Legacy media finally catches up

Sudden U-turn after five years spent parroting covid script

- by JACQUI DEEVOY

AS the world reflects on the fifth anniversary of the faux pandemic’s late 2020 peak, a stark pattern has emerged in the UK’s mainstream media landscape.

Publications that once championed strict lockdowns, vaccine mandates and mask-wearing as unassailable public health imperatives have now pivoted to narratives questioning and criticising those very measures.

But was the early fervour driven by incomplete science, political pressure or a media echo chamber? By examining contradictory headlines from key UK publications — the BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail — alongside the stark evolution in U.S.-based Newsweek — we can trace this reversal. These examples illustrate how reporting has evolved from absolutism to nuance, often without explicit acknowledgment or explanation.

In the frantic early days, UK media outlets aligned closely with government messaging. In 2021, the rapid rollout of the experimental ‘vaccines’ was hailed as a ‘miracle’; masks were said to be essential shields; and the people who chose to be unvaccinated were seen as societal risks — the enemy even. This was the era of fear-driven headlines where dissent was rare, and restrictions were framed as moral imperatives.

In April 2020, the BBC, amid initial confusion over mask efficacy, ran ‘glimmer of light’ headlines whilst insisting all the while that social distancing continues, quoting The Sun’s front page call to wear a mask.

And The Guardian ran an article titled, ‘What kind of face mask best protects against coronavirus?’, emphasising N955 and surgical masks as the ‘highest level of protection’.

By November 2021, it declared mask-wearing was linked to a 53 per cent cut in covid, calling masks ‘the single most effective public health measure’.