Chapter 17 The Day Journalism Died

Rodney Palmer

An excerpt from: Canary In a Covid World; How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World. A collection of essays from 34 contemporary thought leaders. Just released on Amazon here:

On April 4, 2020 the top news anchor at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation started speaking gibberish. Adrienne Arsenault, the highly respected and trusted co-host of The National started her news item looking at the cell phone in her hand and saying, “What do you do if this happens? A loved one, let’s say it’s your dad…” and she goes on to describe how to behave when your dear old dad sends you a wacky text falsely claiming this new virus was engineered in a Chinese lab.

I had reported on the SARS outbreak while stationed in Beijing as foreign correspondent for CTV News in 2003, and followed the snail’s pace of the World Health Organization and its virus hunters who target patient zero. Back then it took about three months for the Chinese government to allow them into the country, and then they stalled them in Beijing while they tried to negotiate their way to Guangdong where the outbreak first emerged.

On April 4, 2020 the world was still only three months into the known emergence of the COVID-19 virus, and less than three weeks into the Canada-wide state of emergency. I knew the virus hunters hadn’t begun to search for patient zero yet, because no one was getting in or out of Wuhan where it was first reported. But on this premature date, the CBC confidently reported that it would be so ridiculous to consider a leak from the Wuhan bat coronavirus laboratory, that only…..

Continue reading the essay from the book: Canary In a Covid World; How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World. A collection of essays from 34 contemporary thought leaders. Available on Amazon here: