Thread by @_johnbye

Despite repeatedly being proven wrong by subsequent events, covid disinformation groups like HART have constantly been given a platform on TV and radio throughout the pandemic.

Even after #hartleaks revealed many of their members to be anti-vax conspiracy cranks.

🧵2: broadcast

One of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation over the last two years has been @talkRADIO's @JuliaHB1.

When she asked someone "what disinformation" she had spread, it didn't take me long to find plenty of examples involving prominent HART members:

In 2020, @JuliaHB1 and other @talkRADIO hosts gave airtime to future HART members like Michael Yeadon, Clare Craig and Anthony Brookes. They predicted there wouldn't be a second wave (there was), it wouldn't be as bad as the first (it was), and we had herd immunity (we didn't).

Despite this appalling track record, after HART launched in January 2021 @JuliaHB1 regularly gave members a platform to speak out against testing, masks, and vaccination.

And their predictions didn't get any better either, as they consistently underestimated the Delta wave...

Even after #hartleaks showed HART to be a bunch of cranks, @JuliaHB1 continued to platform the group's members. Including Ros Jones falsely claiming that children were more at risk from vaccination than covid, and Tony Hinton comparing vaccine passports to the holocaust!

Earlier in 2021, @JuliaHB1 was still using Michael Yeadon as a source weeks after he was exposed as a racist and started ranting about plots to depopulate the Earth!

Yeadon admitted he was "no longer broadcast-able". But JHB still came to him for background info for her show. 🤨

It's not like @JuliaHB1 can feign ignorance either. Yeadon tells a HART colleague that @talkRADIO "know what I fear but they can't broadcast it".

What Yeadon feared was that covid booster shots might be programmed to kill billions of people! 🤪 Hardly a credible source then...

But the most worrying episode was in January 2021, when @JuliaHB1 is reported to have got "a sympathetic Cabinet minister" to ask the Chief Whip to tell @NeilDotObrien MP to stop "smearing" HART members ahead of the group's launch! A shocking abuse of democracy.

Ironically though, HART don't even like @JuliaHB1. Members constantly complain about her talking over them, and call appearing on her show "a waste of bloody time".

One called her "a huge help to the cause but quite annoying", saying she likes to "deliver a lecture".

#awkward

And anti-vax HART members were *really* upset when @JuliaHB1 got vaccinated. Members said she "crumbled" and was "another huge disappointment".

When she spoke favourably about others getting vaccinated, Harrie Bunker-Smith asked "can we get a HART member on to correct her?" 🙄

More popular with HART members is @JuliaHB1's former @talkRADIO colleague @mrmarkdolan. They call him "a strong ally" who gives "HART the respect we deserve" [sic] and is "as anti-mask as we are".

They even joke that he "gives more opportunity to speak than Ms Hartley-Brewer".

They aren't kidding. Barely a week went by without @mrmarkdolan giving HART members a platform, sometimes two in one day!

Members used it to demand that children "must not" be vaccinated, claim lockdowns would kill more people than covid, and call the Delta variant "over hyped".

When @mrmarkdolan jumped ship to @GBNEWS he soon picked up where he'd left off. On his second week he and HART's Gary Sidley ganged up on Dr David Strain in a debate on masks (on which Mark's own views are very clear), and the next week HART's Rev William Phillip was on his show.

Another @talkRADIO host who moved to @GBNEWS, @PatrickChristys, also platformed HART members' wild claims on both channels.

Even months after #hartleaks revealed the group's true colours, Christys had Gary Sidley and Clare Craig on his GB News show.

HART and UsForThem's Ros Jones has also frequently appeared on @GBNEWS, even after the channel asked "how I can possibly say that children will die of vaccine damage who would not die from covid".

She can't, but other members gave her various false figures and claims as "proof".

And @GBNEWS invited Ros Jones back several times after that to make increasingly wild attacks on the idea of vaccinating children.

This continued until at least September, long after we knew she'd spent all year secretly working with anti-vaxxers to stop kids getting vaccinated!

Indeed, @GBNEWS tried to get Ros Jones back just a couple of days after her first appearance, this time inviting her to their studio. But this required a PCR test and, hilariously, she was so paranoid about false positives she turned them down! One member suggested faking a test.

Not everyone's a fan of @GBNEWS though. Liz Evans described them as "fake alternative media", and suggested Del Bigtree's anti-vax show The Highwire instead!

Clare Craig called them "worse than the BBC in many ways", despite them putting her on the channel multiple times.

Meanwhile back at @talkRADIO, presenters like @TVKev O'Sullivan, @cristo_radio Foufas and @thejamesmax have also kept putting Ros Jones on air to talk nonsense about covid vaccines, even letting her falsely claim that vaccinating children is somehow against international law!

Another of @TVKev's favourites seems to be Clare Craig, who told HART friends they should "seed the thought that vaccines cause covid". She's been on his show several times, and even tried to scare pregnant women off getting vaccinated by falsely claiming that it may not be safe!

Both @talkRADIO and @GBNEWS have a terrible track record of platforming quacks. Their one-sided and often demonstrably false coverage of the pandemic has even included letting anti-vax campaigners make unfounded claims about vaccine safety unchallenged.

Will @Ofcom ever act? 🤔

UPDATE: It seems @GBNEWS' other resident crank @thecoastguy didn't get the memo. Almost a year after Michael Yeadon was exposed as a racist and started raving about plots to depopulate the Earth, he's STILL platforming him.

Unbelievable.

h/t @mellowmark