Nate Bear Profile picture
May 24, 2023 26 tweets 5 min read Read on X
If I hadn’t spent the last 15 years working in media and public relations, I too would interpret the media silence around covid and new covid research/science as a sign that there is nothing to worry about. But I have. So here are some things you should know🧵
More than 95% of all stories you read in the mass media start as a press release. I don't know if this is a dirty little secret of the media industry or widely known by people, but it's how it goes. Which is like this:
A press release gets written for a client, it gets sent out to a big list of journalists, the PR agent (or in-house person) phones around the journalists in whatever sector they’re working in to try and get them to look at the story, offering interviews with the key players
Sometimes the PR agent might not send out a release en-masse but “sell in” the story as an exclusive to just one outlet. When you read that something is an exclusive, it usually doesn't mean a journalist cracked a story, it means the PR agent gave it only to them
The bigger the PR agency, the more likely you are to get a journalist to bite on your story. And this is a major problem. Because the bigger the agency = the more expensive the agency
So the biggest, richest clients hire the biggest, richest agencies with the most brand recognition and media connections, and these agencies are responded to most favourably by editors and reporters
And the bigger the agency, the bigger the budget you have to entertain journalists, go out for lunches/dinners, which enables the fostering of human connections that mean the journalist will respond favourably to your next press release/call pitching a client story
In addition to this, many PR agency bosses, especially of the largest agencies, will be members of the same private members clubs as the media bosses, with a lot of informal “work” done during these evenings
So how does this relate to covid? Covid doesn’t have a PR agency, and most studies come out of niche research labs or universities that have very limited or non-existent PR teams/agency support
And even when it’s coming out of a big university, the media teams at these unis are spread thin and often don’t see the humdrum science research as something to prioritise when it comes to media. It doesn't raise money, it's not sexy etc
Unless it’s a breakthrough piece of research, you’re unlikely to see it. It’s no surprise that when you do see a covid story it’s been published in a high-profile medical journal like The Lancet that has a bigger media team and more connected PR officers
You might be thinking: but what are you going on about, covid was all over the news for 18 months. Yes. But this is because there was no denying we were in a genuine global emergency/event. Governments led and media had to respond. It was, for a time, the only game in town
All the media outlets put their journalists onto covid, looking for sector-specific angles. The health reporter, the science reporter, the travel reporter, the food reporter, obviously the politics team, were all covid all the time
For those first 12-18 months the whole ecosystem flipped. Journalists will have been asking agencies for their stories around covid, and agencies will have been crafting every story into something covid-appropriate for all their clients
But over time, and especially as the vaccines began to be rolled out, the messaging from political offices and the media shifted explicitly and implicitly - the emergency is over and it’s time to get back to normal. It would have gone something like this:
The press officers for No.10, the White House or any head of state office would have talked editors about the need to move away from the emergency framing to transition back to normal. Country leaders themselves would have talked to newspaper owners to encourage this shift
And these political offices and leaders will have been making this push to media off the back of their own conversations with 'business' about the need to get back to normal
The push to return to a pre-pandemic mode will have been coordinated between the highest political and media offices, with business CEOs well in the mix, if not the originating node, of this push
This is the broad context for the media silence on covid. It’s over, and we the media helped make it over. And if something’s over, how can it be news?
The dynamic has shifted a little for the climate crisis, with some coverage (in recognition of an ongoing event) and the omissions are subtler, primarily around failing to platform research and experts who advocate solutions that do not conform to an economic growth agenda
The latest batch of stories was a good example: article after article telling us we’re going to breach 1.5C but without any decent critique of why this is happening and how we can stop it, beyond “reduce emissions”
The current mass media ecosystem exists largely to propagate specific agendas that tend to consolidate business-as-usual, rather than to inform people of threats to their health, livelihoods or futures
Which is why twitter is still somewhat useful as a means to push against a media culture weighted heavily in favour of the biggest, richest businesses and PR agencies
(To read my full article on this please go via the link in my bio because the beef between musk and substack means substack links on tweets and threads get throttled) Image is a picture of a person reading a newspaper against a colourful background - it is the pic accompanying my substack article on the topic
Here's an example: the Guardian's transport correspondent in 2021 witing about Michael O'Leary of Ryanair slamming protections as bad for his business. No counter point about the necessity for protections, just a subtle consent manufacturing article for back to normal Guardian article by their transport correspondent Gwyn Topham with headline: Ryanair boss says UK response to Omicron shaped by idiots
This has gone a bit woah so I want to say: of course there are good journalists out there and publications willing to challenge the status quo e.g. @BylineTimes. But in general the mass media is no ally to those seeking a just, equitable, decent (even liveable) future

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More from @NateB_Panic

Aug 29
The EU has given Israeli technology start-ups run by ex-IDF soldiers nearly half a billion euros in research grants intended for civilian purposes since the start of the genocide. Some of the tech has been deployed in Gaza, and some of the founders have served in Gaza. A thread
The grants were provided via the EU’s Horizon Programme, ‘a scientific research initiative to develop a sustainable and liveable society in Europe.' 348 Israeli start-ups, many run by ex-IDF soldiers and intelligence officers, have been awarded €475 million since October 2023
The largest Israeli recipient of Horizon fund is the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel’s most importance scientific centre. The EU has given it €70m since the start of 2024. Weizmann partners with arms companies Elbit, Rafael and IAI and offers an MA for active duty IDF
Read 14 tweets
Aug 12
You’ve never heard of Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian peace activist who lived in Gaza for three years, had a state funeral organised by Hamas and a street named after him, because it would make you question the caricature of Hamas promoted by the western media and political class
Arrigioni arrived in Gaza on a peace flotilla in 2008. Living with local Palestinian families across the strip, he was welcomed openly, and lovingly. He integrated into the society and culture of Gaza and became an iconic figure. He even got a tattoo in Arabic dedicated to Gaza
After leaving the gym in Gaza City, Arrigioni was kidnapped by al-Qaeda affiliated militants opposed to Hamas, and murdered. In response Hamas locked down Gaza City, killed two of Arrigioni's kidnappers in a firefight, and arrested four others
Read 5 tweets
Aug 3
Israel knew that if they denied foreign journalists access to Gaza they could call everyone Hamas and do a holocaust because the depth of anti-Muslim racism in the west would mean Palestinian accounts of their own suffering would be disbelieved or ignored
Central to this was lobbying the west to proscribe Hamas as a terror group even though they were the civic authority responsible for everything from taxes to rubbish collection and their armed wing never attacked the west. Everything could be Hamas and everyone could be killed
This was dutifully achieved through the 90s and media now prefaced every mention of Hamas with the words 'terror group.' It was now possible, in time and with the right pretext, to do a holocaust because no one would want to defend Muslim terrorists against poor victimised Jews
Read 5 tweets
Jul 29
A vast network of Israeli spy tech, built by software engineers who cut their teeth writing code for the IDF to enforce Israeli apartheid, is being sold to police forces and security services across the west who use it to intercept communications and hack phones 🧵
Between 2021 and 2023, the US backlisted four Israeli spy tech companies after hacking scandals that targeted politicians, journalists and activists: NSO Group, Candiru, Cytrox and Intellexa. All were founded by former Unit 8200 Israeli intelligence operatives
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Many Israeli spy tech companies are legally contracting with western security services to provide face and voice recognition software, interception and wiretapping, covert location tracking and smartphone data extraction
Read 16 tweets
Jul 19
Turning Jews into perpetual victims created the cultural cover for their state to apply their final solution against the Palestinians. And still now, with the Jewish state in the orgiastic throes of genocidal impunity, we're commanded to see Jews as victims. It's grotesque
Many people were more than prepared, eager even in the early days of the genocide, to argue Zionism isn't Judaism. But after 21 months and zero establishment Jewish groups and leaders breaking from Israel, we have to start considering this as a mainstream not an extremist project
Palestinian-Americans have been disappeared and held in solitary confinement for months. Waving a Palestine flag is a terrorist offence in the UK. All to the silence of western Jewish community leaders who want even more authoritarianism to protect their feelings. Pathetic
Read 4 tweets
Jun 4
She posted on Instagram how for four months she was in agonising pain, went repeatedly to hospitals in Newcastle and Durham, begged for blood tests and scans, was told it was all in her head. It was cancer. Dead at 25 six months later. I swear medicine attracts sociopaths
Her posts where she says not one doctor listened to her and authorised scans or blood tests despite her begging on the floor crying in pain and despite her autoimmune conditions that predisposed her to cancer. For months. Absolutely disgusting failure from @NewcastleHosps Image
@NewcastleHosps Image
Read 4 tweets

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