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Witnessing the Media’s Covid Coverage from the Inside
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Michael Ejercito
Nov 19, 2023, 2:36:16 PM11/19/23
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https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/17z10f7/writing_wrongthink_witnessing_the_medias_covid/
Witnessing the Media’s Covid Coverage from the Inside
BY Gabrielle BauerGABRIELLE BAUER NOVEMBER 17, 2023 MEDIA, SOCIETY
7 MINUTE READ
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
In the movie An Education, the main character gets sidetracked from her
studies by a smooth-talking art dealer who turns out to be a
criminal—and married. Our protagonist learns more from that experience
than from all the medieval literature books she cracked open before. I
have similar feelings about my own education. While I’ve been earning my
living as a writer for the past 29 years, it’s only during the Covid era
that I learned what the writing business is really about.
I wear two hats in my professional life: medical writer, creating
materials for doctors and the healthcare industry, and feature-article
journalist for consumer magazines. It wasn’t until Covid that I began
pitching essays and op-eds for publication.
I started with a piece called “A Tale of Two Pandemic Cities,” which
grew out of my short trip to Amsterdam and Stockholm in the summer of
2020, when the European Union opened its doors to “well-behaved”
countries like Canada. The Covid hysteria in my country had made me
desperate to visit more balanced parts of the world, and my trip didn’t
disappoint. The article found a home at a Canadian outlet called Healthy
Debate, though the editor asked me to temper my enthusiasm for the
Swedish strategy with an acknowledgement of its risks. Happy to find a
legit publisher for my first Covid piece, I capitulated, sort of. (You
can judge for yourself.)
Thus began a feverish outpouring of essays, each one motivated by the
same bewildered questions: What the hell is happening to the world, and
why? Has everyone else gone mad, or is it me? I had written a few
controversial articles throughout my career, but never before had I held
a “dissenting view” about an issue that affected the whole world—or felt
such an urgent need to express it.
The Great Divide
I quickly learned that certain news outlets were less open to my pieces
than others. Salon, fuggedaboutit. Spiked Online, bull’s eye on the
first try. Washington Post, not a chance. Wall Street Journal, a couple
of “close, but no cigar” efforts and then finally a yes. It boiled down
to this: the further left a publication leaned, the less likely it would
publish my pieces (or even respond to my inquiries). I’m sure a
statistician could write an equation to capture the trend.
So why the radio silence from left-wing publications? I doubted I was
tripping their “Covid disinformation” radars, as my pieces had less to
do with scientific facts than with social philosophy: the balance
between safety and freedom, the perils of top-down collectivism, the
abuse of the precautionary principle, that sort of thing. If
right-leaning outlets wanted my words and left-leaning ones did not, my
Occam’s razor landed on ideology as the explanatory factor. So-called
progressive media had a story to uphold and rejected any plot twist that
threatened the cohesion of its narrative. (Not that right-wing media
behaved much differently. Such is the age of advocacy journalism.)
Most nerve-wracking of all were the publishers who accepted my articles
but, like that first Healthy Debate editor, insisted I make substantive
changes. Should I concede or push back? I did a bit of both. The most
important thing, I told myself, was to make people reflect on the
topsy-turvy policies that had freeze-framed the world. If I had to
soften a few sentences to get the word out, so be it. I have the utmost
respect for writers who refuse to yield on such matters, but 29 years of
paying the bills from my writing have tipped my internal compass toward
pragmatism.
I did stand my ground with an article on the mask wars. My thesis was
that the endless and pointless disputes on social media—masks work, no
they don’t, yes they do, no they don’t—had less to do with science than
with worldview: irrespective of the data, social collectivists would
find a way to defend masks, while my freedom-first compatriots would
never countenance a perma-masked world.
One editor agreed to publish the piece if I mentioned that some studies
favor masking, but I argued that quoting studies would undercut my
central argument: that the forces powering the mask wars have little to
do with how well they block viruses. He wouldn’t budge, so we parted
ways and I found a more congenial home for the piece at the Ottawa Citizen.
Hidden Treasures
The process of pitching counternarrative essays, while arduous at times,
led me to a smorgasbord of lesser-known, high-quality publications I
never would have discovered otherwise. Topping the list was the glorious
UnHerd, a UK news and opinion website with such daring thinkers as Mary
Harrington and Kathleen Stock on its roster of contributors. The
US-based Tablet magazine offered consistently fresh takes on Covid and
never took the easy road in its analyses. In its pages I found one of
the most powerful Covid essays I have ever read. The author, Ann Bauer
(no relation), teased out the common threads between the “settled
science” about the virus and the litany of quack theories about autism,
which fed into her son’s death by suicide.
Then there was Quillette, whose contempt for the sacred cows of wokeism
gave me a special thrill. True confession: I blew my chances with
Quillette and it’s my own damned fault. Like many working writers, I
sometimes pitch a piece to more than one outlet at the same time, a
practice known as simultaneous submissions. This goes against
protocol—we’re supposed to wait until an editor declines our pitch
before approaching the next one—but the reality is that many editors
never respond. With the deck thus stacked against us, we writers
sometimes push the envelope, figuring the odds of getting multiple
acceptances (and thus pissing off editors) are low enough to take the risk.
On this particular occasion, I submitted an article called “Lessons from
my Half-Vaxxed Daughter” to three publications. Medpage Today responded
right away, and I accepted their offer to publish it. (This was while
Marty Makary, the dissident-lite physician who called out people’s
distorted perception of Covid risk in mainstream media, led the
editorial team.) A few hours later, Quillette’s Canadian editor sent me
a slightly reworked version of my piece and told me when he planned to
run it. I had no choice but to proffer a red-faced apology and admit I
had already placed the article elsewhere. He never responded to my email
or to a follow-up mea culpa a few weeks later—and has ignored everything
I’ve submitted since then. I guess I’ll have to wait until he retires.
Podcast Polarities
Earlier this year, Brownstone Institute published my book Blindsight Is
2020, which critiques the pandemic response through the lens of 46
dissident thinkers. By all standards a moderate book, it stays clear of
any “conspiratorial” speculations about the origins of the pandemic or
the political response to it. Instead, it focuses on the philosophical
and ethical issues that kept me awake at night during the peak Covid
years—the same themes I explore in my essays, but in greater depth. I
wrote the book not just for “my team,” but for those who vehemently
opposed my views—perhaps especially for them. I didn’t expect to change
their minds as much as to help them understand why some of us objected
so strenuously to the policies they cheered on.
After the book came out, a few podcasters invited me to their shows. I
appeared on a Libertarian Institute podcast in which the host puffed on
his hand-rolled cigarettes while we talked. I spoke to an amiable ex-con
podcaster who made it his mission to share Ayn Rand’s ideas with the
world. I bonded with Rupa Subramanya—a brilliant Canadian conservative
journalist and podcaster featured in my book—over the Freedom Convoy we
had both supported.
All told I’ve appeared on 22 podcasts to date, each of them hosted by a
right-leaning or libertarian host. Crickets from the left. Not one to
accept defeat, I’ve begun reaching out to left-leaning podcasters on my
own. Perhaps one day I’ll hear back from them.
Covid media, like so much else in modern life, has become hopelessly
fractured: the tall, left-facing trees dominate the landscape, telling
the story of a deadly virus that we “did the best we could” to manage.
Below the tree canopy lies the tangle of weeds that sway in the wind,
whispering songs of freedom and warning against the totalitarian
impulses that all too readily emerge during crises. While I’ll continue
to throw my essays at those unyielding trees, the messy underbrush is
where I’ve found my journalistic home.
Witnessing the Media’s Covid Coverage from the Inside
BY Gabrielle BauerGABRIELLE BAUER NOVEMBER 17, 2023 MEDIA, SOCIETY
7 MINUTE READ
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL
In the movie An Education, the main character gets sidetracked from her
studies by a smooth-talking art dealer who turns out to be a
criminal—and married. Our protagonist learns more from that experience
than from all the medieval literature books she cracked open before. I
have similar feelings about my own education. While I’ve been earning my
living as a writer for the past 29 years, it’s only during the Covid era
that I learned what the writing business is really about.
I wear two hats in my professional life: medical writer, creating
materials for doctors and the healthcare industry, and feature-article
journalist for consumer magazines. It wasn’t until Covid that I began
pitching essays and op-eds for publication.
I started with a piece called “A Tale of Two Pandemic Cities,” which
grew out of my short trip to Amsterdam and Stockholm in the summer of
2020, when the European Union opened its doors to “well-behaved”
countries like Canada. The Covid hysteria in my country had made me
desperate to visit more balanced parts of the world, and my trip didn’t
disappoint. The article found a home at a Canadian outlet called Healthy
Debate, though the editor asked me to temper my enthusiasm for the
Swedish strategy with an acknowledgement of its risks. Happy to find a
legit publisher for my first Covid piece, I capitulated, sort of. (You
can judge for yourself.)
Thus began a feverish outpouring of essays, each one motivated by the
same bewildered questions: What the hell is happening to the world, and
why? Has everyone else gone mad, or is it me? I had written a few
controversial articles throughout my career, but never before had I held
a “dissenting view” about an issue that affected the whole world—or felt
such an urgent need to express it.
The Great Divide
I quickly learned that certain news outlets were less open to my pieces
than others. Salon, fuggedaboutit. Spiked Online, bull’s eye on the
first try. Washington Post, not a chance. Wall Street Journal, a couple
of “close, but no cigar” efforts and then finally a yes. It boiled down
to this: the further left a publication leaned, the less likely it would
publish my pieces (or even respond to my inquiries). I’m sure a
statistician could write an equation to capture the trend.
So why the radio silence from left-wing publications? I doubted I was
tripping their “Covid disinformation” radars, as my pieces had less to
do with scientific facts than with social philosophy: the balance
between safety and freedom, the perils of top-down collectivism, the
abuse of the precautionary principle, that sort of thing. If
right-leaning outlets wanted my words and left-leaning ones did not, my
Occam’s razor landed on ideology as the explanatory factor. So-called
progressive media had a story to uphold and rejected any plot twist that
threatened the cohesion of its narrative. (Not that right-wing media
behaved much differently. Such is the age of advocacy journalism.)
Most nerve-wracking of all were the publishers who accepted my articles
but, like that first Healthy Debate editor, insisted I make substantive
changes. Should I concede or push back? I did a bit of both. The most
important thing, I told myself, was to make people reflect on the
topsy-turvy policies that had freeze-framed the world. If I had to
soften a few sentences to get the word out, so be it. I have the utmost
respect for writers who refuse to yield on such matters, but 29 years of
paying the bills from my writing have tipped my internal compass toward
pragmatism.
I did stand my ground with an article on the mask wars. My thesis was
that the endless and pointless disputes on social media—masks work, no
they don’t, yes they do, no they don’t—had less to do with science than
with worldview: irrespective of the data, social collectivists would
find a way to defend masks, while my freedom-first compatriots would
never countenance a perma-masked world.
One editor agreed to publish the piece if I mentioned that some studies
favor masking, but I argued that quoting studies would undercut my
central argument: that the forces powering the mask wars have little to
do with how well they block viruses. He wouldn’t budge, so we parted
ways and I found a more congenial home for the piece at the Ottawa Citizen.
Hidden Treasures
The process of pitching counternarrative essays, while arduous at times,
led me to a smorgasbord of lesser-known, high-quality publications I
never would have discovered otherwise. Topping the list was the glorious
UnHerd, a UK news and opinion website with such daring thinkers as Mary
Harrington and Kathleen Stock on its roster of contributors. The
US-based Tablet magazine offered consistently fresh takes on Covid and
never took the easy road in its analyses. In its pages I found one of
the most powerful Covid essays I have ever read. The author, Ann Bauer
(no relation), teased out the common threads between the “settled
science” about the virus and the litany of quack theories about autism,
which fed into her son’s death by suicide.
Then there was Quillette, whose contempt for the sacred cows of wokeism
gave me a special thrill. True confession: I blew my chances with
Quillette and it’s my own damned fault. Like many working writers, I
sometimes pitch a piece to more than one outlet at the same time, a
practice known as simultaneous submissions. This goes against
protocol—we’re supposed to wait until an editor declines our pitch
before approaching the next one—but the reality is that many editors
never respond. With the deck thus stacked against us, we writers
sometimes push the envelope, figuring the odds of getting multiple
acceptances (and thus pissing off editors) are low enough to take the risk.
On this particular occasion, I submitted an article called “Lessons from
my Half-Vaxxed Daughter” to three publications. Medpage Today responded
right away, and I accepted their offer to publish it. (This was while
Marty Makary, the dissident-lite physician who called out people’s
distorted perception of Covid risk in mainstream media, led the
editorial team.) A few hours later, Quillette’s Canadian editor sent me
a slightly reworked version of my piece and told me when he planned to
run it. I had no choice but to proffer a red-faced apology and admit I
had already placed the article elsewhere. He never responded to my email
or to a follow-up mea culpa a few weeks later—and has ignored everything
I’ve submitted since then. I guess I’ll have to wait until he retires.
Podcast Polarities
Earlier this year, Brownstone Institute published my book Blindsight Is
2020, which critiques the pandemic response through the lens of 46
dissident thinkers. By all standards a moderate book, it stays clear of
any “conspiratorial” speculations about the origins of the pandemic or
the political response to it. Instead, it focuses on the philosophical
and ethical issues that kept me awake at night during the peak Covid
years—the same themes I explore in my essays, but in greater depth. I
wrote the book not just for “my team,” but for those who vehemently
opposed my views—perhaps especially for them. I didn’t expect to change
their minds as much as to help them understand why some of us objected
so strenuously to the policies they cheered on.
After the book came out, a few podcasters invited me to their shows. I
appeared on a Libertarian Institute podcast in which the host puffed on
his hand-rolled cigarettes while we talked. I spoke to an amiable ex-con
podcaster who made it his mission to share Ayn Rand’s ideas with the
world. I bonded with Rupa Subramanya—a brilliant Canadian conservative
journalist and podcaster featured in my book—over the Freedom Convoy we
had both supported.
All told I’ve appeared on 22 podcasts to date, each of them hosted by a
right-leaning or libertarian host. Crickets from the left. Not one to
accept defeat, I’ve begun reaching out to left-leaning podcasters on my
own. Perhaps one day I’ll hear back from them.
Covid media, like so much else in modern life, has become hopelessly
fractured: the tall, left-facing trees dominate the landscape, telling
the story of a deadly virus that we “did the best we could” to manage.
Below the tree canopy lies the tangle of weeds that sway in the wind,
whispering songs of freedom and warning against the totalitarian
impulses that all too readily emerge during crises. While I’ll continue
to throw my essays at those unyielding trees, the messy underbrush is
where I’ve found my journalistic home.
HeartDoc Andrew
Nov 19, 2023, 2:47:06 PM11/19/23
to
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use
Apostle Paul's secret (http://bit.ly/Philippians4_12 ). Though masking
is less protective, it helps us avoid the appearance of doing the evil
of spreading airborne pathogens while there are people getting sick
because of not being 100% protected. It is written that we're to
"abstain from **all** appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22
w/**emphasis**).
Source:
https://biblehub.com/1_thessalonians/5-22.htm
Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the US & elsewhere is by
rapidly ( http://bit.ly/RapidTestCOVID-19 ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
http://WDJW.great-site.net/ConvinceItForward (John 15:12) for them to
call their doctor and self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of
stopping this pandemic. Thus, we're hoping for the best while
preparing for the worse-case scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations
and others like the Omicron, Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu &
Delta lineage mutations combining via slip-RNA-replication to form
hybrids like http://tinyurl.com/Deltamicron that may render current
COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no longer effective.
Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry ( http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest
) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.
So how are you ?
...because we mindfully choose to openly care with our heart,
HeartDoc Andrew <><
--
Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD
Cardiologist with an http://bit.ly/EternalMedicalLicense
2024 & upwards non-partisan candidate for U.S. President:
http://WonderfullyHungry.org
and author of the 2PD-OMER Approach:
http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrewCare
which is the only **healthy** cure for the U.S. healthcare crisis
Michael Ejercito
Nov 19, 2023, 3:49:14 PM11/19/23
to
Michael
HeartDoc Andrew
Nov 19, 2023, 8:15:27 PM11/19/23
to
Michael Ejercito wrote:
While wonderfully hungry in the Holy Spirit, Who causes (Deuteronomy
8:3) us to hunger, I note that you, Michael, are rapture ready (Luke
17:37 means no COVID just as eagles circling over their food have no
COVID) and pray (2 Chronicles 7:14) that our Everlasting (Isaiah 9:6)
Father in Heaven continues to give us "much more" (Luke 11:13) Holy
Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) so that we'd have much more of His Help to
always say/write that we're "wonderfully hungry" in **all** ways
including especially caring to
http://WDJW.great-site.net/ConvinceItForward (John 15:12 as shown by
http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest ) with all glory (
http://bit.ly/Psalm112_1 ) to GOD (aka HaShem, Elohim, Abba, DEO), in
the name (John 16:23) of LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen.
Laus DEO !
Suggested further reading:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/5EWtT4CwCOg/m/QjNF57xRBAAJ
Shorter link:
http://bit.ly/StatCOVID-19Test
Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier especially for
diabetics and other heart disease patients:
http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrew touts hunger (Luke 6:21a) with all glory
( http://bit.ly/Psalm112_1 ) to GOD, Who causes us to hunger
(Deuteronomy 8:3) when He blesses us right now (Luke 6:21a) thereby
removing the http://WDJW.great-site.net/VAT from around the heart
8:3) us to hunger, I note that you, Michael, are rapture ready (Luke
17:37 means no COVID just as eagles circling over their food have no
COVID) and pray (2 Chronicles 7:14) that our Everlasting (Isaiah 9:6)
Father in Heaven continues to give us "much more" (Luke 11:13) Holy
Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) so that we'd have much more of His Help to
always say/write that we're "wonderfully hungry" in **all** ways
including especially caring to
http://WDJW.great-site.net/ConvinceItForward (John 15:12 as shown by
http://tinyurl.com/RapidOmicronTest ) with all glory (
http://bit.ly/Psalm112_1 ) to GOD (aka HaShem, Elohim, Abba, DEO), in
the name (John 16:23) of LORD Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Amen.
Laus DEO !
Suggested further reading:
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/5EWtT4CwCOg/m/QjNF57xRBAAJ
Shorter link:
http://bit.ly/StatCOVID-19Test
Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier especially for
diabetics and other heart disease patients:
http://bit.ly/HeartDocAndrew touts hunger (Luke 6:21a) with all glory
( http://bit.ly/Psalm112_1 ) to GOD, Who causes us to hunger
(Deuteronomy 8:3) when He blesses us right now (Luke 6:21a) thereby
removing the http://WDJW.great-site.net/VAT from around the heart
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