The below features comment from reader Vijay Vallamudi in quote boxes, with FRN's brief responses to his points raised. His objections to OffGuardian's coverage are well-intentioned, we've vetted his interactions on Disqus and Medium, and he seems genuine. Our responses to his points are below each point.
The article in question appeared first on
OffGuardian and was reproduced on
FRN days later.
While we aren't experts on this subject of virology, pandemics, or public responses to these, we've accurately covered any number of ongoing wars, crises, and world events and there has never been an exception where the military-media-intelligence nexus wasn't involved. There has rarely been a case where we've had to retract a story entirely, aside from updating facts, figures, locations and other 'fog of war' elements that come as a part of war coverage.
As we've been featured in US Senate Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the subject of propaganda and democratic processes, have been targeted and smeared directly by Atlantic Council projects, and have nevertheless survived to tell the world about the situations in Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela and beyond, and members of our editorial team have often been featured on foreign televised media to give expert assessment of these world events, we believe we are at least in the position to speak to the media-intelligence aspects of this phenomenon, which several of the experts in the referenced article above have described as 'hysteria'.
We encourage a robust conversation about this pandemic, its consequences on public health, civil liberties, economic justice, transparency, and fundamental challenges it poses to whatever democratic institutions may still exist. - J. Flores
Comment: This just illustrates the complete hysteria around the current coronavirus outbreak. People are not acting rationally and officials are not being careful in how they are reporting deaths. To say that someone 'died of coronavirus' simply because they had a cough is completely irresponsible. And there's a very big difference between 'dying of coronavirus' and 'dying with coronavirus', a turn of phrase the media has been all too willing to exploit.
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