One of the most instructive exercises I've ever undertaken in understanding how the mainstream media really works came via writing a letter of complaint to the Daily Mail in April 2019. My letter read as follows:
Dear Sirs,
I read an article in your online newspaper today entitled 'Research scientist, 28, reveals her horror at discovering she had NO childhood jabs because her mother was an anti-vaxxer', link below:
I note that the author, Sasha Walton, claims to have been offered the HPV vaccine aged 13. She states that she was born in 1991, so would have been 13 in 2004.
However, the HPV vaccine was not introduced to the UK market until 2008.
Walton goes on to state that she wanted to receive the HPV vaccine, but her mother withheld consent, so she did not receive it.
However, consent for vaccines for 13-year-olds does not reside with the parent, but with the child, due to the Gillick Competency ruling. Had Walton indicated she wished to receive this vaccine, then she would have received it, regardless of the wishes of her mother.
In rare cases, a child may not be considered Gillick Competent (there would have to be a very compelling reason for this), but given Walton was actually 17 when the vaccine came out, and not 13, then she would have been fully in charge of her own medical decisions anyway.
Given these facts, it is clear Walton has included false information in her article for your newspaper, and intentionally misinformed and misled readers. It is your responsibility as a national publication to confirm the credibility of your journalists, and to fact-check the information they give you. As Ms. Walton has wilfully deceived her audience regarding the HPV vaccine, I am forced to doubt the veracity of her entire account, and I would also like to question the motivations behind it. Clearly there is a purpose in her promulgating false information about vaccines, and I - and no doubt many of your other readers - would like to know what it is.
Yours sincerely,
Miri Finch
The Daily Mail did not reply, but they didn't need to - as I was able to answer my own question the following day, by looking up Sasha Walton on LinkedIn, and discovering the true nature of her employment. So, the next day I wrote to Ashfield Medical PR as follows:
To Whom It May Concern,
It may be of interest to you to know that I sent the attached letter to the Daily Mail yesterday, regarding your employee Sasha Walton's article for them on vaccines.
It is of interest to me to learn that she is not in fact a 'research scientist' as billed in the Daily Mail, but actually a writer for a pharmaceutical PR company. I am sure many readers of the Daily Mail would have found it most useful indeed to have been furnished with this information before reading her piece.
Yours sincerely,
Miri Finch
Ashfield Medical did reply, to confirm Sasha Walton was indeed a writer for them, and that they would 'investigate'. I never heard from them again, but I fear poor Ms. Walton's career as a pharmaceutical shill may have been abruptly cut short, for failing to do such basic sums that even a crazed conspiraquack who failed Maths GCSE (such as myself) can do...
That was six years ago, and this experience proved a very useful - shall we say - immunisation against automatically believing anything the papers say for the particularly insane years that followed.
In short, I know for a certain fact, courtesy of the above exercise, that the mainstream media routinely prints blatant propagandist lies spun by PR agencies, and passes them off as fact, because this is in general the role of the establishment press. As they say, "journalism is printing what someone else doesn't want printed. Everything else is public relations." MSM is primarily a PR vehicle, rather than primarily a journalistic one.
However, just because the mainstream media engages in blatant PR fakery as cited above some of the time doesn't mean it does it all of the time, and that every single thing ever printed in a mainstream media vehicle is completely false.
I know that's an almost embarrassingly obvious clarification to have to make, but it has come to my attention recently that there is currently a carefully coordinated agenda going on amongst certain sections of "the truth movement" to bolster trust in the mainstream media by misrepresenting those of us who question it.
"OMG, I can't stand those crazy truthers who say literally everything in the media is fake! That's so ridiculous!"
Yes, it is ridiculous, and that is why literally nobody is saying that. There is absolutely nobody in this so-called movement asserting that every single one of the thousands of news stories printed daily by the MSM are all made up.
However, it seems to serve certain sections of the "movement" to make this claim at this time, in order to try and discredit those of us who urge caution - especially around high-profile, sensationalist media events - by intentionally muddying and misrepresenting what we're actually saying.
Due to the fact that not everyone will read long form essays and a lot of people's attention spans only extend to the length of a Tweet, many of us have had to find a way to condense complex and nuanced arguments into more bitesize phrases, hence I have my slogans, "if you know their name, they're in the game", and "if it's headline news, it's a ruse".
I would hope it was "needless to say", but apparently it isn't, that neither of these phrases are to be taken literally.
In the first instance, everybody knows their own name. So, if the phrase was taken literally, 100% of people would be in the game. Hence, that is not what it means.
Rather, it refers to someone who is well-known courtesy of media promotion, and the likelihood that, if someone is very prominent and visible, gaining traction and attention from the mainstream, they are probably compromised and controlled by said mainstream.
This is because - as all MSM editors know very well - there's no such thing as bad publicity. "Hit pieces" on supposedly opposition figures don't harm them, rather, they help them, by bringing them to the attention of more people, as well as solidifying their credibility with their existing fanbase ("wow, that person must really be a threat to the agenda, look how much the MSM is going after them!"). The MSM itself confirms its relentless "hit pieces" on Russell Brand, for example, made him much richer and more popular.
(The caveat to this would be if someone has a mainstream employer, such as the NHS or a university. Then hit pieces do not help them, and can contribute to getting them fired, and thus losing their platform and voice. Often, the MSM will do hit pieces on outspoken academics, doctors, or scientists to try to get their employment terminated, and then never mention them again once they go independent - when a "hit piece" would help bring much-needed attention to their story - as happened to Dr. Chris Exley.)
So "if you know their name, they're in the game" is obviously true. While we may quibble over whose names are well known enough to qualify to be "under suspicion", the veracity of the essence of the phrase remains indisputable.
So, why would multiple members of the "truth movement" suddenly all go lockstep in trying to discount and discredit this phrase?
Why would they suddenly start trying to undermine the message of those of us who urge caution and careful consideration before reacting emotionally to media stories?
Is it because a big, fake media event is coming up that they are desperate for us all to believe in, and react to accordingly, so they must, at all costs, attack, discredit, and undermine anyone who encourages us to critically think?
I think it is.
I can confidently state that in all my years in "the truth movement" (about 12), I have never seen the fake awake, controlled op, and gatekeepers as rattled as I have in the last few weeks.
If they're not calling me a c***, w****, and doxxing my family, then they're just openly lying, attacking, and desperately trying to discredit my work, and me, in a way none of them have ever attempted in the last five years, so, as always, we ask:
Why this, why now?
Why this sudden coordinated attack, specifically centring around whether we should, or should not, believe in the mainstream media, and people who often appear in it?
There can only be one reason for this, in my opinion: that we are approaching a major crescendo of social tensions, where a very big, very dramatic, very fake event is going to be reported by the media, and the establishment needs us all to believe in it so we can be manipulated accordingly.
As I reported in my last article, the establishment is absolutely desperate for a summer of riots, but has confirmed - as stated in the Daily Mail by Hungarian communist, Frank Furedi - that we need a 'spark' to set it all off.
Furedi's specialist subject, by the way, is the 'sociology of fear'.
The establishment needs a big, bombastic event that will compel people to get off their screens and take violently to the streets, and I predict we will see that igniting event emerge within the next three weeks - on or before the 21st August, which is when we have been told ultra high-profile "political prisoner", Lucy Connolly, will be released from jail.
I have been covering this story, and what I believe to be a devious psychological operation to advance a number of agendas, for some time, and it has seemed to be my probing of the Lucy Connolly story that has really brought out the coordinated vitriol against me.
It seems that Ms. Connolly has a very important upcoming role to play in the political pantomime, so it's crucial we all believe in her and don't dismiss the whole thing as a blatant psyop being staged by state assets and actors.
Unfortunately, on this score, said assets and actors rather shot themselves in the foot yesterday, by publishing this story in the Daily Mail, based on a Tweet from a photoshopped AI "friend" announcing Lucy's imminent release.
As somebody said to me on Twitter:
"The Mail 'story' is entirely based on the tweet from an anonymous 'friend'. No genuine editor would run such drivel with zero confirmation. It fits exactly the pattern you previously outlined. I didn't believe you about LC at first but now my head is spinning."
A lot of people didn't believe my theories on LC at first, but the more shrill desperation from the establishment to "prove" their fabricated version of events, such as the above article, the more people do.
For a start, that is obviously a fake photo, and everybody can see that instantly. It's a particularly shoddy photoshop job, and running the photo through a fake image detector confirms it's "computer generated or modified" (this software isn't perfect, and can sometimes flag up real photos as fake, and vice versa, but it's an interesting additional piece of information when it comes to a very likely fake story).
Plus, as the above Tweeter suggests, editors rule over the content of their newspapers with an iron fist, and no editor would run an unconfirmed Tweet from an anonymous account as a "story".... unless it was all part of a prearranged lockstep agenda to validate an operation.
The mainstream media is now bringing "Lucy Connolly" back to your attention and urging you to emotionally invest in her (just as you did when you "talked to her on Twitter") so you have a maximal personal stake in the story for whatever happens to her next... and whatever happens to her next could very well be the 'spark' they are in the process of fomenting to kick off mass rioting.
I mean, Donald Trump is now even weighing in on the subject...
Note also that both the mainstream media, and Lucy's "friends", keep strongly suggesting she won't be able to speak to the media upon her release. As The Telegraph's Allison Pearson (she who declared me a 'mad cow' for questioning the veracity of the story) said in a recent article:
"[T]here is understandable concern as to what tricks the Home Office may play to prevent “Starmer’s political prisoner” from telling her story."
A great deal of people have said to me, "when Lucy's released, all the media will want to talk to her, and then we'll be able to see that her story is real."
Obviously, talking to the media doesn't actually confirm a story of political persecution is real - after all, our Tommeh does it all the time (how are we enjoying his latest staged theatrical stunt?) - but in Connolly's case, it does seem like she is not going to speak to the media at all.
So what are they planning to do with her?
Enormous public interest has intentionally been galvanised in this story, and is being reignited now, not to mention a hefty fundraiser running in her name, so is her adoring fanbase really going to accept her simply slinking off silently upon release?
It doesn't seem very likely, so what is the establishment's game here? Why are they relentlessly bringing attention to a person they are telling you will never be able to speak for herself?
Something very sinister looks to be going on here, and while I don't know exactly what it is, I do know that we should be very sceptical indeed of any and every person currently trying to increase confidence in the lying, manipulative, gaslighting mainstream media.
Yes, they tell the truth sometimes (the local press more than the national press). But that simply underlines the contrast: that a lot of the time, they don't...
...including and especially where it comes to high-profile, big budget, big name events.
If you know their name, they're in the game.
If it's headline news, it's a ruse.
Misrepresent and tear apart the phrases all you like, bad actors. It simply brings more attention to them, and gives me the opportunity to explain and re-emphasise how and why they're absolutely true.
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