The founder of a US think tank says mainstream media has a uniformity of opinion, forcing people to look at other platforms for a wider look.. COVID-19 vaccine .Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder and president of Brownstone Institute, gave his testimony to the National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) on COVID-19 as it held three days of hearings in Winnipeg..NCI commissioner Ken Drysdale asked Tucker how once-vibrant local papers disappeared..“Everything changed over the last 25 years; print media began to be replaced by the internet. And then the industry became to be entirely reorganized so that even local media was entirely dependent on centralized media sources, to the point that they've no longer really had much independence.” Tucker explained..“A lot of these local reporters know better than to report things that are contrary to what the dominant mainstream media is saying because they don't want to harm their careers. So, every local media essentially wants to be bought out by a more centralized media, and the reporters want to hang on to their jobs and then advance.”.Tucker said “citizen journalism” on Substack, Twitter, and other venues, is the only place where “independent news” happens..“One time, I got a call from CNN to talk about some economic subject. And I was surprised over the following week that my one clip appeared in thousands of local venues all over the country, all branded by the local station,” Tucker recalled..“It's all become industrially centralized and can therefore easily controlled by the government.”.Tucker’s Brownstone Institute is a non-profit organization focusing on public health, economics, and the philosophical foundations of freedom, while focused on post-pandemic rebuilding. Drysdale told Tucker his assessment of media did not reflect a “free market of business” or of “ideas,” to which Tucker agreed..“It became very important during the pandemic years, especially for centralized government powers, to control information flows. And that impacted everything from early treatments to opinions on lockdowns,” Tucker said..“When groups in the US and Canada have protested, the media sprung into action, demonizing them as disease spreaders without any evidence. So, controlling the news has become very important to corrupt bureaucracies and government.”.Drysdale recalled how coverage of the Vietnam War decades ago was different. Tucker said the pandemic is unprecedented for an even longer period of time..“We've never seen anything like this. It was as if rights and liberties that we spawned over the course of a thousand years of historic progress suddenly didn't exist,” Tucker said..“The actions of governments all over the world, which is basically copying the China model, had no historical precedent whatsoever and should have been enormously controversial. But instead, the media just completely fell into line.”.Tucker said some media “self-censorship” continues, as they report on educational gaps and more depression and drug use but draw no connection to lockdowns and public health responses..Drysdale said it sounded like the media had been monopolized. Tucker, a past Forbes columnist who studied economics at three universities, agreed..“When the monopolization benefits very powerful people, apparently, there's nobody left to object to it,” Tucker said..“People have to wean themselves from their attachments to national media, turn off those notifications, delete those apps. It’s the only way we're going to get from here to the truth. I don't think the antitrust authorities in any country are interested in busting up big media at this point because it's serving their interests.”.Drysdale asked if anti-trust laws could apply, but Tucker was doubtful..“We've seen over the pandemic period that these monopolies have served very powerful interests, so they don't have any interest in busting them out. Unfortunately, there's plenty of antitrust to do these days, but it's not likely to happen,” Tucker said..“The most important thing to do right now is to unplug national security from its controls over our big media venues. And we're nowhere near being done with that, unfortunately.”
