The information and commentary that reaches us from traditional media outlets is frequently highly politicised and biased by partisan interests, whether ideological, political, or financial, as we have seen throughout the Covid pandemic. Luckily, we can complement the information and commentary of mainstream sources with the perspectives of independent journalists and commentators; that is, journalists and commentators who are independent from financial conflicts of interest, heavy-handed ideological agendas, advertising revenue with strings attached, government sponsorship, Big Pharma, and more generally, slavish attachment to the dominant narrative.
In case you want to complement your mainstream media content with independent analysis, here is a pitstop tour of some of the best media analysis and reporting I have found. The list is very selective, with short quotes to give you a taste of the content, but I hope you find it of interest. Feel free to use the comments section at the end to recommend additional media platforms you consider to be fair, balanced, and well informed.
My recommendation of these journalists and platforms does not entail that I agree with everything they say, just that I find them to make for thoughtful, informed and stimulating conversation partners. Each reader will have their own special interests and preferences. If you dig deep enough, you will probably find the right type of independent journalist or media outlet to cater to your own peculiar needs and interests.
1. Vinay Prasad - Public Health Needs Restrictions
Post-COVID we need to seriously talk about setting restrictions. But not on people. We need to place restrictions on public health and things done in the name of public health. We cannot allow individuals who are poor at weighing risk and benefit and uncertainty to coerce human beings, disproportionately the young and powerless (waiters/ servers) to participate in interventions that have no data supporting them, for years on end.
2. Common Sense - Kony 2012 Never Ended
We learned to parrot each year’s slogans and post infographics and put our preferred pronouns in our Instagram bios and believe, somehow, that this was the same thing as fighting injustice. We let corporations and opportunists and corrupt non-profits tell us that they’d take care of the hard part, if only we’d donate our money or email our representative, and we used their forms and language and dedicated our feeds to The Cause. We conflated our good politics with being a good person.
3. The Epoch Times - Florida to Allow Doctors to Use Off-Label Drugs for Early Treatment of COVID-19
Repurposed drugs that have been shown to prevent or treat COVID-19 may be prescribed by physicians, the Florida Department of Health said in its new COVID-19 guidance for health care practitioners…Florida is the first and only state to go against the Centers for Disease and Prevention’s (CDC) recommendation of staying home and only going to the emergency department when symptoms become severe unless the individual is at high risk, then they may be eligible for treatment with an authorized antiviral or monoclonal antibody.
4. Mercatornet - Groupthink today: an endless circle of scapegoating
A theory of mob violence by the French philosopher René Girard sets the phenomenon of groupthink in a wider anthropological context. Girard argued that human desire itself is mimetic. In other words, human beings don’t just conform their thinking to others, but also copy their desire from others. Like groupthink, human beings are unaware of the origin of their desire, believing it to be something that originates in themselves.
5. Eugyppius - a Plague Chronicle - Andreas Schöfbeck, German insurance executive who warned of the high vaccine side-effect rate revealed by billing data, has been fired
Two weeks ago, BKK ProVita chairman Andreas Schöfbeck caused a small uproar by writing to Germany’s vaccine regulator, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, to inquire about the high rate of vaccine side-effects evident from BKK billing data. Schöfbeck has now been fired following an hours-long company meeting this morning, at which he was called upon to defend his letter. Representatives from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, including its president, Klaus Cichutek, had agreed to meet with Schöfbeck and other BKK officials about their concerns this afternoon. Schöfbeck’s termination was obviously timed to prevent his participation at that meeting, which will now go forward without him.
6. The Pandemic Podcast - Why Do So Many Still Buy Into the Narrative?
7. The Joe Rogan Experience - in-depth interview with Maajid Nawaz on terrorism, censorship, and vaccines, among other issues
8. Sebastian Rushworth - Non-specific vaccine effects, with Dr. Christine Stabell Benn
Unfortunately, when randomized trials of vaccines are run, they usually only look at the ability to protect against a specific pathogen, and thus fail to answer whether the vaccine provides an overall health benefit or not. Vaccine trials are also usually too short, because non-specific vaccine effects can last for years or in some cases even decades.
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I like reading Michael R. Eades, M.D. "The Arrow" currently as an email every Friday morning.
A few years ago, who would have believed it would become so difficult to find honest, principled reporting. Here we are. Before Substack, I found the odd tidbits of truth, but thankfully for so many great writers in this community, the world is waking up to what’s really been going on.
Thanks for the recommendations, I think there’s a whole lot of people having become obsessed with going down the rabbit hole of truth…and discovering just how badly we’ve been deceived.