CMA and misinformation.
The Canadian Medical Association hired Abacus to survey 2500 Canadians about misinformation associated with Health and Health Care System information sources. Do you trust its conclusions ?
CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
2024 Health and Media Annual Tracking Survey
https://digitallibrary.cma.ca/viewer?file=%2Fmedia%2FDigital_Library_PDF%2F2024%2520Health%2520and%2520media%2520annual%2520tracking%2520survey%2520EN.pdf#page=1
At the end of this 25 page report is the following 4-point takeaway.
MOVING FORWARD.
Social media use, including for health and health system information, is trending upward as the preferred news source for young Canadians. It is also the least trusted source of health and health system information. How can we bring trusted information to the channels Canadians frequent?
Canadians are still interested in consuming news despite an overall news environment that feels increasingly negative. The pandemic was a positive experience for health news, with many applauding the media on its coverage. Following the pandemic, how can we keep up this momentum and build on it with everyday health reporting?
With authorship being the pillar of trust, how do we authenticate authors in a world of misinformation?
Most Canadians can point to a bad consequence of misinformation but seem to have accepted it is here to stay. How can we create a healthy information environment that acknowledges misinformation is here to stay?
Institutional bias.
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) gave itself high praise for its pandemic performance with the statement: “The pandemic was a positive experience for health news, with many applauding the media on its coverage”.
BUT, consider this.
Abacus was paid well to conduct the survey according to directions provided by CMA officials. Those same CMA officials were responsible for the survey conclusions as per “MOVING FOREWORD”.
Was there ever any doubt that those CMA officials would give an “attaboy”shoutout for themselves and their associates?
Psychology of Totalitarianism.
Dr. Mattias Desmet wrote the book that most influenced me during the pandemic. An expert on mass formation psychosis, he explained how the phenomenon was applied with great success throughout the Covid-19 era.
Terms like ‘mind control’ and ‘propaganda’ were already too tarnished with unacceptable connotations, so new methods and terms like ‘fact-checkers’, ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, “fake news”, “conspiracy theory”, “junk science” and “racist” took centre stage to discredit some information sources while bolstering others.
FEAR was the secret sauce to make the news more tasty.
Fear-mongering was applied liberally by those institutions that benefitted most from tax funding and governments subsidies.
“Innocence” is on the eye of the beholder.
Doctors, nurses and health care professionals practice under a government-approved license supplied by their governing bodies. Many of those professionals were also victims of the perpetrators of mass formation psychosis.
It must have been very difficult for them to treat patients under “approved protocols” when evidence of their safety and efficacy were suspect, and when their own eyes and ears told them that the pervasive daily pandemic news reports were grossly misleading.
Journalists were also under scrutiny and feared for their jobs. The advertising revenues of corporate media companies plummeted over the past decade. This placed an increasing urgency on media employees to conform to editorial mandates as they watched many of their colleagues get ‘pink slips’ and face future employment uncertainty.
The Internet came to the rescue.
Podcasting for money became a viable alternative for many former corporate journalists and “dismissed” health care professionals. As a Substack writer since January 2022 and an ardent podcast follower since 2015, I have witnessed this and other related phenomenon as the information landscape has morphed into what it is today.
The Abacus survey revealed much of the demographic factors that have shaped “public trust” relating to “official” news sources and the “unofficial” ones (ie those provided by social media, bloggers and podcasters). It has been the advent of these “unofficial” sources which helped me to realize how much “misinformation” had been coming from “official” sources.
I wonder how many of they CMA officials who wrote “MOVING FORWARD” were Boomers, or who otherwise the kind of people who get all of their “news” and “opinions” from TV, the CBC, the Toronto Star, and the like.
Do any of them even know the names of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Paul Marek, Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. Eric Cole, Dr. Steven Pelech, Dr. Christopher Shaw, or any of the esteemed medical professionals and scientists listed as FELLOWS of the Independent Medical Alliance.
The JFK files.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated over 62 years ago. The government file is classified as “Top Secret” and remains locked away from public scrutiny. Why?
What other secrets are stored in the “Top Secret Vault”?
What do our governments have to hide that is so egregious as to warrant the policy of absolutely NO TRANSPARENCY?
It’s the ultimate irony that millions of citizens will vote to place trust in politicians then acknowledge that politicians are the least trusted of all professionals
What I gather from this report is "Ignorance is bliss" when it comes to the health system and policies. I don't trust any health system employee any longer!