Between April 2020 and August 2022, the government spent over $116 million on COVID messaging, plus another $55 million via the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
“This substantial government funding stifled open debate,” Anna McLoughlin of NZ Doctors Speaking out on Science (NZDSOS) writes, creating an atmosphere where sceptics were “disappeared or ridiculed and independent journalism was cast quite literally as criminally dangerous.”
She calls out the “stark double standard: journalists and ‘infotainment’ pundits, untrained in medicine, dispensed health advice without consequence, while TV personalities like Hilary Barry offered chocolate fish for vaccines.
Yet, “experts in medicine were heavily punished for exercising their professional judgment, even whilst the Medical Council of New Zealand spouted the vaccines were 100% safe,” she writes.
“No pharmaceutical treatment in any circumstance, at any time is ever 100% safe, particularly brand new genetic therapy products which were presented in warp speed timing without full studies completed. We are now seeing thorough peer-reviewed science showing significant safety concerns years after vaccination,” she argues.
Calling it “state-sponsored manipulation,” she points to the Behavioural Insights Team slogans like “Team of 5 million,” colour-coded alert levels, and coordinated messaging driven by the Behavioural Insights Team, WHO partnerships, and USAID-linked media funding.
“This is not public health communication,” she argues. “It’s information dictatorship, and we’re still paying the price.”
She urges the Royal Commission to investigate funding, ethics, and media accountability.
Centrist Ltd.