Monday 14 September 2009

Journalism (2)

As a follow-up to an earlier post and my comment that 'journalists' show an effrontery to even use the title, comes yet another post by The Rest Of The Story illustrating the 'cut & paste' art practice that is nowadays called 'journalism'. It is also worth noting that Anna Gilmore, referred to in this post, is on the board of ASH, so one can hardly take her views as 'neutral'; ASH being one of the most renowned, fact-twisting, 'fake-charity' that the Good Lord ever allowed to exist!

Velvet Glove Iron Fist also has a few, well-chosen, words to say on the subject of heart attacks.

If one were searching for a 'definitive' rebuttal to the 'second-hand smoke' 'hysteria', one could do no better than refer to 'Scared To Death' (continuumbooks.com) written by Richard North and Christopher Booker. Whilst 'de-bunking' subjects such as Salmonella, Listeria, Mad Cow and Asbestos  amongst others - they also said this on 'second-hand' smoke:

"What the campaigners against 'second-hand smoke' were not entitled to claim, however, although it was their most constantly repeated boast, was that they were saving thousands of lives which would have been lost through passive smoking itself. Despite their tireless efforts, they had not been able to produce a single, genuinely scientific study that proved beyond doubt that second-hand smoke was actually responsible for killing people. Hundreds of studies had tried to establish this point, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds. But, for all their researchers' ingenuity, not one had produced evidence which in reality was objectively convincing or, under the strict rules of science, 'statistically significant'."

And all the 'facts' spouted by the campaigners, were all faithfully reproduced by the 'media' as fact!

They continue:

"The triumph of the campaign against passive smoking had provided one of the most dramatic examples in history of how science can be bent and distorted for ideological reasons, to come up with findings that the evidence did not support and which were in many ways the reverse of the truth."

It is worth noting that the comment in the last paragraph could also be levied against the proponents of 'climate change' and 'global-warming'! Yet again the 'facts' were faithfully reproduced, without question!

If you have not read 'Scared to Death' - do go buy a copy, it is a real 'eye-opener'!



H/T: Mark Wadsworth who began the 'train of thought' for this post.

2 comments:

subrosa said...

Not many of the media have publicised the fact that air travel is far less healthy since smoking was banned.

Now all the air is recycled. Before only 50% of it was recycled.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Ta for link.