Why does the BBC hate Novak Djokovic?
And what does this have to do with 1984?
I’ve always thought of myself as a big fan of the BBC. I love their Radio output, they produced much of the best comedy and documentaries, and I used to find their website was the go-to place for news. However, things have changed over the past few years, and that change has accelerated with Covid. There are now tow BBCs. News/propagandists, and content production. I still think the content is excellent, though the organisations political vies have bled into its entertainment programmes (Mock the week featuring questions on vaccines, roll-outs and grouping anyone who is vaccine hesitant with the nutters, and the less said about Jeremy Vine the better)
This morning the news was about Novak Djokovic being interviewed about his thoughts on vaccination. Bearing in mind this is a man whose point of view has not come without significant cost.
“I was never against vaccination,” he told the BBC, confirming that he’d had vaccines as a child, “but I’ve always supported the freedom to choose what you put in your body.”
He explains that he would be prepared to forego the possibility of becoming the most successful tennis player ever…
“Because the principles of decision making on my body are more important than any title or anything else. I’m trying to be in tune with my body as much as I possibly can.”
These two statements might seem reasonable to most people. Noble even. But not to the BBC. As I noted in my December article Judgment Day. Why are there so many anti- anti… | by Simon Cottee | Medium, it is easy to have a go at people expressing any alternative viewpoint. And Novak Djokovic appears to be showing the sort of independent thought that the BBC has spent the last two years trying to crush. (Underreporting side effects, mis-reporting peaceful demonstrations, parroting the governments Big Brother-like mantas “Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”, “Stay alert, control the virus, save lives”. “Get boosted now”)
The live update on the BBC Website Wimbledon: Djokovic says he would miss tournaments rather than get jab — BBC News quotes only critical responses “He over-estimates his importance’’, ‘’I hope he comes to the right conclusion in the future’’, and “So maybe his facts are incorrect, I think his facts are incorrect, but I hope he comes to the right conclusion in the future.” The latter frighteningly echoes George Orwell’s 1984 “Whatever the [Party/BBC] holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the [Party/BBC].” The response to this from Fergus Walsh (under the oxymoronic “Analysis by Fergus Walsh” — containing no analysis just opinion and a smattering of facts) is not to address the question of autonomy — Fergus works for a state sponsored organisation, and the government pays his wages. His response is that vaccines are safe and effective: “What more does he want to know?” Fergus seems to be forgetting that all the vaccines are still in trial phase and are approved for emergency use only. Furthermore, the original trials were not even designed to see if vaccines saved lives. And all the evidence suggests don’t prevent infection of the current variant, and even the Boss of Pfizer doesn’t claim otherwise. So, the scientists still want to know more, why shouldn’t everyone?
Fergus Walsh, who seems to be one of the most poorly informed medical journalists around, admits: “You could say I’ve been waiting much of my career for a global pandemic.” This has made him more important than ever, as long as Covid is a bad news story. He has not written a balanced piece on the pandemic in two years, and is happy to ignore scientific evidence.
Back in May 2020 he tested positive for antibodies. He had Covid-like symptoms in January 2020 “I’m rarely ill….I was off sick for about 10 days and had a cough and a high temperature. I couldn’t shake it off.” , and despite having no illness between then and May, he showed signs of Covid infection.
But as Fergus States “I can tell you that having a positive test did not change my mindset.”. Not one to allow facts or science to change the narrative, he later concludes “It will also give us the first really accurate picture of how many people have had coronavirus without knowing it, so-called asymptomatic cases — people, it seems, like me”
He has concluded he had asymptomatic Covid, despite the early evidence of this being very weak, and can’t even entertain an alternative, where Covid was circulating earlier, despite having travelled internationally in December “I’d been reporting on the outbreak in China by mid-January, the farthest afield I’d been in recent months was Christmas in Brussels.”
If this is the quality of BBC medical journalism, no wonder some people are questioning the £159 annual cost of the licence fee. With its goal of to Inform, educate and entertain, not even Meatloaf would think one out of three ain’t bad. But let’s hope George Orwell wasn’t right either, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”
