Thread by @Big_Headers

Muckspreaders.

And the anti-mask protests in Parliament square.

Thread.

1/28

The heart of the UK popular press has been about muckspreading.

News of the World being perhaps the worst example.

2/28

“Well, it’s how you sell papers.” …is the justification that you could expect a press owner to say.

3/28

In order to get people to buy papers, you need to get them more upset, more enraged, than they were yesterday. That bit further from the truth, that bit more extreme.

4/28

The problem is that with this egregious process over a number of years, is that it has created people who have lost the ability to filter out what is true from what is muck.

5/28

This problem is exacerbated by darker, nastier corners of the internet – from the alt right to religious extremist forums to dark ads on Facebook, and new ‘dialog forums’ such as Parler, to much of youtube.

6/28

As a reference point here: Bin Laden used a Palestinian three year old being shot by an Israeli soldier, on repeat, in a video that had all the hall marks of a Hollywood blockbuster like Pulp Fiction, to recruit the 9/11 bombers.

7/28

A youtube algorithm that, when a viewer watches one video, won’t serve up a similar video… it will serve a more extreme version of the video just watched. A mental crack heroin.

8/28

And so you get both the worrying and bizarre protests like the anti-maskers in parliament square on Sunday. It is partially the harvest of the muckspreader journalists. The dearth of reliable, well presented truthful information in mainstream news channels.

9/28

Too many news outlets portraying a merry go round of increasingly nightmarish horses of their own invention, with blaring grating music. People are transfixed.

10/28

Problem is that unless there is radical change in the mindset of popular press journalists, that carousel soon enough will have the four horsemen of the apocalypse on it, and they can finally start reporting on the reality. Without egging it up.

11/28

https://twitter.com/Big_Headers/status/1218548596703928320

But to come back to the ‘anti-maskers’ protest in Parliament square on Saturday 19th September. Populated by the products of, or should we say victims of, muckspreaders.

12/28

The ‘anti-maskers’ won’t have heard about the case of the Starbucks coffee house, where a customer had Covid, and gave it to over ten other customers.

No staff got Covid.

The staff were all wearing masks.

13/28

And that’s in spite of the fact that masks protect other people more than the mask wearer.

If the sick person who went into that Starbucks coffee shop had worn a mask – perhaps no one else would have caught Covid.

14/28

But also, of course the anti-maskers are unaware of how bad Covid is. They won’t have read this article in the New York Times on silent hypoxia.

15/28

nytimes.com/2020/04/20/opi…

Or learnt how, once recovered, people have permanently damaged senses.

16/28

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…

Big irony for the muckspreader journalists is that this Covid show is just a side show for the UK.

Just like ignorance about Covid and masks, people have been kept away from the truth about our leaving the EU.

17/28

How bad it will get? No deal will mean that the current setup for car manufacturing in the UK will come to an end. To a pretty immediate juddering halt. Two death blows: 1. The end of just in time manufacturing. 2. The imposition of multiple punitive tariffs.

18/28

Of course, some car manufacturers, such as Nissan, may decide to retain a rump operation. Perhaps ship in parts from Japan. Just to cater for the UK market. But its not just car manufacturing. Or just manufacturing.

19/28

Regarding farming: thousands of smaller farms that are dependant on the EU for exports will go bankrupt. And for fishing: fishermen will lose their jobs, as they won’t be able to export fish to the EU.

20/28

The Govt’s planning for this: lorry parks! I guess the plan is that parked lorries can run out of diesel, keeping their generators going, while their fresh produce festers, or their cargo of lamb bleats plaintively, suffering horribly.

21/28

Thirty lorry parks. So that you can park lorries. So they don’t create a traffic jam. Bit like a plaster on a wound that will cause the UK economy to bleed to death.

22/28

Most people in the UK are unaware that the EU has now grown, since the EU ref, by more than the value of the entire UK economy.

Some of that has been due to UK businesses leaving.

Expect this to increase post Jan 1st 2020.

23/28

Getting back to the theme of muckspreaders – there is an argument that journalists cater for their readership. That they don’t manipulate how their readers think. They simply reflect their readers.

24/28

However, this is a false narrative. A false article will poison someone’s views, rather than reflect them.

25/28
bigheaders.com/headline-lies-…

Responsible journalists do inform their readership – but their driving is to provide a balanced, factual picture of what is going on.

26/28

However, if you happen to be a muckspreader journalist who has chanced upon this thread – please think of the UK you have created and are continuing to create.

27/28

When things really do go tits up, there will be plenty more to write about, and talk about, but many of you will lose your jobs.

A bankrupt economy does not pay media advertising bills. You will be suffering, like the rest of us.

28/28 & ENDS.