A former Global TV News control room director told the National Citizens Inquiry she was told to be quiet after raising questions about her network’s coverage of the pandemic..Anita Krishna got her degree from Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and had a career in journalism lasting 25 years. She worked for a few years at Global starting in 1997, and after a few years’ hiatus returned to Global News in 2007..Krishna, who was a control room director for news broadcasts in Burnaby, BC, said from the day WHO declared the pandemic, coverage seemed to prompt panic. In successive segments, the prime minister appeared to say he would take care of the country, the federal health minister warned 30 to 70% of people could get the disease, and social distancing was recommended..“In one minute we'd like felt … panic, fear, like just trying to scare everybody when … I could see that nothing was really happening yet,” Krishna told the NCI on its second day of hearings in Ottawa May 18..“I didn't see anybody in my community that had it. I didn't know anybody that had it… These crazy measures and these fear tactics were coming fast and furious. And it was also right around that time that all the sports had canceled.”.Krishna said her “gut instinct” was this was a “massive overreaction” but “nobody seemed to question that hysteria.”.“As time wore on, it just seemed to be that there were things that we were not reporting. So you can easily find these things on the internet … but for some reason our own newscast, we're neglecting to tell people,” she said, the possibility of a leak from the Wuhan lab being one example..“I just thought, how can we neglect to tell people that? How can we lead people to believe something which is not 100% accurate … about several things… We were not reporting this other side, just to so many pieces of the story.”.Krishna said she “was raising concerns left, right and centre about absolutely everything,” but her newsroom conversations were not well-received..“I said I thought this was a synthetic virus. In the newsroom, that did not go over well. People just ended up getting mad… And [another issue] I raised was why we were not telling people about medications that could possibly help.”.Krishna said her cousin suffered with COVID-19, but took hydroxychloroquine for a different chronic condition. The cousin believed it helped her recovery..“I told this to an anchor at work… And he just said, ‘Oh, she thinks she got better.’ Like, he got mad about it. But why would you get mad? Shouldn’t your answer be, ‘Hey, that's awesome. I'm glad that that worked for her. Maybe we should look into it. Maybe that’s something we should be doing a story on’?”.Krishna said the newsroom had “negativity and judgment” for people who questioned the vaccine or who advocated drugs like Ivermectin and called them “Covidiots.” She recalled internet talk show host Joe Rogan was made to look foolish “on purpose” for taking Ivermectin “and that is wrong.”.Krishna testified she told her assignment editor about how Ivermectin was handed out as a preventative measure in the state of Uttar Pradesh India and out of 241 million people, few fell ill to COVID-19..“I said, ‘What do you mean that whole drug is debunked? Did you not see that big, big study in India?’ All he could say was, ‘That is debunked,’” she recalled..“Right after that my boss sent me an email that said, you need to stop talking about COVID. So I wasn’t even allowed to talk about this. But the dangerous part of it is, these are the people that are shaping your newscasts.”.Krishna said normal coverage would have covered arguments for and against and let people decide for themselves..“If you hide that information, that is misinformation. That is 100% misinformation coming from Global News in Burnaby. And I can attest to that,” she said..“The vaccine was like a religion. All we did was constantly run stories. Look at this person in the hospital, this person who made a bad choice didn’t take the vaccine… All our stories were slanted like that … a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”.She thought businesses hurt by the pandemic deserved more balanced coverage..“We didn’t hold anyone to account saying, is what we are doing fair?… We didn’t stand up for people, we just shoved propaganda in your face.”.Krishna said the employer was pushing people to disclose their vaccine status, which did not sit well with many employees. .“Working at Global was like working in a Twilight Zone during the pandemic, that everything that you thought would ever make sense for choice, for freedom, for your health, just went out the window," she said..“I was very concerned because we were running stories telling pregnant women to take this jab… For pregnant women you have to be so careful. You cant even eat certain cheeses… Why would we tell women to take this vaccine that has never ever been tested on women? How dare we even do that?… I was actually feeling sick about that.”.Krishna said she heard of miscarriages happening in Scotland and Waterloo following the jab. She heard Dr. Mel Bouchet was talking at a rally in December 2021. She attend as a private citizen, but Global gave no coverage..“If you’re part of the media, you should be covering this stuff and they did not. They don’t care.”.Krishna ended up speaking at the rally, something she said “was totally unplanned.”.“I just ended up speaking, and I just thought, what the heck, you know?”.Global suspended her for three days with pay for violating journalistic principles..“They still have not been able to tell me how I violated those principles. They violated their own principles by not reporting on community events … by not showing up to the National Citizens hearing….“Who is violating journalistic principles? I can only say they are by preventing this information from getting out to people.”.Krishna returned to a newsroom with divided opinion..“Secretly a lot of people supported me. They felt scared, they felt nervous, they didn’t want to take it. They felt completely violated and threatened and bullied by management,” she said..“My relationship became strained with the people who disagreed with me, who thought I was becoming radicalized. So lifelong friends who just ended up completely disagreeing.”.Krishna told a colleague her 24-year-old cousin was paralyzed with Guillain Barre Syndrome after taking a Pfizer shot, but her editing colleague only asked what pre-existing conditions he had..“It doesn’t matter … he took a jab, he can’t walk… So, there is just an absolute refusal to believe. There are some reporters there that ... know what’s going on, but they’re not going to say anything because you’re really not going to want to lose your job.”.Krishna said she confronted the news director and asked, “There are very perverse incentives behind this vaccine. Are you not worried? How do you think they came up with this so quickly?”.The reply was, “All the scientists in the world got together … [to] make this happen,” which was what made it possible. Then the news director told her to get the vaccine..Krishna was fired from her job Jan. 18, 2022, but was not eligible for EI. She said her termination letter cited a social media post where she asked, “Can someone ask the provincial health officer why the casinos and liquor board stores and strip clubs are open and the gyms and the churches are closed?”.“They fired me because on my profile it said… ‘Global News Director.’ So I guess they thought I was putting them in some kind of disrepute… It’s a valid question,” she told the inquiry.
