light on the UK’s lockdowns, mandates, and fear messaging.

The UK Narrative Falls Apart with Leaked Messages Read Journal Article

Woody Harrelson

Woody Harrelson Demonstrates the Pain of Truth

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The veil of myth that surrounds the great trauma of our lives needs rending at some point. Perhaps it starts just this way: with truth-telling fables in the guise of comedy that fall flat on shocked audiences who prefer to keep up the illusion that all of this happened in the name of public health. 

Woody Harrelson Demonstrates the Pain of Truth Read Journal Article

podcast censorship

Censors Use AI to Target Podcasts

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The collapse of support for free speech among Western pseudo-elites is the foundation of so many other problems, from medicine to war. Misinformation is the natural state of the world. Open science and vigorous debate are the tools we deploy to become less wrong over time. Individual and collective decision-making depend on them.

Censors Use AI to Target Podcasts Read Journal Article

ghosts of science

The Ghosts of Science Past

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Many of those who claim to represent science are no longer objective. Science educators teach orthodoxy. Science communicators openly engage in blatant marketing campaigns. Scientific consensuses are manufactured when needed. All of these components in how scientific knowledge is disseminated and how trust in science is built are now tools to advance and support official policy. All have become ghosts of what they used to be. 

The Ghosts of Science Past Read Journal Article

disinformation

How New Zealand Dealt with “Disinformation”

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Cases may not have been active cases, hospitalisations may not be due to SARS-CoV-2, and deaths may be due to various causes related or unrelated to SARs-CoV-2. We will never know for sure. Why? Because the PCR cycle threshold for testing PCR “positive” in Middle Earth was 40 to 45, ensuring that most tested people would test positiveeven in the total absence of contamination (a very tall order). 

How New Zealand Dealt with “Disinformation” Read Journal Article

deadlier pandemic

An Even Deadlier Pandemic, Warns New York Times

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Are we going to allow a repeat of what happened during Covid-19, or are we going to exercise critical thinking and our rights as citizens, to put an end to the growing biomedical security state? I choose the latter. We can start by critically examining what we’re being fed by the mainstream media, and by compromised government and public health officials, and refusing to be frightened and manipulated into another over reactive, unconstitutional, disastrous response to a pathogen.

An Even Deadlier Pandemic, Warns New York Times Read Journal Article

wartime-parallels-iraq-and-covid

Wartime Parallels: Iraq and Covid

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First, the resort to emotional arguments and moral blackmail generally implies that they have little reasoned argument and evidence to support their case and are deflecting to bluster instead. Second, whenever we are presented with excitable exclamation marks (Saddam Hussein already has weapons of mass destruction (WMD)! He can hit us with WMD in just 45 minutes! Coronavirus could be more cataclysmic than the Spanish flu! The sky is falling!), it is a very good idea to substitute sceptical question marks instead:

Wartime Parallels: Iraq and Covid Read Journal Article

fact check this Facebook

Fact-Check This, Facebook

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The censorious warnings that are now slapped over posts that contain my original article, How the “Unvaccinated” Got It Right would seem to imply that Facebook is so determined that information presented on its platform does not “mislead” for “lack of context” that it is willing to engage in illegal collusion with the government to satisfy that goal. 

Fact-Check This, Facebook Read Journal Article

censorship operations

Censorship Operations: Covid, War, and More

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This all follows a similar pattern to the informational warfare of the Covid era: an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true (or at least highly plausible). Arguments over natural immunity, vaccine efficacy, masks, the lab leak hypothesis, school shutdowns, lockdowns, and the scientific basis of social distancing are just a few examples that followed this cycle of reporting. 

Censorship Operations: Covid, War, and More Read Journal Article