I never said anything about right or left in my post.
I did not claim as such - but I've never seen "rednecks" linked to the left-hand side of the political spectrum.
Oh, the Epoch Times. Yes, they're a
bastion of journalistic integrity.
There is not one single source that I trust completely, which is why I trawl multiple sources from both left- and right-leaning sides and some that favour neither, including a lot of small and/or independent sources that have demonstrated pretty decent overall reliability and accuracy over several years. I look for consistency within each one and between them all.
Interestingly, a few of the left-leaning independents that I selected long ago specifically for their left-leaning perspectives have adopted more conservative outlooks over the past five years but none of the conservative-leaning ones have shifted leftward. It was an interesting evolution to watch in each case.
And I've culled a lot out over time as well, for underperformance.
"The Epoch Times has spread misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in print and via social media including Facebook and YouTube. It has promoted anti-China rhetoric and conspiracy theories around the coronavirus outbreak, for example through an 8-page special edition called "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", which was distributed unsolicited in April 2020 to mail customers in areas of the United States, Canada, and Australia. In the newspaper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is known as the "CCP virus", and a commentary in the newspaper posed the question, "is the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan an accident occasioned by weaponizing the virus at that [Wuhan P4 virology] lab?" The paper's editorial board suggested that COVID-19 patients cure themselves by "condemning the CCP" and "maybe a miracle will happen"."
I suppose you believe everything they publish then.
Not at all. Why on earth would you suggest that? I'll even look for corroboration for something in a trusted source when I see something unusual or inconsistent or that does not make sense.
Do
you believe everything published by any particular source?
I learned to question
everything at a
very young age. I have also forced myself to wade through blatant Soviet and other communist propaganda looking for useful information (generally non-existent) or other points of view/insights into the workings of other minds, at the expense of some actual headaches.
I have seen journalists get a lot wrong - sometimes innocently - when they write about subjects where I have a fair amount of knowledge and experience, so I presume that they make similar errors everywhere else. I have also noted major individual or corporate biases.
I am at least equally sceptical about "fact-checkers", who are also no more omniscient nor less biased than anybody else. Some have even "fact-checked" satirical articles, which amuses me greatly - although it's getting harder to distinguish satire from actual reality of late.
The failing dinosaur media, which, in Canada, are being propped up by Trudeau (and can therefore no longer claim to be "independent"), are failing because fewer and fewer people trust them. Almost everybody has a cellphone now and can post videos online within seconds, and often live, of events that traditional media will often either spin, misrepresent, or ignore if they do not fit their agendae.
On the other hand, even CNN is capable of some excellent reporting - outside of politics. They ran a fascinating (and long) story of a black man wrongfully convicted of murder, the efforts to free him over decades, the artwork that he learned to produce in jail and sent to a friend who kept it all safe, his eventual release and bright future as a result of his art, and his calm and wise philosophy. I should have kept a link, I suppose, as it was a very inspirational tale.
Traditional media have one underlying purpose, that drives everything that they do, and it's not to impartially and accurately inform the public about anything. Their prime purpose is to
sell advertising. The old mottos, "if it bleeds, it leads", is true. Tragic, horrible, scary headlines generate sales. Sales attract more advertising. Corporations become richer, as do those at the top. Anything else is incidental.
Anyway, there is no law that states that the WHO can force anybody to use its preferred terminology, and so I shall continue to employ my preferred term and thereby give credit to the party that owns the lab wherein it was almost assuredly spawned and which exploited its eventual release to minimize damage and embarrassment to itself and maximize it to the rest of the world - including its own citizens, who are also innocent victims.
www.latimes.com
globalnews.ca
