A thread about media bias during the pandemic. Forget for a moment the BBC's Panoramaski where a qualification to be interviewed seems to have been that you'd once been in a Labour Party Political Broadcast, completely undermining the show's criticism of PPE policy.
2./ Other offenders are less obvious especially when they claim to base themselves on science. @thesundaytimes still defends its hatchet job of April 19th 👇 one so full of holes some of its own journalists sent DMs to me to applaud my critical thread. thetimes.co.uk/article/corona…
3./ The piece slams the govt for calling the risk from COVID-19 Low after the first Cobra meeting on Jan 24th. The govt response to this is that even its arch-critic Lancet Editor @richardhorton1 had that very morning tweeted a warning to the media against overdue alarm.
4./ In other words if even their fiercest critic was playing down the risk how can they be accused of underplaying it? The ST accepts that Horton did indeed tweet this at 8am but fires back that by 4pm the same scientist had changed his mind and tweeted a dire warning.
5./ It even quotes Horton who says the govt's defence is "redolent of the Kremlin" which gives a flavour of his trademark overblown rhetoric Here's the Sunday Times's defence here.👇 thetimes.co.uk/article/corona…
6./ I hate to be pedantic but the original ST article says the Cobra level of risk announcement was made at lunchtime on the 24th. @MattHancock can be accused of many things but surely not of failing to predict the future tweets of his diva arch-critic 4 hours later that day?
7./ As for the key charge against the govt of Boris's lethargy between the 24th Jan and 2nd March, no one would accuse @NicolaSturgeon of lethargy and yet her policies were identical throughout that period. And since then the differences have been wafer-thin.
8./ Indeed on the 8th March, a full 6 days after Boris' first Cobra meeting, 67000 supporters piled into Murrayfield to watch France play Scotland. Maybe the simple explanation is that both Boris and Nicola were following their own scientific advice, which was identical.
9./ And talking of hatchet jobs here's the Observer's @soniasodha claiming the UK govt was obsessed and blinded by poor behavioural science. Her piece is a tissue of half-truths and blatant omissions as bad as the Sunday Times piece. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
10./ At the heart of the article is the claim the concept of 'behavioural fatigue' was used to delay lockdown. This idea, that the public would quickly grow tired of lockdown, she argues was foisted on SAGE by Richard Halpern, who over-promoted the concept
11./ The behavioural science Nudge Unit which he heads is now a business and this allows the Observer to push a narrative that says a mixture of shaky science and Tory vested interests shaped the govt's strategy to delay lockdown. Here's why it's bollocks:-
12./ Other scientists on SAGE who didn't and still don't buy into 'behavioural fatigue' as a concept argued for exactly the same strategy as that advocated by Halpern, Whitty and the govt: a staggered build up of restrictions rather than a French style quick and total lockdown.
12./ Here's SAGE member @SusanMichie one of the UK's most eminent Health Psychologists, interviewed by @WIRED just a few days before lockdown defending the delay, as "a coherent strategy" which allowed the govt to ratchet up its message "bit by bit". 👇wired.co.uk/article/social…
13./ In the interview she also expressly dismisses the concept of 'behavioural fatigue'. Despite that, here she is 10 days before lockdown arguing banning the public from large sporting events could have the consequence that they'd collect in pubs and transmit the virus more. 👇
14./ And in the same Newsnight show here she is arguing against a critic of the govt who advocated more rapid action, explaining how the staggered approach is needed to bring the public on board. She and Whitty were singing from the same song sheet word for word.
15./ And while Michie says 'behavioural fatigue' as a concept hasn't been researched enough to make claims about it here she is on the litany of problems during lockdown including failure to adhere to it eventually. Frankly it sounds like 'behavioural fatigue' by any other name
16./ Why does Michie matter? This eminent scientist who shaped and defended the delay in lockdown and argued that the UK's staggered approach was best is politically as distant as imaginable from a Tory cheerleader with vested financial interests to protect.
17./ Here's @GuidoFawkes being brutal about her membership of the Communist Party as well as her fervent support of Jeremy Corbyn. Don't get me wrong I've communist mates & Michie has every right to campaign for what she likes 👇order-order.com/people/susan-m…
18./ But if a left-wing psychologist who negotiated an electoral pact between Corbyn's Labour and the CP argued for identical policies on lockdown within SAGE as the govt & doesn't even believe in 'behavioural fatigue' how could the concept make a damn bit of difference?
19./ That's no doubt why the Observer failed to interview perhaps the most eminent psychologist on SAGE. It wouldn't fit the hatchet job Sodha was determined to write Later on twitter she ripped into @R_Thaler one of the founding fathers of behavioural economics.
20./ She suggested he was over-rated. Yeah, that's probably why he won the Nobel Prize for Economics. I've interviewed him which is more than the Observer could be bothered to do in a piece about the Nudge Unit he inspired. And perhaps the silliest thing about this silly article?
21./ Yes there's limited evidence for 'behavioural fatigue' during a pandemic. But there's limited evidence for anything during a pandemic. Yet here's @IsabellaLovin the Swedish Deputy PM saying she is indeed concerned about..err...fatiguing citizens.👇
22./ Ironically, that was on the Andrew Marr show the same day the piece came out. So why did Sodha write such a biased piece? Later that Sunday she retweeted this from @sunny_hundal that argued a battle was about to commence. 👇
23./ The biggest recession in history is heading our way he says (he's right about that) and it's crucial the left ensures the govt gets the blame for it and all because of its mistaken pandemic strategy. Sodha agreed. She wants to blame the govt. Evidence won't stand in her way.
23./ It's just a shame that science and factual accuracy has to be sacrificed or undermined on the way. But when you hear scare stories just remember the left-wing scientist who was driven by the evidence and the facts to argue for the same policy as the Tory govt. She was right.
And isn’t it funny how little there is in our media warning of the dangers when it might have helped? Here’s the Guardian in Feb when they say now the UK govt wasn’t doing enough. It warns of the danger of doing too much. Go figure. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
