Comment // Culture & Media

Mainstream Press: Is the worm actually turning?

We publish the below anonymously for self-evident reasons.

 

Dare I say it? I am seeing green shoots of journalistic integrity appearing in newspapers.

These green shoots are the new journalists joining the bitter hacks already chipping away at the coalface of truth. They are up against it, though, and I can testify to that as a seasoned hack who has been in the newspaper business for over 25 years.

As I reported in UK Column in 2021 and 2022, the industry has been co-opted by Big Tech and Big Pharma, leaving credible journalism in its wake. It has been thirteen months since my last article urging UK Column readers not to hate the worker drones in the dinosaur media, and it was another thirteen before that when I called out newspaper industry chiefs as being criminally negligent over the Covid con.

So what has changed?

In this third whistleblower account—in which I am choosing to remain anonymous so I can preserve my job within the belly of the technocratic juggernaut—I aim to expose where news is going and why there is still hope for the industry, and for humanity itself. To put it simply, my colleagues are starting to wake up in greater numbers and to varying degrees—they are starting to smell the coffee. 

 

What took them so long?

I know, I know, it’s only taken them three years, but one must remember that nearly all of them have been propagandised far more than most, by being expected to consume ‘the news’ each day. But a huge caveat to this optimism is that no-one, apart from those wishing to understand propaganda techniques, should ever try to learn anything about the major issues of the day by reading corporation-owned newspapers, whether local or national.

So let’s turn back to the new reporters joining the fray, the ones fresh out of college. Not only are they freshly programmed by educational establishments to worship at the Branch Covidian Church and the Monastery of Woke, but they are thrown into a world of website story targets, clickbait, chronic understaffing and extremely low pay, meaning that some have to take on second jobs in pubs.

They are also faced with what us seasoned hacks have faced for decades—the layers of editorial bureaucracy, battles against public relations machines, fears of what others might think, and misinformation being spewed from every media orifice falsely shaping their sense of reality. And yet these new recruits, of which I know many, are brave. They are doing their best and are interested in the counter-narratives I present them with.

 

Stirrings

As an avid reader of The Light—the one decent printed newspaper in the land that will cover these counter-narratives without dismissing them as conspiracy theories—I have shared copies with several colleagues, old and new. And I have been happily surprised to receive only good reactions, and—like a newly born foal finding its feet—a new type of journalism is emerging from their cores. 

Challenging what authority says is a good thing, The Light articles scream, and the penny is starting to drop with many of my colleagues. One of the apprentices I work with has even put out an appeal to readers to come forward with their personal stories of Covid ‘vaccine’ harm. And a health reporter I have been in dialogue with for three years—about the PCR test, the disappearance of flu, and Midazolam—is even starting to respond to my emails on these subjects.

She would previously ignore my correspondence but has recently been admitting how she has been so terrified by the predominant Covid narrative (which probably 90% of journalists still believe to be the truth) that she was still wearing a mask and had been upset to find out her boyfriend does not wear one in shops when they are apart. She also says that she has been psychologically harmed by the relentless fear propaganda and has stopped writing stories promoting the Covid narrative after numerous polite but firm challenges from me.

So it has taken me three years to say this, but I can testify there truly can be change from within. It has taken what in the clinical profession are described as a spine and a pair of balls. But I am talking figuratively; in fact, more women than men in the mainstream media profession have stood up to push back against the relentless drive to increase fear levels.

 

Spine

For myself, I have used my metaphorical spine to stand up and challenge what my colleagues were regurgitating from NHS press releases. And I used my two proverbial reproductive organs to risk ridicule and backlash when I have stood up. That ridicule and scorn came from my managers, but I took it and accepted it. It was worth my while, as what I was warning of three years ago has proven to have happened and I have gained credibility as a result. No-one has come out and said it to me directly, but colleagues are now listening to and agreeing with what I say, often in hushed conspiratorial tones, as if we are the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied France.

There is still work to do, but having troops on the ground who are aware of what is going on is far better than having entirely programmed automatons convinced they are righteous and serving their communities. In short, my colleagues are waking up to the fact that authority, at local and national level, tell lies—and they are doing so on an industrial scale, with instructions coming from corporate pyramids who hold power well above the illusory control of politics.

Our numbers are small but they are growing in pockets around the country. And as technocratic control becomes more obvious, newspaper journalists—who are generally a kindly and polite bunch who love their fellow man—are realising something is up.

 

Adverts and reader comments

But now for the bad news. The newspaper industry has been imploding at a fairly rapid pace for decades, and for as long as I can remember there have been job cuts every other year, progressing in more recent times to every year. In years gone by, the cuts were always on a voluntary basis, but now compulsory redundancy is creeping in and ongoing recruitment freezes also ensure the staffing levels are always hovering at crisis point.

So what do the newspaper groups do to try and stop the rot? Around 20 years ago, they put all their eggs in the digital basket, giving away the news for free while watching newspaper print sales fall through the floor. Little did they realise that the print side of these groups would still be earning the vast bulk of profits today and that 95% of digital users are on mobile phones, a device that does not have much retail space for advertising.

Furthermore, the mobile advertisements clog up our newspaper sites so they are nearly unworkable, and profits are so minimal from these advertisements that editorial decisions are made to chase clickbait rather than news. These ‘easy wins’ in which reporters just cover what readers are saying about major issues (rather than reporting on those issues themselves) have helped destroy our brands, which are now often the butt of jokes on our Facebook feeds.

On a positive note, however, on these same feeds, any Covid stories we now post, the reader community has switched from being government-narrative sycophants to calling out the treacherous lies that we have pumped out without question. There is more news about Covid injection harm on these feeds in a day than in a year’s worth of newspaper title publications.

 

Froth

Going back to the clickbait, Newsquest, Reach plc, and National World (which between them own the vast majority of newspaper titles in the UK, even those that pose as local papers) are all manoeuvring editorial staff into a world of individual web targets that must be met to avoid punishment and achieve financial reward. So it’s in a reporter’s own interest to shun a council corruption story (that may generate a few hundred clicks on our website) and instead report on what readers think about the new teriyaki chicken burger being sold at the local outlet of a big fast-food chain (that will generate tens of thousands of clicks).

I despair at the way the industry is going and only hope the National Union of Journalists can somehow put the brakes on this trend to swap out holding authority to account for being slaves to Big Tech algorithms and clicks. But I repeat, there are green shoots of journalistic integrity appearing: not least in our new recruits, who are as aware as I am that the industry is being shoehorned into a digital froth with no journalistic substance. And they are resisting, pushing back, questioning and turning to their union chapels to fight against these changes.

Perhaps this piece can be a call to arms to those within the industry and those from outside. Readers can bombard the newspaper Facebook feeds and contact news desks to call out the clickbait and government propaganda, and those within the industry can start pushing back against the erosion of our journalistic duty to serve the public.

I have always felt there is far more strength at the bottom of a corporate pyramid than the top; the key is to get those at the bottom to be aware of their power.

I won’t stop pushing back, and I hope you won’t stop either.

The battle for humanity is millennia old, so there is no point throwing in the towel now.

Looking ahead to the future of news, I see it as a battle for humanity and a battle against artificial intelligence, which is already being used to write some of our ‘news’. But as long as we have the same calibre of new recruits coming through in the future that I see arriving in our news teams today, I have confidence that the technocratic takeover is not going to go smoothly.

Long live freedom of speech, and long live journalism.

 

Image: GGAADD | licence CC BY-SA 2.0