The Candice Malcolm Show - 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

00:00:04.960 propaganda when it comes to COVID-19, vaccines, and vaccine mandates. I'm Candice Malcolm and

00:00:10.100 this is The Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. One of the

00:00:18.400 biggest stories of the year has been not just COVID, not just the persistence of COVID still

00:00:23.880 in our lives despite the fact that we have jumped through every hoop that public health experts have

00:00:28.540 asked us to, whether it's, you know, 15 days to stay home to flatten the curve, the creation of new

00:00:35.540 things in our society that we never had to use before, like masks and social distancing, the idea

00:00:41.680 that when vaccines came out, if we all just got vaccinated, we'd be able to go back to life as

00:00:47.540 usual. Well, like I said, the biggest goal, the biggest story of the year has been these moving

00:00:52.620 goalposts. The fact that it's never enough, there's always something more, something new, and I want to

00:00:57.980 bring in a guest today who has been on the front lines reporting this important story, often going

00:01:02.840 against the narrative that is being pushed by the political class and the legacy media, often

00:01:07.880 attacked for it, but still relentless in his reporting. I'm talking about Anthony Fury. Anthony

00:01:13.200 is an editor and columnist for the Sun newspaper chain in Canada. He's written for Time, the New York

00:01:18.300 Daily News, literary review of Canada and other publications. He's also appeared on television

00:01:23.260 programs and talk radio all over the world, including Fox News and BBC. He is the host of

00:01:28.980 post-media podcast, Full Comment with Anthony Fury. And since the start of the pandemic, like

00:01:33.960 I said, Anthony has been one of the few voices in the legacy media who has been pushing back

00:01:38.620 against the government's draconian measures and the sometimes nonsensical public health measures.

00:01:44.540 So Anthony, thank you for joining the podcast.

00:01:47.540 Candice, great to be here. You're so kind, but I got to say, all I've really been doing the

00:01:52.080 past year and a half or 20 months is a government report will come out that says, okay, here's

00:01:57.140 what's going on with COVID. Here's what the data actually shows. Here are the myocarditis

00:02:01.660 hospitalization rates post-vaccine. Here's the comorbidity data on a government website.

00:02:06.500 And I'm just reporting what is in government reports. It should be really actually the most

00:02:10.740 boring and easiest and least controversial journalism there is. But for whatever reason,

00:02:16.200 yes, reporting government statistics has kind of upset a few people here and there. It's an

00:02:20.720 interesting time to be alive. That's for sure.

00:02:23.360 It is interesting because Anthony, we see, I mean, look, the problem of groupthink in the

00:02:28.620 media in Canada is a long running problem. It's nothing new, nothing with COVID. But what we see

00:02:33.460 is, you know, there'll be some kind of a main message that's coming from the government,

00:02:37.700 coming from Justin Trudeau or even provincial authorities. And the media is sort of like a pack.

00:02:43.460 They all just completely take the narrative, take the talking points, hook, line and sinker and start

00:02:47.960 promoting it. Not like journalists, but like little activists pushing, pushing one side of the story.

00:02:52.840 And like you said, you sort of take the step to dig a little deeper. You're often demonized and

00:02:58.260 attacked on social media by some of these other fancy, fancy journalists writing in the other

00:03:03.180 organizations. They've called you dangerous. They've called your stories fake news. And, you know,

00:03:09.920 like you said, you're just pulling government data. So I know this is an impossible question to answer,

00:03:15.540 but why is there so much groupthink in the Canadian media? What is happening in Canada where

00:03:20.720 all of the journalists and most of the political class have the exact same opinion when it comes to

00:03:25.500 major issues? Yeah. And I will preface my remarks by saying I have heard from a number of politicians

00:03:30.280 across the spectrum. I've actually heard from people who work at media outlets, pretty much every

00:03:35.440 major media outlet in Canada, people who I didn't know before who have reached out to discuss

00:03:39.660 this issue, people who may want to do journalism a little bit differently. And it is interesting to see that

00:03:44.840 there are folks out there, I'm not going to name them or the outlets because we spoke in confidence,

00:03:48.780 but there are people out there who are kind of uncomfortable with things and they do want to

00:03:53.680 see things go in a different direction. I found it always very enlightening to have those conversations

00:03:57.820 with people. Why are we at this point though, Candace? I mean, I think back in March 2020, April 2020,

00:04:05.180 public health wanted everybody to take this seriously. They were not exactly sure what we were dealing

00:04:10.540 with, what the fatality rate was, how this thing spreads. They said, look, we've got to make sure

00:04:15.140 everybody does things to take protocols, got to take it seriously. So we had a very blanket,

00:04:19.700 blunt message that basically said, anybody can get COVID at any time, in any situation,

00:04:25.360 anybody can die from it. And you've got to stay home, not do anything. And the only way out is for

00:04:30.480 like a 100% vaccination rate or what have you. I know initially they said 70, 75, numbers change and so

00:04:35.500 forth. But that was kind of the blunt message that was communicated. And one can appreciate

00:04:39.960 initially why someone like Dr. Teresa Tan would maybe think that's a good strategy to just make

00:04:46.000 sure someone who actually is quite, you know, maybe not a healthy individual, but mistakes themselves for

00:04:52.080 being healthy. They, oh, I don't have to worry about COVID. And you go, well, I don't know, sir,

00:04:55.680 maybe you do. Or I don't have to get the vaccine. And you go, oh, I don't know, maybe you do.

00:04:59.660 I appreciate why they want to sort of oversell things to a degree. But come on, we're way beyond

00:05:06.560 that. Everybody out there is much more informed about the nuances. A journalist's job is not just

00:05:11.980 to amplify a tone that has been set by a government official or public health official. And may I remind

00:05:18.000 you that public health talks a lot about behavioral sciences or what they call nudging, encouraging

00:05:22.740 people to take a certain attitude. And it's just not the job of media to be pushing all of that out

00:05:28.320 there. If there's some contextualized and nuanced data that suggests that that sort of blunt message

00:05:33.920 that I articulated perhaps is not 100% true, well, you still report that data because that's your job

00:05:39.940 in an independent press and to inform the people out there. So I think that's kind of largely what's

00:05:44.880 going on. That's where the sort of the pack journalism, the narrative and the advocacy journalism

00:05:49.420 has come from. And it's a shame because the general public is much smarter than that and deserves

00:05:54.080 to be treated with much more respect. I couldn't agree more, Anthony. And what I find interesting

00:05:59.480 is that it isn't necessarily a left-right issue. The way that many journalists sort of painted is like,

00:06:04.900 oh, look at these right-wing muckruckers who are spreading this sort of information that goes

00:06:09.780 against the narrative. I mean, look down in the States. I know we've had this conversation before,

00:06:13.520 but we saw in the Atlantic magazine, a sort of mainstream leftist organization going through

00:06:21.440 and saying, well, look, maybe the way that we calculated COVID deaths was wrong and that this

00:06:27.460 thing was never as bad as we thought. We saw Vanity Fair come up with a really comprehensive piece

00:06:31.720 talking about how putting little kids in masks is probably not the best idea. In fact, it probably

00:06:36.760 causes far more harm than good. Whereas these kind of opinions, like the two that I just mentioned,

00:06:42.240 you know, if you put anything up like that out in Canada, well, first of all, you don't see anything

00:06:46.800 like that. You know, the Atlantic is the equivalent of like McLean's Vanity Fair would be like the

00:06:52.420 Walrus. I couldn't imagine those left-leaning mainstream publications. They're hardly mainstream

00:06:57.860 because they have such small audiences, but the legacy media, they just, they don't, they don't have

00:07:04.400 that. And, and, and it's sort of sad that we're, that we're sort of missing out on that other,

00:07:08.200 other viewpoints. So I, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but, but how, how come in the U.S.,

00:07:14.200 which is, which is a political culture very similar to ours, there is so much more array of

00:07:19.020 opinions and thoughts being, being promoted? Yeah, you're so right. I mean, here where I am

00:07:23.360 in Ontario, we suffer from what I would call an information silo. In Ontario, people, and

00:07:28.120 particularly in Toronto, like to congratulate themselves as being so worldly and cosmopolitan

00:07:33.120 and informed. And yet they were deeply ignorant throughout COVID of what was going on in say,

00:07:37.800 Michigan, a place that had less COVID rates in Canada, but was always much more open. Michigan

00:07:42.820 is a bit more of a left-wing state. Governor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer is very much connected 0.74

00:07:47.520 to Joe Biden. Also in Ontario, we didn't know what was going on in British Columbia. I appreciate a lot

00:07:52.160 of my BC readers. They're still unhappy with some of the restrictions in BC, and they hate that I

00:07:56.400 talked them up as a great success. But I do think the only NDP government in Canada has actually

00:08:01.120 been the most balanced government in its response to the pandemic. Here in Ontario, the idea of

00:08:07.280 children not wearing masks in schools, which is still going on right now, and I believe the kids

00:08:11.200 should not be wearing masks in schools. In British Columbia, they actually did revert back to it. But

00:08:16.080 for most of the pandemic, particularly elementary age kids did not wear masks. To your point about the

00:08:21.580 United States, you're right, much more nuanced. New York Times, Atlantic, they're all saying things that

00:08:27.500 generally would not get published in a Canadian outlet. Here in Canada, we would know, we would

00:08:31.660 have followed, say, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, which has nothing to do with our lives. We would

00:08:35.660 have followed every minute of it, every nuance. We would have sort of micro-analyzed all of it,

00:08:41.660 but we don't really pay attention to the US COVID response. And I think a lot of leading Democrats,

00:08:47.100 forget Ron DeSantos in Florida, forget Greg Abbott in Texas, prominent Democratic voices have called

00:08:53.420 for much more balanced response. Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, she's a very left-wing individual. 1.00

00:08:58.380 In January of 2021, she said reopen the restaurants, reopen the stores. That would have been considered

00:09:03.820 far-right crazy talk here in Canada. The former acting Democratic Mayor of Boston, Kim Janey,

00:09:09.980 she compared vaccine passports to slavery. She is a Black lady, just for the record,

00:09:14.380 to put that into context. She later withdrew the remarks, but it's still interesting to see that

00:09:18.620 that is the sort of things that are being said by Democrats, by left-wing individuals in the US.

00:09:24.140 It's much more balanced there. And I think it's been able to allow them to live in a much more

00:09:30.620 balanced way in terms of responding to COVID. I think that when so many Canadians, especially in

00:09:36.460 Ontario, and I'm not trying to be unfair, but they think of the US reaction or the US reaction to COVID

00:09:43.100 and how they treated it, they think of like the very early days when New York was getting hammered

00:09:47.020 and everyone was saying, Trump, Trump's at fault, Trump's at fault. And they sort of smugly say,

00:09:51.180 okay, we're doing better than the US. And then they don't really look at the nuances and the

00:09:55.020 differences that now, two years later, it's like totally different story. You mentioned little kids

00:10:01.340 in masks, and this is a pet peeve of mine and something that I get so frustrated about, even for my 0.90

00:10:07.260 two-year-old that's often made to wear a mask, which is just the most ridiculous thing. You've 0.95

00:10:13.340 reported something a little different when it comes to little kids and vaccines. And I know that we've

00:10:19.340 talked about it before on the program, but I still think that it's incredibly important to address

00:10:25.180 because when you watch the CBC, when you read some of the newspapers, they almost feel like

00:10:30.380 infomercials for the vaccine. Like the sort of report from all around is, parents are eagerly

00:10:36.460 awaiting this vaccine. They can't wait. Kids can finally get the jab and go back to Ramona. I know

00:10:41.660 that's true. I talked to a neighbor of mine yesterday who, her little kids are already vaccinated. As

00:10:47.420 soon as it was available, she was sort of first in line. I know that some parents do have that attitude, 0.97

00:10:51.660 but that's not like the unanimous decision of parents with little kids. I know you've got some

00:10:58.540 kids in that age range. So can you sort of walk us through what the experts say,

00:11:04.300 what the stats are, what the data is when it comes to vaccinating this age group 5 to 11?

00:11:10.460 Yeah, well, one thing that's very interesting, again, some of the nuanced and contextualized

00:11:14.140 information that really hasn't been doing the rounds is the risk-benefit analysis, for instance,

00:11:19.340 for the kids. Pfizer, in their own submission data to the FDA, they looked at myocarditis rates versus

00:11:26.300 COVID prevented hospitalizations among kids to say, what would we actually be getting here if we did

00:11:30.860 a mass campaign? And they looked back at five different periods in time for the past 20 months

00:11:36.140 to say, if we did a max vaccination campaign of kids in this time, how much COVID hospitalizations

00:11:41.020 would there be prevented versus myocarditis? And they did find in one scenario, I believe it was

00:11:45.340 June 2021, and they said, if we vaccinated all kids, it would prevent this number of COVID

00:11:51.020 hospitalizations, but would actually create slightly more myocarditis hospitalizations. So that's

00:11:56.140 very interesting that Pfizer themselves actually say, well, in not all circumstances do the benefits

00:12:02.620 outweigh the risks. And the FDA committee that was actually looking into whether or not they'd

00:12:07.020 approve it for kids, they went back to the FDA and they said several times, hey, could we maybe just

00:12:11.580 first approve this for high-risk kids that we believe definitely should be getting this vaccine

00:12:16.620 before we approve it for the general public because of this sort of risk assessment uncertainty? And the

00:12:21.020 FDA said, no, it's all or nothing. And they said, well, okay, if it's all or nothing, we better just approve

00:12:25.100 it. So we can make it available to those who want it and those we feel need it. But that is not

00:12:29.660 really the stuff that comes out in the reporting. You think the reporting is the FDA saying every

00:12:33.580 kid must get it immediately. So let's come up here to Canada. What happened with NACI, which is our

00:12:38.460 immunization advisory committee, when they approved the vaccine for kids, they made a number of

00:12:44.620 statements about how, by the way, this clinical trial will only detect side effects like myocarditis

00:12:52.060 in one in 1,000. But if it's any worse than that, we just don't know. And there's limited data. They

00:12:57.100 make a point of saying in their documents, their approval documents, that parents should be respected,

00:13:02.060 whatever choice they make, someone should not be stigmatized for not going along with the vaccine.

00:13:07.100 And one interesting document that they sent to medical providers, they didn't make it public,

00:13:12.220 but I have since had it confirmed by Health Canada, is they make it clear that they approve vaccines

00:13:17.340 under two categories, a may be offered and a should be offered. Should be offered means we

00:13:22.860 really think everyone needs to take this because there's a big problem right now. May be offered is,

00:13:27.420 well, look, you know, let's make this available, but we don't have to pressure everybody to taking

00:13:31.420 this. And they clarify the kids vaccine is the may be offered, just because the compelling reasons

00:13:37.340 to push it on everyone isn't there right now, because the risks to children of COVID are so small,

00:13:42.460 and there's a lot of uncertainty still around side effects for the vaccine. And Candace,

00:13:46.460 that is straight out of a Health Canada document. And yet, I think very few people,

00:13:51.020 even very few doctors, I believe, who are appearing on television talking about this issue,

00:13:55.340 very few of them are probably aware of these nuances out there. And this is not me telling

00:13:59.420 anybody what personal decision to make. I'm just saying this is what is in these official documents

00:14:04.940 by the people closest to the story. Well, I do like the fact that they say that parents should

00:14:09.660 be respected either way, because I absolutely agree with that. I agree with that, Anthony, for everyone.

00:14:13.420 If you have personal reasons why you don't want to get vaccinated, all the power to you. I don't

00:14:17.420 think that we should live in a society where we force people to do things. I don't think that we

00:14:20.780 should live in a society where parents who choose to wait to get their kids vaccinated or demonized are

00:14:26.540 called labeled anti-vaxxers. And one of the other interesting things that I read in the report that

00:14:31.580 you did on the NACI report was that the justification to vaccinate kids for any reason other than just

00:14:38.860 to protect the kids is wrong. So when you watch the CBC report, it was like, you know, the purpose

00:14:43.900 of the vaccine for kids is to keep them safe and to protect vulnerable people in their life and to

00:14:49.740 protect general society from COVID. But it's like, no, you can't vaccinate little kids to protect

00:14:57.020 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

00:15:05.580 about the idea of the sort of what Doug Ford once called the split society. He said he didn't think

00:15:09.580 it was right to implement this vaccine passport idea at the get-go. Of course, he changed his mind.

00:15:14.940 I remember you writing about a hypothetical vaccine passport over a year ago and other journalists

00:15:21.900 saying that you were spreading fear and that we wouldn't we wouldn't get a vaccine passport in

00:15:26.140 Canada. And here we are where we saw Justin Trudeau spend half of the election demonizing those who

00:15:31.500 opposed it and sort of scapegoating them. I've talked to a lot of people who are unvaccinated,

00:15:37.660 a lot of people who oppose it for health reasons or moral reasons or religious reasons.

00:15:42.460 And Anthony, from the people I talked to, these people feel afraid, they feel persecuted,

00:15:47.980 they feel demonized, scapegoated, all these things that Canada doesn't do. We don't we don't do that

00:15:53.660 to groups. We don't blame one group for all society's ills. We don't we don't implement snitch lines

00:16:00.140 on one group. Except for for some reason, this this group of unvaccinated people. And I know you 1.00

00:16:06.460 report on this a lot as well. And I wonder if you comment on the sort of creation

00:16:12.380 of a split society where we have the sort of untouchables, which which are the the unvaccinated 1.00

00:16:18.220 in today's society. Let me just say this, I have read about how in past times where there have been

00:16:25.660 major societal upheavals turmoil, the Cultural Revolution in China, in past pandemics actually,

00:16:32.300 where there were odd choices made by society and shaming and odd things people did to their fellow

00:16:38.380 neighbors, or even those some of those videos we've seen. I remember a video coming out of Quebec,

00:16:43.980 back during the absolute height of the lockdowns where a family had extended family members over

00:16:49.340 it might have just been parents in their 60s or so had their had their son who was in his 30s and his

00:16:55.340 wife over for dinner. That's all it was neighbors called police, and the police came, and the people

00:17:01.580 were very angry that they'd come into the house, and a physical altercation happened. I don't encourage

00:17:06.780 anyone to get into a fight with the police, but it happened. They were saying, leave me alone,

00:17:10.540 get out of our house. They were trying to find them or drag them out for having their son over for

00:17:14.620 dinner. And I believe that in the years ahead, we will deny that those things happen. People will feel

00:17:22.620 silent, deep shame over those things that happened. And I believe that many of the medical experts who

00:17:29.020 appeared on television, encouraging the climate for these things to happen, that they will try and pull a

00:17:34.460 revisionist history, and they will deny that they have the positions they had. And they say,

00:17:39.340 well, no, I was actually one of the people who called for a more balanced response.

00:17:42.780 No, I thought that was a bit too extreme. I believe that's going to happen. I think it's already

00:17:46.940 starting to happen a little bit. And I think we should and we will feel deep shame about how we

00:17:52.220 treated our neighbors and our fellow Canadians over a lot of all of this.

00:17:56.780 Well, I hope you're right, Anthony, because I can see another path, which is even darker,

00:18:02.700 where we maintain these positions and we bring them into our post-pandemic life, if a post-pandemic

00:18:08.140 life even is out there where there's greater and deeper persecution. But I hope that you're right,

00:18:14.540 that we move on past from all this and people who acted that way are ashamed. Well, it's sort of a

00:18:21.020 year-end interview, Anthony. And so I just wanted to say that we really appreciate the reports that you

00:18:25.660 do for True North. You're one of our best reporters. Your videos are really popular. And I know our

00:18:30.220 audience really appreciates you. What do you have in store for 2022? Do you have any big reports coming

00:18:37.660 out? Any big things that you're going to be covering? What does the year look like for you?

00:18:41.500 Oh, wow. Well, look, I think it's all about, again, getting the verified data from government

00:18:46.220 to help tell people what's actually going on, whether it comes to COVID statistics, COVID data,

00:18:51.900 or basic things like we hear renewed interest in legislation for the climate crisis. But then when

00:18:58.780 we actually look at the federal government's own data, we see that Canadians per capita emissions

00:19:03.740 are dropping 20%. Emissions are actually going down in Canada. The situation's looking okay. And this

00:19:10.460 is actually because of innovation through industry, building a better mousetrap. Lots of great Canadian

00:19:16.380 talent putting the R&D into building solutions. I don't know what's going on at these climate Glasgow,

00:19:22.220 Paris events, and so forth. It seems like a lot of people having some cocktails and hanging out and

00:19:27.260 everything. I think that has nothing to do with the situation. And I really put my faith in industry

00:19:32.620 just doing awesome things and great innovation. And I think you've got to get that data out there

00:19:37.660 as well about what's going on with the climate stuff. Because a long time ago, in April 2020,

00:19:42.940 the Green Party of Canada actually put out a release saying, yeah, this whole shutting down

00:19:46.780 thing, this lockdown thing is actually good for the climate as well. So let's have that in mind

00:19:51.100 moving forward. And let's keep in mind that they said that, because that's scary.

00:19:55.900 Well, it's true. And you hear so often, Justin Trudeau, throughout the whole pandemic,

00:19:59.660 he wouldn't just talk about the COVID crisis. He would always make a point of saying that the dueling

00:20:05.740 crises of COVID and climate, it was like he couldn't, he wanted to compare the two. He wanted to keep it in

00:20:11.340 your mind. It's like, okay, we've gone through this whole COVID crisis thing. Let's just replicate

00:20:15.100 that with the climate and get everyone scared and make everyone take huge sacrifices and throw out

00:20:20.700 the debt, run up the debt. You know, it's coming. So I'm really grateful and fortunate. We're fortunate

00:20:28.460 at True North that we have your talents and we really appreciate all the work you do. Anthony

00:20:33.580 Fury, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you have a great Christmas and a great holiday with

00:20:36.620 your family. Thanks for joining us. Well, thanks very much. And same to all the viewers.

00:20:41.340 All right. Thank you so much. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - December 21, 2021

COVID news reports often look more like propaganda than journalism

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