We now live in an age where it is imperative to always question mass media journalism if we are interested in arriving at truth about almost any matter. Given recent numerous examples of mass media journalism spreading disinformation and presenting them as “facts” and social media icons aggressively forwarding the suppression of freedom of speech by censoring any independent journalists that (1) either spreads truth or (2) merely questions the numerous holes that sometimes exist in the mass media narrative, any person of any intelligence would regularly question the “journalists” that work for mass media corporations.
A couple of weeks ago, I started blogging, having traveled to two different Asian nations and having observed the precautions people were taking in crowded areas, and having spoken to friends that live in China, my suspicions that the coronavirus was much more serious than being implied by official State reported data. Initially, when I conveyed these suspicions, I received quite a bit of pushback from people and heard accusations that I was just contributing to the hysteria, even though I additionally conveyed my belief that there was a good deal of real hysteria being reported on pure speculation from other nations’ reporters outside of the Asian continent, and that this hysteria should be largely ignored as click-bait rubbish. For example, hysteria that the Wuhan coronavirus had originated from someone eating bat soup, and with zero evidence or facts to support such contentions along with many other baseless accusations were made with regularity by clueless journalists working thousands of kilometers from ground zero just to generate clicks and advertising revenue. However, my suspicions of a couple of weeks ago of massive underreporting of true data were vindicated yesterday when the Chinese Hubei province reported that deaths and infections had spiked, in just one day, respectively by 242 and 14,840 after new reporting definitions had been imposed. And even so, as the spike in new deaths and infections were triggered by the inclusion of deaths from, and symptoms of, severe respiratory complications, many believe that the real numbers of infected are still being significantly underreported due to the lack of inclusion of asymptomatic patients.
To illustrate the shoddy nature of such sensationalistic “journalism”, Time magazine journalist Charlie Campbell claimed in an article he penned about coronavirus that “scientists ha[d] confirmed that the pneumonia-like disease, like around 70% of new human pathogens, was zoonotic or transmitted from an animal”, even though there was zero proof or confirmation of this speculative statement that the Wuhan coronavirus had spread to humans by making a leap from an animal to a human being. Given the sorry state of journalism today, facts no longer matter and many “journalists” just claim statements are facts, misleading millions of people, even though there is zero evidence of their claims. Ever since consumption of bats were first speculated as the source of the coronavirus, other animals also speculated as the being the original carriers of the virus have included snakes and pangolins. It may later be proven that indeed the Wuhan virus originated in an animal, but without any confirming proof of this claim, journalists that continually state claims as facts with zero proof should be permanently banned from their industry.
In stories in which the unknowns far exceed the knowns, I don’t believe that opinions and speculation should necessarily be banned. Above, I stated that I offered my own opinions about the coronavirus just a few weeks ago on my blog. However, when stating opinions, opinions need to be clearly indicated as such, and far too many mass media journalists convey opinions as facts today. Already, within the realm of finance, mass media channels offer widespread exposure to the least qualified of people they misbrand as “experts” to offer widely speculative and often very erroneous opinions, of which I’ve written about here, that we don’t need to also compound such errors in reporting by also misbranding wildly speculative opinions as facts.
Given the fact that I live in Asia, I directly observed how people were behaving in nations bordering China to the coronavirus and spoke with some people on the ground in China about what they were hearing about the virus, and based upon my minor research, I concluded that the virus was of a much more serious nature than being suggested by the Chinese government. While I acknowledge that my research was of an unscientific nature and purely anecdotal, it still was strong enough to doubt the “official” narrative, even while simultaneously not yet knowing the truth. I believed that eventually the serious nature of the virus would come to light and slowly, the truth is leaking out. Consequently, more than two weeks ago, I discussed with my patrons (transcendent level) two companies that I thought would benefit in share price once the true nature of the virus eventually came to light and a need for a long-term solution to this crisis became apparent. Currently, the stock prices of these companies are up 9% and 21% from my discussed purchase prices and I believe that both still have considerable upside.
Likewise, when I was running a gold and silver mining company research service in years past, I discussed with my clients the ridiculous nature of very high ratings granted by mining executives to a newly opened market to them – Myanmar. The reason I warned my clients against buying the stock of any gold mining company operating in Myanmar back then was because:
(1) I had taken multiple trips to Myanmar to investigate the business environment for myself;
(2) spoken to people there on the ground about the opening business environment in Myanmar; and
(3) spoken at length to a friend that had grown up in Myanmar about her thoughts on the changing, evolving business environment as well.
All of my research led me to the conclusion that the mining executives were delusional in their high positive ranking of Myanmar as a new mining market and that they failed to understand, as neophytes in a new market, that promises made to them were more lip service than reality. I immediately knew that these mining executives would be in for a very rude awakening when the promises made to them to lure their business and investment commitments were eventually broken. In fact, even to this day, I guarantee that large international companies that are operating in Myanmar, like Coca Cola and Thailand food conglomerate CP, are paying substantial behind closed-doors bribes to government officials for the “privilege” of operating in that nation. Regarding the mining company executives, sure enough, the next year, with a year of actual business experience under their belt, all of them that had praised Myanmar’s business environment a year prior drastically downgraded their ranking. Thus, merely being on the ground and conducting some investigative work for myself trumped decades of experience that these mining executives had in the industry regarding the determination of the truth. In fact, in conducting my investigative work, it was beneficial for me to be an outsider, as no one with whom I spoke told me tall-tales about the welcoming nature of the business environment to foreigners since they were not trying to attract a business investment from me.
Finally, on-site investigation, not anecdotal based, but fact and evidence-based, always trumps pure speculation shamelessly promoted as facts in politics as well. In some instances, like the one I discussed above, anecdotal information can still be of high utility and does not necessarily always need to be dismissed when making an educated decision. However, in the shady realm of political reporting, in which many political reporters fear losing their job for reporting the truth, and therefore always stick to a State approved “official” narrative and never deviate from this stance, much higher quality information based upon evidence and facts, produced by independent journalists, is often available. I guarantee that if you believe Syrian President Assad killed his own people with Chlorine gas attacks, as widely promoted as “fact” by “journalists” in many nations that did not spend a single second on the ground in Douma, Syria investigating the information they reported, your opinion will drastically change simply by reading fact and evidence based investigations of independent journalists that actually traveled to Douma to gather facts.
In conclusion, despite the brevity of this article, I hope that I have been able to convince you of the necessity to always question mass media journalism when it comes to reporting of a controversial topic in which the unknowns about a reported subject outweigh the knowns presented by mass media platforms. It indeed is reprehensible that many “journalists” report present pure speculations as “facts” regarding subject matters in which the unknowns at the time outweigh the knowns. As an example of this, have you ever wondered how State-sponsored “journalists” always have reported the identities of terrorists responsible for shooting down a commercial flight within hours of the tragedy in the absence of any claimed responsibility? Of course, with zero time for any forensic investigation to be conducted on the wreckage, in every single instance like this, the unknowns far outweigh the knowns about the situation, but yet this never stops mass media corporations from taking to the airwaves and accusing someone of being responsible for the tragedy despite zero evidence and proof to support their accusations. Consequently, in my quest for truth, this is always why I deem it an absolute necessity to question mass media journalism.
