IN their wisdom, the BBC decided to address the ‘problem’ of the unvaccinated on Wednesday. The programme can be seen here.
If you thought that this might finally have been an acknowledgement from our national broadcasting Big Brother that it should explore the reasons why some of us are unvaccinated, stop right there.
As ever with the BBC, it skewed and deceived from the start with a pre-broadcast promotional claim that only 8 per cent of the population took this radical decision. Thank goodness for the determination of Professor Norman Fenton who challenged this absurd assertion, shown to be way off the mark by the inimitable Dr Clare Craig earlier this month.
The interesting thing was that within hours of Professor Fenton posting his ‘fact check’, the BBC updated their article to remove the egregious 8 per cent comment, as documented here in his article.
No apologies predictably have been forthcoming for this journalistic and editorial travesty.
The programme has already drawn criticism, even from the pro- vaccine Telegraph where it’s been described as a painfully patronising documentary that treated vaccine sceptics as idiots. The presenter, Professor Hannah Fry, can expect more to come her way, not least from this particular informed and intelligent vaccine-sceptic publication, none of whose unvaxxed editors, writers and readers were approached for their views.
Our own review of this latest BBC disgrace, from the sharp pen of Laura Perrins, can be read elsewhere in these pages today.
Finally, here is Professor Fenton’s latest post viewing update of his article. https://www.normanfenton.com/post/bbc-s-independent-vaccine-expert-just-happens-to-be-in-charge-of-pfizer-s-vaccine-centre In addition to its other travesties he points out that ‘the programme’s ‘vaccine is safe’ for pregnant women ‘expert’ (introduced to the concerned selected members of the unvaxxed public by Prof Finn) just happened to be the PI of the Pfizer Covid vaccine in pregnancy trial. When speaking about the US pharma companies Pfizer and Moderna in the programme the Bristol University paediatrician, Prof Adam Finn stated that he ‘acted as a buffer between them and the public’ (implying some kind of independent role). This, Professor Fenton rightly points out, was a remarkable statement given Finn’s position as the leader of the Pfizer Centre of Excellence for Epidemiology of Vaccine-preventable Diseases – set up with an initial £4.6 million investment in May 2021. No prior interests from this ‘expert’ then.
