Harassment to be expected

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Sept 22

Re: Harassment of journalists rising in COVID era.  Grant Lafleche.  The Hamilton Spectator 10 Sept 22

The rise of social media has coarsened our culture.  It has lowered the price of being an A-Hole.  The Left is known for harassment, having invented it; and for cancel culture, and for being A-Holes.  What we see complained about here is A-Holery from the right, which, being a violation of copyright, is referred to as “hate.”  Hate’s intolerable, and Joanna Frketch of the Spectator has been a victim of it.

In part, I blame the editor for her harassment.  He wants a story slanted to favor the narrative - that the government and its experts are all completely right, and everyone who disagrees is not just wrong, they’re evil and deserving of cancellation.  How often has Frketch sought out a credentialed opponent to the current line – lockdowns, masks, vaccinations - and asked for their reasons for opposing?  Never.  They do exist, but I don’t recall one interviewed.

Instead, we get principled opposition to vaccine mandates dismissed as “anti-vaxxers.”  Never mind we were promised no vaccine mandates before the election.  We don’t see in print criticisms from experts who think the vaccines quite worthless as vaccines, even after the data demonstrates that that’s so.  (Like the critic at U of G, Dr. Byram Bridie.)  We see no challenges put the alleged experts to explain themselves in the face of contraindicating data.  When did we see reviews of forecasts past compared to actual events?  The obvious nonsense of ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ and the need to protect the vaxxed from the unvaxxed went unchallenged.

After the Stanford study (Jan 2021) and the Johns Hopkins study (May 2021) on lockdowns that showed they were worthless in stopping the spread, why wasn’t Frketch asking about why Ontario was locking down again in the face of the most current science?  Why were third doses necessary if the vaccine “worked?”  Because the editor told her he didn’t want that kind of story?

You think there aren’t alternative sources of information?  Dismissing information uncongenial to the narrative as misinformation on the basis of the authority of whom exactly doesn’t win friends or demonstrate intellectual honesty.  Lack of curiosity and refusal to engage the other side is both weak and contemptuous, and you wonder why people retaliate after they think they’ve been lied to?

I blame the editor, in part, for hiding behind the skirt of his reporter; and it’s wrong and cowardly in itself to make threats as happened to Frketch.  Frketch wasn’t indecent in her editorializing of a news story, but bad reaction to editorializing in a news story is to be expected.  Because it’s unprofessional.  People get angry when their intelligence is insulted.  When you’re a mouthpiece for one side and pretend not to be, some people blame you.  And if you don’t realize you’re being a mouthpiece, then maybe you’re not clever enough to be writing from authority.

And if Frketch doesn’t understand straight reporting, then she can blame her teachers, in part.  It’s wrong to harass her, but that’s the world we live in today, unfortunately.

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