Juno News - COVID news reports often look more like propaganda than journalism

00:00:00.000 The legacy media team up with the political class to push information and sometimes flat-out

00:00:04.920 propaganda when it comes to COVID-19, vaccines, and vaccine mandates. I'm Candice Malcolm and

00:00:10.060 this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. One of the

00:00:18.360 biggest stories of the year has been not just COVID, not just the persistence of COVID still

00:00:23.840 in our lives despite the fact that we have jumped through every hoop that public health experts have

00:00:28.500 asked us to, whether it's, you know, 15 days to stay home to flatten the curve, the creation of new

00:00:35.500 things in our society that we never had to use before, like masks and social distancing, the idea

00:00:41.640 that when vaccines came out, if we all just got vaccinated, we'd be able to go back to life as

00:00:47.500 usual. Well, like I said, the biggest goal, the biggest story of the year has been these moving

00:00:52.580 goalposts, the fact that it's never enough, there's always something more, something new, and I want to

00:00:57.940 bring in a guest today who has been on the front lines reporting this important story, often going

00:01:02.800 against the narrative that is being pushed by the political class and the legacy media, often

00:01:07.840 attacked for it, but still relentless in his reporting. I'm talking about Anthony Fury. Anthony

00:01:13.160 is an editor and columnist for the Sun newspaper chain in Canada. He's written for Time, the New York

00:01:18.260 Daily News, literary review of Canada and other publications. He's also appeared on television

00:01:23.220 programs and talk radio all over the world, including Fox News and BBC. He is the host of

00:01:28.940 post-media podcast, Full Comment with Anthony Fury. And since the start of the pandemic, like

00:01:33.920 I said, Anthony has been one of the few voices in the legacy media who has been pushing back

00:01:38.580 against the government's draconian measures and the sometimes nonsensical public health measures.

00:01:44.320 So Anthony, thank you for joining the podcast.

00:01:47.500 Candace, great to be here. You're so kind, but I got to say, all I've really been doing the

00:01:52.040 past year and a half or 20 months is a government report will come out that says, okay, here's

00:01:57.080 what's going on with COVID. Here's what the data actually shows. Here are the myocarditis

00:02:01.620 hospitalization rates post-vaccine. Here's the comorbidity data on a government website.

00:02:06.460 And I'm just reporting what is in government reports. It should be really actually the most

00:02:10.700 boring and easiest and least controversial journalism there is. But for whatever reason, yes, reporting

00:02:16.660 government statistics has kind of upset a few people here and there. It's an interesting time to be

00:02:21.540 alive. That's for sure.

00:02:23.000 It is interesting because Anthony, we see, I mean, look, the problem of groupthink in the

00:02:28.580 media in Canada is a long running problem. It's nothing new, nothing with COVID. But what we see

00:02:33.420 is, you know, there'll be some kind of a main message that's coming from the government, coming

00:02:37.820 from Justin Trudeau or even provincial authorities. And the media is sort of like a pack. They all just

00:02:43.980 completely take the narrative, take the talking points, hook, line and sinker and start promoting it.

00:02:48.560 Not like journalists, but like little activists pushing, pushing one side of the story. And like

00:02:53.340 you said, you sort of take the step to dig a little deeper. You're often demonized and attacked

00:02:58.520 on social media by some of these other fancy, fancy journalists writing in the other organizations

00:03:03.680 that they've called you dangerous. They've called your stories fake news. And, you know, like you said,

00:03:10.540 you're just pulling government data. So I know this is an impossible question to answer, but why is there

00:03:16.680 so much groupthink in the Canadian media? What is happening in Canada where all of the journalists

00:03:21.940 and most of the political class had the exact same opinion when it comes to major issues?

00:03:26.860 Yeah. And I will preface my remarks by saying I have heard from a number of politicians

00:03:30.240 across the spectrum. I've actually heard from people who work at media outlets, pretty much

00:03:35.160 every major media outlet in Canada, people who I didn't know before who have reached out to discuss

00:03:39.620 this issue, people who may want to do journalism a little bit differently. And it is interesting to see

00:03:44.680 that there are folks out there. I'm not going to name them or the outlets because we spoke in

00:03:47.960 confidence, but there are people out there who are kind of uncomfortable with things and they do

00:03:53.400 want to see things go in a different direction. I found it always very enlightening to have those

00:03:57.220 conversations with people. Why are we at this point though, Candace? I mean, I think back in

00:04:02.240 March 2020, April 2020, public health wanted everybody to take this seriously. They were not

00:04:08.900 exactly sure what we were dealing with, what the fatality rate was, how this thing spreads. They said,

00:04:13.760 look, we've got to make sure everybody does things to take protocols, got to take it seriously. So we

00:04:18.420 had a very blanket, blunt message that basically said, anybody can get COVID at any time, in any

00:04:24.000 situation, anybody can die from it. And you've got to stay home, not do anything. And the only way

00:04:29.720 out is for like a 100% vaccination rate or what have you. I know initially they said 70, 75, numbers

00:04:34.840 change and so forth. But that was kind of the blunt message that was communicated. And one can

00:04:39.420 appreciate initially why someone like Dr. Theresa Tan would maybe think that's a good strategy to just

00:04:45.460 make sure someone who actually is quite, you know, maybe not a healthy individual, but mistakes

00:04:51.400 themselves for being healthy. They don't have to worry about COVID. And you go, well, I don't know,

00:04:55.480 sir, maybe you do. Or I don't have to get the vaccine. You know, I don't know, maybe you do.

00:04:59.640 I appreciate why they want to sort of oversell things to a degree. But come on, we're way beyond

00:05:06.520 that. Everybody out there is much more informed about the nuances. A journalist's job is not just

00:05:11.940 to amplify a tone that has been set by a government official or public health official. And may I remind

00:05:17.960 you that public health talks a lot about behavioral sciences or what they call nudging, encouraging

00:05:22.700 people to take a certain attitude. And it's just not the job of media to be pushing all of that out there.

00:05:28.460 If there's some contextualized and nuanced data that suggests that that sort of blunt message that

00:05:34.080 I articulated perhaps is not 100% true, well, you still report that data, because that's your job

00:05:39.900 in an independent press and to inform the people out there. So I think that's kind of largely what's

00:05:44.840 going on. That's where the sort of the pack journalism, the narrative and the advocacy journalism

00:05:49.380 has come from. And it's a shame because the general public is much smarter than that and deserves

00:05:54.040 to be treated with much more respect.

00:05:55.760 I couldn't agree more, Anthony. And what I find interesting is that it isn't necessarily

00:06:00.820 a left-right issue. The way that many journalists sort of painted is like, oh, look at these right

00:06:05.900 wing muckruckers who are spreading this sort of information that goes against the narrative.

00:06:10.420 I mean, look down in the States. I know we've had this conversation before, but we saw in the

00:06:16.040 Atlantic magazine, a sort of mainstream leftist organization going through and saying, well,

00:06:22.360 look, maybe the way that we calculated COVID deaths was wrong and that this thing was never

00:06:27.920 as bad as we thought. We saw Vanity Fair come up with a really comprehensive piece talking about

00:06:32.360 how putting little kids in masks is probably not the best idea. In fact, it probably causes far more

00:06:38.160 harm than good. Whereas these kind of opinions, like the two that I just mentioned, you know,

00:06:42.920 if you put anything like that out in Canada, well, first of all, you don't see anything like that.

00:06:47.280 You know, the Atlantic is the equivalent of like McLean's Vanity Fair would be like the walrus.

00:06:52.780 I couldn't imagine those left-leaning mainstream publications. They're hardly mainstream because

00:06:58.000 they have such small audiences, but the legacy media, they don't have that. And it's sort of sad

00:07:05.880 that we're sort of missing out on that other viewpoint. So I don't want to beat a dead horse,

00:07:11.720 but how come in the US, which is a political culture very similar to ours, there is so much

00:07:17.640 more array of opinions and thoughts being promoted? Yeah, you're so right. I mean, here where I am in

00:07:23.420 Ontario, we suffer from what I would call an information silo. In Ontario, people, and

00:07:28.080 particularly in Toronto, like to congratulate themselves as being so worldly and cosmopolitan

00:07:33.080 and informed. And yet they were deeply ignorant throughout COVID of what was going on in, say,

00:07:37.580 Michigan, a place that had worse COVID rates in Canada, but was always much more open. Michigan

00:07:42.800 is a bit more of a left-wing state. Governor Democrat Gretchen Whitmer is very much connected

00:07:47.480 to Joe Biden. Also in Ontario, we didn't know what was going on in British Columbia. I appreciate a lot

00:07:52.120 of my BC readers. They're still unhappy with some of the restrictions in BC, and they hate that I talked

00:07:56.640 them up as a great success. But I do think the only NDP government in Canada has actually been

00:08:01.360 the most balanced government in its response to the pandemic. Here in Ontario, the idea of children

00:08:07.540 not wearing masks in schools, which is still going on right now, and I believe the kids should not be

00:08:11.760 wearing masks in schools. In British Columbia, they actually did revert back to it. But for most of the

00:08:16.740 pandemic, particularly elementary age kids did not wear masks. To your point about the United States,

00:08:22.580 you're right, much more nuanced. New York Times, Atlantic, they're all saying things that generally

00:08:27.720 would not get published in a Canadian outlet. Here in Canada, we would know, we would have

00:08:31.800 followed, say, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which has nothing to do with our lives. We would have

00:08:35.820 followed every minute of it, every nuance. We would have sort of micro-analyzed all of it,

00:08:42.060 but we don't really pay attention to the U.S. COVID response. And I think a lot of leading

00:08:46.540 Democrats, forget Ron DeSantos in Florida, forget Greg Abbott in Texas, prominent Democratic voices

00:08:52.680 have called for much more balanced response. Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, she's a very left-wing 1.00

00:08:57.140 individual. In January of 2021, she said, reopen the restaurants, reopen the stores. That would

00:09:03.140 have been considered far-right crazy talk here in Canada. The former acting Democratic mayor of

00:09:08.240 Boston, Kim Janey, she compared vaccine passports to slavery. She is a Black lady, just for the record,

00:09:14.500 to put that into context. She later withdrew the remarks, but it's still interesting to see that

00:09:18.280 that is the sort of things that are being said by Democrats, by left-wing individuals in the U.S.

00:09:24.160 it's much more balanced there. And I think it's been able to allow them to live in a much more

00:09:30.480 balanced way in terms of responding to COVID. I think that when so many Canadians, especially

00:09:36.260 in Ontario, and I'm not trying to be unfair, but they think of the U.S. reaction or the U.S.

00:09:42.260 reaction to COVID and how they treated it, they think of like the very early days when New York was

00:09:46.220 getting hammered and everyone was saying, Trump's at fault, Trump's at fault. And they sort of smugly say,

00:09:51.220 we're doing better than the U.S. And then they don't really look at the nuances and the differences

00:09:55.480 that now, two years later, it's like a totally different story. You mentioned little kids in

00:10:01.560 masks, and this is a pet peeve of mine and something that I get so frustrated about, even for my two-year-old 0.90

00:10:07.880 that's often made to wear a mask, which is just the most ridiculous thing. You've reported something 0.61

00:10:14.020 a little different when it comes to little kids and vaccines. And I know that we've talked about it

00:10:19.820 before on the program, but I still think that it's incredibly important to address because when

00:10:25.600 you watch the CBC, when you read some of the newspapers, they almost feel like infomercials

00:10:31.100 for the vaccine. Like the sort of report from all around is parents are eagerly awaiting this

00:10:37.100 vaccine. They can't wait. Kids can finally get the jab and go back to hormona. I know that's true.

00:10:42.160 I talked to a neighbor of mine yesterday who her little kids are already vaccinated. As soon as it

00:10:47.820 was available, she was sort of first in line. I know that some parents do have that attitude, 0.99

00:10:51.860 but that's not like the unanimous decision of parents with little kids. I know you've got some

00:10:58.420 kids in that age range. So can you sort of walk us through what the experts say, what the stats are,

00:11:05.260 what the data is when it comes to vaccinating this age group 5 to 11? Yeah, well, one thing that's very

00:11:11.640 interesting, again, some of the nuanced and contextualized information that really hasn't been

00:11:15.860 doing the rounds is the risk benefit analysis, for instance, for the kids. Pfizer and their own

00:11:21.260 submission data to the FDA, they looked at myocarditis rates versus COVID prevented hospitalizations

00:11:28.140 among kids to see what would we actually be getting here if we did a mass campaign. And they looked back

00:11:32.880 at five different periods in time for the past 20 months to say if we did a max vaccination campaign

00:11:38.340 of kids in this time, how much COVID hospitalizations would there be prevented versus myocarditis? And they

00:11:43.720 did find in one scenario, I believe it was June 2021. And they said, if we vaccinated all kids,

00:11:48.920 it would it would prevent this number of COVID hospitalizations, but would actually create

00:11:52.840 slightly more myocarditis hospitalizations. So that's very interesting that Pfizer themselves

00:11:58.180 actually say, well, not all circumstances do the benefits outweigh the risks. And the FDA

00:12:04.500 committee that was actually looking into whether or not they'd approve it for kids,

00:12:07.900 they went back to the FDA and they said several times, hey, could we maybe just first approve this

00:12:12.640 for high risk kids that we believe definitely should be getting this vaccine before we approve

00:12:17.360 it for the general public because of this sort of risk assessment uncertainty. And the FDA said,

00:12:21.720 no, it's all or nothing. And they said, well, okay, if it's all or nothing, we better just approve it.

00:12:25.320 So we can make it available to those who want it and those we feel need it. But that is not really

00:12:29.980 the stuff that comes out in the reporting. You think the reporting is the FDA saying every kid must get

00:12:34.360 it immediately. So let's come up here to Canada. What happened with NACI, which is our immunization

00:12:39.400 advisory committee. When they approved the vaccine for kids, they made a number of statements about

00:12:45.420 how, by the way, this clinical trial will only detect side effects like myocarditis in one in

00:12:52.800 1000. But if it's any worse than that, we just don't know. And there's limited data. They make a point

00:12:57.700 of saying in their documents, their approval documents, that parents should be respected,

00:13:02.080 whatever choice they make, someone should not be stigmatized for not going along with the vaccine.

00:13:06.920 And one interesting document that they sent to medical providers, they didn't make it public,

00:13:12.200 but I have since had it confirmed by Health Canada, is they make it clear that they approve vaccines

00:13:17.000 under two categories, a may be offered and a should be offered. Should be offered means we really think

00:13:23.380 everyone needs to take this because there's a big problem right now. May be offered is, well, look,

00:13:28.120 you know, let's make this available, but we don't have to pressure everybody to taking this. And they

00:13:31.960 clarify the kids vaccine is the maybe offer, just because the compelling reasons to push it on

00:13:38.020 everyone isn't there right now, because the risks to children of COVID are so small. And there's a lot

00:13:43.080 of uncertainty still around side effects for the vaccine. And Candace, that is straight out of a

00:13:47.300 Health Canada document. And yet, I think very few people, even very few doctors, I believe, who are

00:13:53.340 appearing on television talking about this issue, very few of them are probably aware of these nuances

00:13:57.900 out there. And this is not me telling anybody what personal decision to make. I'm just saying

00:14:02.580 this is what is in these official documents by the people closest to the story.

00:14:07.700 Well, I do like the fact that they say that parents should be respected either way,

00:14:10.720 because I absolutely agree with that. I agree with that, Anthony, for everyone. If you have personal

00:14:14.480 reasons why you don't want to get vaccinated, all the power to you. I don't think that we should live

00:14:18.140 in a society where we force people to do things. I don't think that we should live in a society where

00:14:22.440 parents who choose to wait to get their kids vaccinated or demonized or called labeled

00:14:27.380 anti-vaxxers. And one of the other interesting things that I read in the report that you did on

00:14:32.220 the NACI report was that the justification to vaccinate kids for any reason other than just

00:14:38.920 to protect the kids is wrong. So when you watch the CBC report, it was like, you know, the purpose

00:14:43.960 of the vaccine for kids is to keep them safe and to protect vulnerable people in their life and to

00:14:49.800 protect general society from COVID. But it's like, no, you can't vaccinate little kids to protect

00:14:56.820 other people. You can vaccinate little kids to protect kids. And I think that that's something 0.99

00:15:00.300 that is missing from a lot of the way that people are thinking about it. I want to talk about the

00:15:05.900 idea of the sort of what Doug Ford once called the split society. He said he didn't think it was right

00:15:10.160 to implement this vaccine passport idea at the get-go. Of course, he changed his mind. I remember

00:15:15.360 you writing about a hypothetical vaccine passport over a year ago and other journalists saying that you

00:15:22.380 were spreading fear and that we wouldn't get a vaccine passport in Canada. And here we are where

00:15:27.700 we saw Justin Trudeau spend half of the election demonizing those who opposed it and sort of

00:15:33.780 scapegoating them. I've talked to a lot of people who are unvaccinated, a lot of people who oppose it

00:15:39.700 for health reasons or moral reasons or religious reasons. And from the people I talk to, these people

00:15:46.260 feel afraid, they feel persecuted, they feel demonized, scapegoated, all these things that

00:15:51.300 Canada doesn't do. We don't do that to groups. We don't blame one group for all society's ills.

00:15:57.880 We don't implement snitch lines on one group, except for, for some reason, this group of

00:16:04.380 unvaccinated people. And I know you report on this a lot as well. And I wonder if you comment on

00:16:10.980 the sort of creation of a split society where we have the sort of untouchables, which which are the 0.99

00:16:17.220 the unvaccinated in today's society. Let me just say this. I have read about how in past times where

00:16:25.220 there have been major societal upheavals, turmoil, the cultural revolution in China, in past pandemics,

00:16:32.020 actually, where there were odd choices made by society and shaming and odd things people did to

00:16:37.940 their fellow neighbors, or even those some of those videos we've seen, I remember a video coming out

00:16:42.980 of Quebec, back during the absolute height of the lockdowns where a family had extended family members

00:16:49.060 over it might have just been parents in their 60s or so had their had their son who was in his 30s and

00:16:55.140 his wife over for dinner. That's all it was neighbors called police, and the police came, and the people

00:17:01.540 were very angry that they'd come into the house, and a physical altercation happened. I don't encourage

00:17:06.740 anyone to get into a fight with the police, but it happened. They're saying, leave me alone, get out

00:17:10.740 of our house. They were trying to find them or drag them out for having their son over for dinner.

00:17:15.460 And I believe that in the years ahead, we will deny that those things happen. People will feel silent,

00:17:23.060 deep shame over those things that happened. And I believe that many of the medical experts who

00:17:28.980 appeared on television, encouraging the climate for these things to happen, that they will try and pull a

00:17:34.420 revisionist history, and they will deny that they have the positions they had. And they say,

00:17:39.300 well, no, I was actually one of the people who called for a more balanced response. No,

00:17:42.980 I thought that was a bit too extreme. I believe that's going to happen. I think it's already starting

00:17:47.220 to happen a little bit. And I think we should and we will feel deep shame about how we treated our

00:17:52.660 neighbors and our fellow Canadians over a lot of all of this.

00:17:56.740 Well, I hope you're right, Anthony, because I can see another path, which is even darker,

00:18:02.660 where we maintain these positions and we bring them into our post-pandemic life, if a post-pandemic

00:18:08.100 life even is out there, where there's greater and deeper persecution. But I hope that you're right,

00:18:14.500 that we move on past from all this and people who acted that way are ashamed. Well, it's sort of a

00:18:20.980 year-end interview, Anthony. And so I just wanted to say that we really appreciate the reports that

00:18:25.940 you do for Trenorth. You're one of our best reporters. Your videos are really popular. And I know our

00:18:30.180 audience really appreciates you. What do you have in store for 2022? Do you have any big reports coming

00:18:37.620 out? Any big things that you're going to be covering? What does the year look like for you?

00:18:41.460 Oh, wow. Well, look, I think it's all about, again, getting the verified data from government to help tell

00:18:46.980 people what's actually going on, whether it comes to COVID statistics, COVID data, or basic things

00:18:53.460 like we hear renewed interest in legislation for the climate crisis. But then when we actually look

00:18:59.460 at the federal government's own data, we see that Canadians per capita emissions are dropping 20%.

00:19:06.020 Emissions are actually going down in Canada. The situation's looking okay. And this is actually

00:19:10.980 because of innovation through industry, building a better mousetrap. You know, lots of great Canadian

00:19:16.340 talent putting the R&D in to building solutions. I don't know what's going on at these climate

00:19:21.620 Glasgow, Paris events and so forth. It seems like a lot of, you know, people having some cocktails and

00:19:26.740 hanging out and everything. I think that has nothing to do with the situation. And I really put my faith

00:19:31.460 in industry just doing awesome things and great innovation. And I think you got to get that data out

00:19:37.300 there as well about what's going on with the climate stuff. Because a long time ago in April 2020,

00:19:42.980 the Green Party of Canada actually put out a release saying, yeah, this whole shutting down

00:19:46.740 thing, this lockdown thing is actually good for the climate as well. So let's have that in mind

00:19:51.060 moving forward. And let's keep in mind that they said that, because that's scary.

00:19:55.940 Well, it's true. And you hear so often, Justin Trudeau, throughout the whole pandemic, he wouldn't

00:20:00.340 just talk about the COVID crisis, he would always make a point of saying that the dueling crises of COVID and

00:20:07.540 climate, it was like he couldn't, he wanted to compare the two, he wanted to keep it in your mind. It's like,

00:20:12.980 this whole COVID crisis thing. Let's just replicate that with the climate and get everyone scared and

00:20:17.460 make everyone take huge sacrifices and throw out the debt, run up the debt. You know, it's coming.

00:20:24.500 So I'm really grateful and fortunate. We're fortunate at True North that we have your talents. And we

00:20:31.540 really appreciate all the work you do. Anthony Fury, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you have a

00:20:35.060 great Christmas and a great holiday with your family. Thanks for joining us.

00:20:37.860 Well, thanks very much. And same to all the viewers.

00:20:41.300 All right. Thank you so much. I'm Candace Malcolm. And this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

Juno News - December 21, 2021

COVID news reports often look more like propaganda than journalism

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