
Continue reading Ten Topics You’ll Rarely Hear Discussed Openly and Rationally on Mainstream MediaSometimes the silencing of dissenting viewpoints is achieved through overt censorship – as we saw when Facebook suppressed arguments that entertained the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis, or when Twitter censored pretty much any assertion that could be construed as even slightly disfavourable to Covid vaccines. But more often than not, it is achieved by refusing to give any airtime to arguments from “the other side.” In many ways, this is more sinister than overt censorship, because it is subtle and may easily go completely unnoticed.
I have had personal experience of this “from the inside,” so to speak. I used to write ocassionally for a prominent national newspaper in Ireland, as well as a regional newspaper in Spain. Soon after I began to seriously question Covid measures or the science behind lockdowns, my contributions at both newspapers ceased to be published, quite abruptly. There was simply no editorial interest in questioning the fundamentals of the national response to the virus.
The average newspaper reader or TV viewer knows nothing of this filtering process. They just pick up the newspaper or switch on the TV and assume that there are “serious” people and experts who will be given a platform to express themselves. They will naturally assume that if no credible voice defends this or that position, it must be because the position is weak or indefensible. It will not occur to the average reader or viewer that the reason there are no “credible voices” on the other side is because they have been filtered out in advance…