Guerrilla journalism: taking over where Australia's corporate media has failed
Rebel reporters are tipping the apple cart as best they can while hobbled corporate repeaters defer to billionaires and bureaucrats
Once upon a time in journalism, efforts were made to hold the powerful to account.
Now, it’s only the independent voices, the writers on Substack, the comedians-turned-podcasters, and the battlers from Rebel News slogging it out on Twitter who offer any meaningful challenge to corporate power and influence.
Just compare: real journalism versus flunkies.
Real journalism: Avi Yemini and Ezra Levant of Rebel News question Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla in the greatest doorstop of all time, on location in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum meeting in January. This is a golden moment.
Fake journalism: Bourla, still wearing the same scarf, slobbered over by a Bloomberg reporter who, without shame, said the following, 40 seconds in:
“So obviously, you’ve been enormously successful, you and BioNTech, in the vaccine, and thank you, by the way, as somebody who’s received it.”
Albert Bourla: “Thank you for saying that”.
Then later, at 7:58, zero pushback as Bourla floats the idea of more money from the US Government and others to buy his Pfizer products for the third world: “To improve health and improve the health inequities, this is where we should focus our attention right now.”
Here is some real reporting from Western Australia: Rebekah Barnett of Dystopian Downunder on Substack.
And some more from Rebekah - who actually noticed how authoritarian the rules were becoming.
More real reporting : The Real Rukshan
This story was so incomplete without some respect paid to Rukshan Fernando, a wedding photographer who took his camera to the streets during the brutal Victorian lockdowns.
His footage showed the reality of the pandemic protests while corporate media misrepresented them.
In turn corporate media lied about Rukshan, saying he “isn’t a journalist”
Rukshan is the most important kind of journalist, a truth-teller who simply filmed reality and showed it to the world. Here he tells his story on CHD.TV.
Big respect to Rukshan Fernando.
Nine Entertainment has been among the worst offenders, pushing the mRNA products across the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. It’s a credit to 2GB radio host Ben Fordham that he is able to speak out about the suppression of doctors and the failure to report vaccine injuries - despite alleged pressure from parent company Nine. A rare rebel in corporate territory.
More real reporting: scientists, doctors and vaccinologists have discovered they can use Substack or YouTube to talk directly to the public.
Real reporting from University of California Epidemiology Professor Vinay Prasad on Twitter and YouTube:
Dr John Campbell, a nurse educator from the UK, has produced consistently outstanding reporting on the covid pandemic almost every day for the past three years, covering crucial health news that corporate media simply ignores.
It’s not always easy in Australia for independent journalists to get official responses from government.
Letters From Australia wanted a response from Australia’s Department of Health & Aged Care on why it is not recommending Vitamin D supplementation in response to the definitive studies that show it greatly reduces covid intensive care admissions and deaths, as referenced by Dr John Campbell (video above).
In response, the media department fobbed off the request as not coming from a “recognised news organisation” - as if publishing on Substack is somehow not actually publishing and as if writers on Substack are not real journalists.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance had this heartening message for independent journalists in response:
“Clearly, government agencies and other large organisations need to come to grips with changes in Australia’s media landscape over the past decade or more.
There are now innumerable specialist media outlets and freelancers reporting on issues of public interest who are not connected to a large print or broadcast media organisation.
In many cases, they are providing vital public interest journalism and filling gaps left behind by staff shrinkages as a result of cost cutting at large outlets. This is a welcome development in a media industry that is one of the least diverse and most concentrated in the democratic world.
MEAA acknowledges it can be complex for government agencies and large organisations to discern genuine journalism, but one of the simplest ways for any journalist to prove their credentials is through a MEAA membership.
As a MEAA member, a journalist is bound to adhere to the Journalist Code of Ethics, with a commitment to truth, accuracy and fairness.
If an organisation still refuses to recognise a journalist who is a MEAA member, the union may be able to assist upon request from the member.”
Australia needs its independent journalists because its corporate media has so far failed to clearly present even the basic facts of the pandemic to the public - such as the risk-reward ratio of the mRNA products.
The only large media outlet to rigorously question official claims about the pandemic and mRNA products is the Epoch Times, a newspaper started by Chinese Falun Gong dissidents, now slandered as “far-right” by security state operatives on social media and in Wikipedia.
Even the ABC, which has a commitment to fairness and a lack of bias has been less than even-handed.
Everyone by now has seen Sarah Ferguson’s interview with Bill Gates.
Corporate media praised the 7.30 piece as hard-hitting because it “grilled” Bill Gates on his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous sexual blackmailer.
But was this a challenge?
The rest of the 13 minutes was a platform for the world’s fourth-richest man to advertise as an innocent philanthropist slandered by crazy “anti-vaxxers” on social media because he pioneers life-saving vaccines and fights climate change.
“Anti-vaxxer” is hate speech that dehumanises people who oppose coerced covid injections, implying they are unreasonably against all vaccines.
The ABC delicately referred to “anti-vaccination campaigners” (as if that were less biased) while touting Gates online: Bill Gates complained to tech companies about 'laughable' COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
“Early in the pandemic, when governments worldwide were floundering, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped mobilise the global response, including donating $US751 million ($1.05 billion) to the World Health Organization, more than any country except Germany.”
No mention of the 1-in-800 mRNA side-effect risk or the fact that healthy under-70s never needed it at all.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the second biggest donor of the World Health Organisation (WHO), accounting for 10 percent of its budget, as SwissInfo reports.
The WHO used this money to urge world governments to bulk-buy expensive mRNA products for mass covid vaccination for “everyone, everywhere”, including young and healthy people who never needed them. They did so on the incomplete and shoddy data supplied by Big Pharma corporations who profited, and against the expert warnings of vaccinologists such as Dr Byram Bridle and Dr Geert Vanden Bossche and of immunologists such as Professor Robert Clancy AM.
The UK is now only recommending booster doses for the elderly and those at severe risk of covid because side effects are more likely than hospitalisation from covid for healthy under-70s. Australia is now recommending a fifth injection for people who don’t need them, without question from the ABC.
Sarah Ferguson had Gates in her hands and did not ask about the influence his money buys at the WHO, whether it is appropriate or harmful.
It’s only the outsiders asking these questions, with no access to corporate media platforms.
For example: investigative reporter Jordan Shachtel reported on Substack that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded and controlled the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which produced faulty modeling based on an inflated infection fatality rate that prompted US health experts to impose ruinous lockdowns.
Russell Brand did a stirling job of raising every issue that the ABC didn’t.
To be fair, Gates may have made his interview contingent on not mentioning certain topics. It’s possible. He’s certainly conscious of PR.
Journalist Dan Goodin, writing in Ars Technica, remembered Gates being grilled by the US Justice Department in 1998, and responding with a PR campaign that reached “shock-and-awe proportions”.
Gates was questioned because Microsoft, the company he made his fortune with, was being investigated for anti-competitive practices. Microsoft was found guilty of breaching the Sherman Anti-trust Act, for preserving its monopoly power.
The tycoon has reinvented himself as a “philanthrocapitalist” - but some might notice it’s not all humble generosity.
Charity foundations allow billionaires, their friends and their corporations to wield political power, tax-free, and be praised for it.
Bill Gates’ wealth went up by $20 billion during the pandemic as his political influence soared, The Nation reports, and now he’s investing in “climate technologies”.
The public gets no say in the policies pushed by foundations because you can’t vote out Bill Gates. But he was in Australia to meet Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to talk about climate change opportunities.
What implications is that going to have for the taxpayer?
During the pandemic, global news outlets quoted Bill Gates as if he were a public health expert even though he had no medical training and is not a public official.
The Columbia Journalism Review reported in August 2020 that the Gates Foundation had donated more than $250 million in grants to recipients such as: “BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting,” along with charitable organisations affiliated with news outlets such as BBC Media Action.
Perhaps that has something to do with the widespread Big Media deference.
The one strength of corporate centralised media is that it holds to reporting standards, for example, not obtaining stories by illegal or unethical means.
But in this total system failure it was the deeply unethical guerilla recording of right-wing activists Project Veritas that revealed Pfizer is conducting gain-of-function research on Covid - but just not calling it “gain-of-function”.
Pfizer admitted in a press release (put out at 8pm on a Friday night so people won’t notice) that it was conducting research “where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new varients of concern”.
Like saying “collateral damage” when you are referring to “killing civilians unintentionally”.
It was left to Project Veritas to push the story forward with despicable honeypot-trap secret taping - because corporate media is out to lunch.
As Dr John Campbell noted, Pfizer’s commitment to transparency is greatly assisted by the addition of alcohol and the possibility of sexual opportunity.
This was censored immediately from FaceBook and YouTube, so Project Veritas reporter Christian Hartsock confronted YouTube Vice President Global Head of Trust & Safety Matt Halprin with a doorstop.
Again: real reporting, A Current Affair style, coming from left field (or in this case, right field).
Australians are increasingly aware of how they have been cheated by the corporate media sector and are turning off or turning against the mainstream.
Worryingly, a despicable act of intimidation against a Channel 9 reporter has now occurred following a protest in Melbourne as per below.
Unfortunately this terrible behaviour is likely to continue unless corporate media starts lifting its game and holds the public interest in higher regard than it has in the past 3 years.
ROGUE REPORTERS: welcome to join a discussion table on how the industry landscape is changing at the Australian Heritage Hotel, 100 Cumberland St, The Rocks, Sunday 9 April 2023 (Easter Sunday), 2pm for All Minus One. Event page here.
Update: 10 February 2023 - added Ben Fordham tweet by former MP Craig Kelly plus a paragraph on Nine, graphic for the Rogue Reporters event.
6 March 2023 added Real Rukshan - a most important journo - not one to leave out!
21 March 2023 - VENUE CHANGE - now in the Ladies Parlour at the Australian Heritage Hotel (100m down the same street as the previous venue, the Glenmore)
17 June 2023: Update: replaced Dystopian Downunder’s first story link as a legal dispute has affected her earlier story. It’s replaced with a link to her bigger story on the TGA recording of vax death causality.
What is the problem with being an anti-vaxxer? The more you study this subject, the more you realise vaccines have always been a hoax. Read “Dissolving Illusions” by Suzanne Humphries and “Turtles all the way down” by anonymous.
Alison look what is happening in WA: they are entering the 'denial' phase of the pandemic response https://vicparkpetition.substack.com/p/genocide-denial-now-occurring-in