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April 4, 2022 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
53:27
Anna Brees
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Welcome to The Deli, and I know I always say this, but I really am excited about this week's special guest.
It's Anna Breece.
Anna, Tell us about yourself first of all, because I've seen you around a lot at, you know, cropping up at protests and things.
But tell me about your background.
I mean, you're ex-BBC, which many of my viewers would consider to be the belly of the beast.
So how long were you there for?
So I joined the BBC in 2008.
I was a presenter for BBC 7 Today.
I was one of the main presenters, I used to do the late news.
And then I left for a short while to have my first child, and then I went back to BBC in Wales, BBC X-Ray, which is a consumer programme, I was a producer there.
And again, I had my second child, so I took some time out and ended up working for the National Union of Journalists, I was freelance there for an organisation called NUJ Training Wales.
And so yeah, before that I was at ITV for a long time, I was at ITV for For quite a period, for about six or seven years, ITV in Channel Islands, ITV in Oxford in Abingdon and ITV in Birmingham.
And I really went into more of the presenting side of things.
I used to produce and present the late news.
I used to do quite a lot of live broadcasting and packages, filming and editing at speed.
And then so really, I haven't been back in that kind of mainstream newsroom since 2012.
Right, right.
But I suppose what I'm leaning up to is that you are one of the very few, I mean really surprisingly few, journalists of any description who were calling out the Covid madness over the last two years.
And you know, you recognise that this was not as was being sold to us by the mainstream media.
And I've got to ask you, because this is a question that a lot of people ask me, when you were working in the mainstream media, which obviously you've fallen out of love with, were you aware of the degree to which the mainstream media is controlled and is essentially a branch of the deep state, I think?
No, I wasn't.
And you've got to remember back then there wasn't a lot on social media, so we didn't have a place for discussion and to hear different views and see evidence coming from all over the world.
So it really kicked off for me, I think, when I was contacted by a number of people who were victims of child sexual abuse and their stories weren't coming out.
And also, I was very interested by the BBC Panorama programme called Saving Syria's Children.
And I had, you know, I had concerns really kicked off in 2018, I would say.
That's when I started to realise this isn't right.
Not when I was there, no.
And I think we did really listen to the public a lot more when I was in ITV in Abingdon.
We used to take the front page of the Gloucestershire Echo or the Gloucestershire Citizen, and that was often our lead story.
We would take phone calls from members of the public and we would give them the time to look into their stories and to cover them.
But I think it's become a very different place now, the newsroom.
And I know, you know, I'm in a journalism group, a WhatsApp group, with a number of journalists who are working at the moment in the mainstream and can't speak out.
Others that have retired.
You may have heard of, obviously, Mark Sharman's come along.
He's a very big voice as a former Sky and IT news executive.
I mean, he was above the head of news.
So it'd be good for you to have a chat with Mark.
I should do Mark Sharman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm, you know, I have heard what's going on in the newsroom from people right now, what has been going on in the last two years.
What I would say is I really wasn't a journalist when all this kicked off.
I was a trainer.
So I was showing people how to, corporate communication professionals, earning very good money and really enjoying it.
I made a little business for myself, doing these two day courses on how to film and edit at speed on a mobile.
And these communications departments to really act like TV journalists with their mobiles, being able to produce contemporaneous on the day content.
So I was doing that training and I was really loving it.
And I was earning really good money.
I mean, a freelance shift at ITV in Birmingham at the time, you get 175 quid for one day reporting shift.
And you know, the training, I loved it a lot more.
And I was earning sort of five times that.
So I didn't want to go back into it.
I didn't want to be a journalist again, but I could see what the hell is going on here.
The first thing really was somebody called Professor Robert Endress from Imperial College in London contacted me.
Because I did a few interviews, a few videos on YouTube, especially when the first censorship issue came along.
Do you remember Dr. Erickson, the Californian doctors in the Navy tunics?
They held a press conference.
And they were talking about, like, this is just one of many coronaviruses.
And that had four and a half million views on YouTube, and they removed it.
And that was the first time in my life I had seen that code of censorship.
And that frightened me.
So I started to become more and more vocal.
My YouTube channel had been going for years, but it really started to take off.
Because I was basically saying what a lot of people were thinking.
Professor Rob Endress in particular had never had any issues with mainstream media, which I call old media, but he said the BBC are not providing a balanced view here.
He was very critical of Neil Ferguson's modelling report and he's continued to be very vocal.
I've seen him at protests and he Yeah, he did an interview with me and I just thought I had to do this.
I just had to do this.
It was like coming out of retirement really and I saw the call on retired medics and doctors and nurses to go back and help with the crisis in the hospital and I felt there was a crisis in trust and in the media and I sort of felt like I was coming out And to go back and help with that, and do these very important interviews.
And there are some really big ones, I think, that went viral, like Dr. Mike Yeadon, Dr. Roger, Dr. Pierre Khoury.
I spoke to David Rose, who was at Mail at the time, also an ex-BBCX observer and reporter.
That was very instrumental.
And people have said to me, is when I saw that interview with you, Anna, I changed.
You know, the interview you did, that had a massive impact on me.
So I realised those interviews were, really, I look back now and I realise I was a part, a big part of trying to bring balance.
But what I would say is I got very emotional, very upset, and I tried to stay calm and do the debates.
But I saw the suffering that was going on and I got very involved from day one.
So I had a meeting with Simon Dolan from Keep Britain Free.
Do you remember Simon?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
And then I was also asked for them.
I remember Christine Brett from Ask For Them, the children's campaigning group.
Then I spoke to Louise May Crafield from Save Our Rights UK.
So I saw the whole movement and I became probably quite vocal and a journalist maybe people turn to to feel some way that their reality was being reflected on what they watched because I got the, you know, I sound and look a bit like, you know, well, I was a presenter, wasn't I, for BBC?
Yeah.
And I was trying my very best to get these voices heard with these important individuals.
The Great Barrington Declaration was massive, wasn't it?
Do you remember that?
Yes.
Martin Caldwell.
Yeah.
And I mean, I just couldn't understand why they weren't being invited to debate herd immunity, focused protection, so, you know, shielding the vulnerable and elderly and letting the rest of the population build up herd immunity.
But I did more and more of these interviews.
I became more and more angry.
But I would look at others like Freddie Sayers from UnHerd and I think he was a lot calmer than me.
I think that he was one of the few actually, UnHerd and Freddie Sayers, to keep calm and to keep balanced.
Whereas I was very, I was very upset, you know, what had happened to children in particular and stopping, you know, stopping children's mental health services while at the same time the BBC were filming, you know, EastEnders, you know, and there was a, there was a park I went to, I drove to the park and I wasn't allowed, the police said you're not allowed to come to the park.
You're only allowed to walk within five miles of your home.
And the BBC were there doing a big drama.
All these crazy things happened and we'd forgotten all about it.
There were so many crazy things.
And I really have to write it down.
I have to write the book because this was a moment in history, wasn't it, that we should never forget.
And it's really rotten journalism that was brought to light.
Nasty, rotten, dangerous, dangerous journalism.
Yeah, so you've described your own instinct which is very similar to mine and I would have thought it would have been the instinct of any journalist really because most of us go into journalism not for the money because I mean all my contemporaries, university contemporaries who went into banking and law and stuff were earning way more than me so that was never the goal.
We do it because we're curious And we want to see where, we want to follow the trail and to see where it ends up.
Regardless of what, we haven't got preconceived ideas of what we're trying to find, of where we're going to end up.
We just want to know the truth.
And I find it really mystifying that in the last two years, There has been all this low-hanging fruit about what you mentioned, the Great Barrington Declaration, we've got the cruise ship which gave an early indication of the true infection rate, the true IFR of so-called COVID-19, the emerging stories of vaccine damage, of
Of all the collateral damage of this massive government, I wouldn't call it a cock-up, I would say it was deliberate, but whatever, there were so many stories that five or two years before would have given endless material to any journalist worth their salt, and yet Most of our contemporaries just didn't do it.
They just, they just brought, they clapped for the NHS, they clapped for Captain Tom, who was a kind of, you know, this sort of figure that, he was the, I think he was the equivalent of Stalin's, you know, heroes of the Soviet Union, producing loads of tractors.
He was clearly being used as a kind of propaganda tool by the state, and yet never was this questioned by the media.
So what I want to ask you, sorry long way of getting around to this question, is what were all our colleagues doing in all this?
Do you think they all secretly nurtured suspicions but wanted to keep their jobs?
Or do they believe this crap?
I don't know.
I, I, I, um...
You know, I have conversations with Alistair Bunklerose at Sky News, or I was chatting to Kate Silverton who's at the BBC, or there were lots of celebrities I was in touch with at the beginning, and journalists, and some of them spoke out, but a lot of them were threatened.
Look what happened to Matt Leticier, you know?
He was a pundit, wasn't he, on the Sky Sports programme, and they told him, they warned him, you've got to shut up.
You're going to lose your job.
And I know someone else, actually, quite a few people are very well known and I can't see who they are.
They say, if you don't shut up, we'll let McKinney in.
If you don't shut up, you will never be used by this media organisation again.
We will never.
You have no career and no future.
So when you've got a loss of income, a loss of your career, I mean, it's happened to me.
I have suffered and I'm really upset and angry.
And I'll be honest with you, people have said, I've made money out of COVID.
All I have got is grief, absolute and abuse.
I've just launched some media training courses, donation based.
And the money I've got has only just covered the room hire and the food.
And I sent this out to my email database of 20,000 people.
I had five people write back saying, you're a shill, take me off this list, horrible things.
And I've made no money from it.
But then I get some messages which are wonderful.
I tried to focus on the two lovely emails, but the other five, just, and I get this vile abuse.
And I think, well, what have I done this for?
You know, it's made me quite cynical, quite sad, because I, I was earning good money and I was enjoying it.
And I, and I was, I was, I had a great life and I had a great career.
I was turning work away, loads of word of mouth work.
So I haven't done this.
I've done this for my kids.
I've done this because it was the right thing to do.
And you, money will flow.
If you, People, we need trust.
This is a trust battle now.
You see the likes of Marianna Spring and BBC Trending and these disinformation reporters.
They are not the people to build trust now.
It's people like you and me.
We stood up.
At the moment you see injustice, you shout out and you say something.
That's something my dad taught me to do, especially when it comes to children's suffering.
It's totally what we have done, the chaos.
That responsibility we had as journalists to hold power to account.
You walk out.
If I was at the BBC, I would have got a group together and we would have gone on strike.
There's no two ways about it and I don't understand.
I know people at the BBC are very unhappy.
There's a couple of people I spoke to.
There's loads actually.
There's a very senior editor at the BBC and I need to decide what to do about all of this because I've got so many names and I'm like, You just professionally don't share that information, do you?
So if a celebrity contacted you, or a senior journalist, or whatever, and said, oh, I know this load of shit, I can't believe it, I'm really embarrassed, I can't believe I'm having to do this.
You go like, oh, well, thank you for telling me, but what the fuck are you gonna do about it, excuse my language?
And then you go, oh, well, I'll keep it to myself, I won't tell anyone.
But yeah, actually, there comes a time when you think, no, maybe I should name names, maybe in the future.
But I'll tell you what, the journalists that I did speak to, they were the good ones.
They were engaged in conversation.
They supported my work.
They said, you're very brave.
Thank you for what you're doing.
I wish we could do it.
We're trying our best.
So one person at the BBC, very senior person at the BBC, said, can you put me in touch with the other people at the BBC so we can kind of support each other and find a way through this?
But that person's name I haven't shared, but I could, couldn't I?
I mean, it's a difficult one, Anna.
Anyway, I did my best to connect people at the BBC, but yeah, sorry for swearing.
I get angry.
I'm still very angry.
Justifiably so.
There are a couple of points I want to raise there.
Yeah, first of all, I think that you're probably right that you cannot disclose these people's names without their permission.
I think really the onus is on them to give you permission to, because Look, you've done something courageous.
You've taken a financial hit.
You've exposed yourself to accusations like shill.
I bet you've been called a grifter as well because grifter is one of the favorite words used by the evil establishment.
Whatever it is that this paradigm we live in whereby This crazy paradigm whereby if you work for the BBP and you survive on money which is extracted compulsorily from the viewer through this compulsory tax, that's legitimate.
But when you're actually an independent journalist, Trying to escape this corrupt system and not unreasonably expecting to earn a living for your courage, you're suddenly branded this worthless, cheaty person who doesn't deserve to make a living.
It's completely the wrong way around.
But yeah.
You know what?
Do you know at the beginning, right, when I used to go on LinkedIn, because I used to use LinkedIn to get a lot of business, And I thought, how can you all just carry on, you know, with your life, with your corporate life, selling your business?
And I knew a lot of people had a professional appearance, but what they thought in private was very different.
And I said, there's so much suffering, how can you just carry on as normal and not do something?
And all these people I worked with.
But yeah, and so you're brave, you're right, you're brave, you come out and you make a few quid for them.
I'm making money from Patreon, yeah, but it's not what More than anything.
You know, it's enough to live off.
It's not as much as I was making before.
But the horrible thing is the grief.
Yeah, it's not nice.
It's not being pleasant.
You know, you go and help someone, you know, if you see someone falling over in the street and you go and help them and put yourself out, maybe you're late for a wedding or an engagement and they get up and then they turn around and swear at you and are horrible to you.
When you were all just, you were trying to help, you put yourself out.
It's horrible.
And it's left me feeling really quite sad.
I'm trying to find hope again to not feel that way.
Yeah, I can see that.
Presumably...
I think it was you, wasn't it, who relayed the information that there were lots of people that you, I mean, you've mentioned celebrities, but there were also lots of news journalists of various kinds who'd submitted stories to newspapers and TV programs illustrating the damage being done by government policy over COVID.
And they'd had their stories nixed or suppressed or just editors just refused to run them.
Is that right?
Yes.
I mean, David Rose was quite successful.
I think he was at the Mail on Sunday, not the Mail, and he was able to get something in about Ivermectin.
Well, we did see a little bit more.
I mean, Dr Mike Yeadon had a full page in the Mail in October 2020.
Yeah, but they do that.
But BBC was poor.
Sky was awful.
BBC was awful.
The Guardian was awful.
The Mail and Telegraph were good.
Do you think?
Anna, come on.
At times, yeah.
At times.
Well, no, no, you've got Alison Pearson.
Alison Pearson's good, isn't she?
She's there.
You did have a few good articles in
Alison Pearson, and you're right, that every now and again you had a piece by, a think piece by Jonathan Sumption, or you had, you know, an article about Mike Yeadon, but this was in the context of relentless news coverage which implied that yes, COVID-19 was the worst thing since Spanish flu, that the vaccines were the only solution, no there weren't any
There's no such thing as vaccine damage, that was just a kind of crazy, kooky, tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, that masks were necessary, that school children should wear... You occasionally had a sort of countervailing voice, which was given a sort of licensed opposition, but that's all it was.
I don't believe any of the newspapers, not even the Telegraph... They were bullied, I mean you...
You've got to listen to my interview with David Rose, because he explained that you would be threatened.
The head of comms for the health, you know, health head of comms at a hospital, you'd be removed access.
So as a health correspondent or reporter, so like Hugh Pym or whatever, or Fergus Walsh at the BBC, you had to get on with the communications department, otherwise you'd have no access and wouldn't simply be able to get the footage or do the stories.
If you didn't do as you were told.
And then you have to remember as well that, you know, the Sun, the Mirror, whatever, the Mail, they all have a lot of money coming from government advertising.
Yes.
They had to toe the line, didn't they?
Otherwise you couldn't pay everyone's wages.
I mean, I heard a story from one paper, assistant editor of a publication, I'd heard that they only make money from commuters.
And because everyone was in lockdown, they were desperate to push the vacs and get everyone back to work, because that's how they made their money, was by people picking up the paper on the way to work and on the way home.
That's how they survived financially, so they had to follow a policy that meant people got back to work.
It's all financial.
And I don't know about you, I had somebody offer me £1,000, okay?
So, £1,000 to continue the work, campaigning, To pay my wages.
And I said, that's amazing, thank you.
And then they said, well, could you ask these questions and do this?
And I thought, well, no, if you give me that money, you're giving me the money to decide.
But even on a really tiny level, I saw it and I thought, well, no, I'm not giving that money, if I don't ask those questions and do that story.
I don't get that thousand pounds.
So it's the same kind of thing.
I mean, being realistic.
And also, we have to be very aware if one vaccine death or injury story really does frighten people.
So you might be thinking, you know, you're insulting the intelligence of the general population, really, aren't you, as an editor, by saying they can't handle this.
You know, I don't know.
5,000 people have died in the UK from the vaccine.
But if we publish that, people wouldn't take the vaccine.
They weren't appreciating the intelligence of their audience to decide what the risks and benefits were.
I mean, you did have the stories like, so Charlotte Wright, the wife of Dr Stephen Wright, I tried to get her on ITV this morning.
Her husband died from the AstraZeneca vaccine and that didn't happen.
They wouldn't speak to her.
But I did have a chat with ITV this morning about that.
I had an honest, interesting conversation.
It is really important that we put ourselves in the shoes of these very senior, you know, editors in mainstream media organisations.
But they didn't run those stories.
Obviously, Lisa Shaw's husband did speak.
Do you know Lisa Shaw, the 44-year-old presenter who died?
Yeah.
She had kids, she's the same age as me.
But the husband was allowed on the BBC to talk about it.
He got very upset.
Very powerful interview that was.
But he said we should be allowed choice over whether to take which vaccine.
So these stories did get out.
People are talking about them.
But let's be honest, we don't really know.
I don't know what the hell is going on with the vaccine.
I mean, I try not to... I don't know.
I don't know because I'm struggling to find a place to trust myself.
Right.
Well, it's a kind of, it's a sort of vicious circle or what is it?
A self-fulfilling prophecy in as much as the only places that you can find information about the vaccine damage are on alternative media sites, which generally have slightly sort of dodgy typefaces and they're done on the which generally have slightly sort of dodgy typefaces and they're done They haven't got the budgets of official organizations like the BBC and so on.
And so they look slightly sketchy.
And because the mainstream media will not run these stories, and you're trying to show people, "Look, hang on a second, what you're reading in the papers isn't true." And you point them to these sites and they go, "Yeah, but these are all crazy people and they have no standing in my world where I only trust the mainstream media." So it's very, very difficult.
So, I mean, what you're describing is, I think, what a lot of people are feeling.
They don't know where to turn.
I do know, personally, I don't trust the mainstream media as far as I can spit.
It's absolutely, completely compromised.
And you say, you say, okay, put yourself in the position of an executive at ITV or whatever.
Well, yeah, it's a bit like saying, yeah, but put yourself in the position of Rudolf Huss, the, was it called Rudolf Huss?
The commandant at Auschwitz.
I mean, sure, he'd been given a job to do, but I'm not sure it lets him off the hook.
People have to take a stand.
What's been going on in the last two years was morally wrong.
And also, this was bad news reporting.
It's the antithesis of news reporting, when you just take your information from the government and they say, you can't deviate from this line.
That's not being a news journalist.
That's not why we entered this business.
Well, I also know that this conversations I've heard is a lot of them weren't aware of The impact of lockdown and the Great Barrington Declaration and Martin Kulldorff and Pierre Cory's address to the Senate, because a lot of it was censored.
But Dr Tess Lowry, I mean, I was constantly getting bans for just putting a clip of Dr Tess Lowry out.
So maybe they, maybe they didn't know how bad things were, but that's being very kind.
This one particular person I'm thinking of didn't really seem to know too much about it.
ITV this morning, Really had an opportunity, a very important opportunity at the beginning to put on Us For Them.
And I used to speak to Christine Brett and she was so frustrated because they're about to go on and they pulled it at the last minute.
So I'm not quite sure.
I think they were all motivated by money, OK?
They were all motivated by making sure they've got money coming in.
And I don't know why.
I don't know why.
And I do disagree with you about naming names, really, because it's something You know, the BBC do up to people, don't they?
I mean, you see secret cameras in care homes and they do publish and they do allow secret recording.
And they do publish if it's a matter of huge public interest, and they get a right to reply.
So why can't we turn the cameras on them?
What's stopping secret recordings being published, as long as you make sure that you've given them an opportunity to respond?
And we've seen Project Veritas do this, haven't we?
Yeah, that's true.
Some CNN reporters.
Secret recording is allowed if it's a matter of huge public interest, and this is.
That's very true.
I don't think being professional.
Oh, yes.
Do you know what really annoyed me?
Okay.
It was when celebrities used to come and say, oh, you're doing a great job and a well done.
I'm saying, oh, you do something.
Come on.
There's no good telling me.
Yeah, you've almost swayed me, actually.
Because I think that you and I both understand.
It does seem unethical and unprofessional.
Yeah, it does seem really inappropriate, unethical and unprofessional.
And the people that come to me, the good ones, They were the ones that were upset, yeah?
So they're not really the ones I want to expose.
They're the ones that would engage in a conversation about this and felt very upset and frustrated.
And I think they've done stuff like, well, we're working from within, we've got to reform from within.
You know, the BBC.
They used to say, we're doing our best, we're doing our best.
They weren't, were they?
They really weren't.
And also, did you come across Any evidence?
I suspect that a lot of so-called media influencers, and namely no names but I have my suspicions of a few of them, certain people with a kind of Twitter profile etc or perhaps on shows like May have been given fat wadges of cash in order to promote the vaccine.
There seemed to be so much propaganda money sloshing around that it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case.
Did you hear any of that?
No, I haven't heard that because I think that would be a story worth exposing and I definitely would publish that and I would get a right of reply.
so whoever that individual is I would try and get some concrete evidence in place Oh, several individuals and we're talking about also sort of people who are on programmes like The Only Way is Essex I'm not sure whether that specific programme We can't say unless we've got evidence How would we find out that We'd need evidence, wouldn't we?
We'd need to see the bank account with the money going in.
You're at risk of defamation here if we mention any names, because it's very difficult to prove that.
I mean, GB News, I'd love to talk to you about GB News, I think it's fascinating.
And how, you know, there's some fantastic voices on GB News.
So for example, if I joined GB News, I would have been really, I was really excited about GB News, but then I'd be like, oh, I don't want to work with them.
Don't like that voice.
Oh, Nigel Farage.
That's not for me.
It's not for me now, but I'm working for this organisation and I've, you know, taken a job and now there's other people coming on board, but I'm not really agree with them.
It's interesting, but I'm, um, I am sure that people take money.
Well, it's not awful.
Wouldn't that be an awful thing if someone came to me and said, I'm going to give you 75 grand if you say the vaccine's wonderful.
I'd say, oh, piss off, I don't want the money, thanks.
It's prostitution, isn't it?
It's actually, yeah, I mean, I think it's worse than prostitution because I think prostitution is an honourable profession.
This is something far, far more destructive.
I'd rather be a prostitute.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, me too.
I don't think I'd be a very good one.
I don't think I'd make much money out of it, but yeah.
Yeah, I think that it's as if our culture has lost its moral compass, that so few people have come forward to do their job and speak out when they're celebrities who, heaven knows, they ought to have enough money to be able to afford it.
Listen, you've just said something really important and I can see to people's trigger points So Mark Sharman, the former executive in charge of Sky and ITV at one point, said the mainstream media has lost its moral compass.
And that got the attention of someone very, very high up, and they felt guilty.
And it got to them.
It really got to them.
And I'm not going to say who this person is, but that is not a nice feeling, okay?
It's a horrible feeling.
And probably what happened is over time, you thought, well, It's been going on for a year now.
Do you remember?
We just probably thought it was going to blow away.
It's all going to go away and it'll be forgotten about.
But it went on and on and on and on.
And at what point do you then say, oh God, I've copped up here.
We should have put more balance in.
We've seen the suffering and the damage.
I mean, we're seeing more and more come out now about how lockdown didn't work.
But they maybe at the time just thought, this will be over soon.
I don't have to speak up yet.
I don't know.
But they're saying to someone or a journalist, you've lost your moral compass.
You're not doing your job.
Isn't it a nice thing to hear?
Well, if they haven't got a moral compass it wouldn't bother them.
I can imagine that the person you mentioned, the nameless senior executive, must have thought that he or she had a moral compass and was rather shocked to be accused of not having one.
But otherwise... I can say it, it doesn't matter.
I can say it, and they're like, I don't care.
But when Mark Sharman said it, I mean, Mark was hiring and firing these people.
You know, he took on Juliette Chingham.
He was incredibly important.
He probably could have, he may have even hired this person at one point in the past.
You know, that is someone with authority.
This was significant, I think, when Mark Sharman spoke out.
And he's going to be on a program called The High Wire, hopefully soon, that got six million views globally.
So you were talking about What's the true picture?
Who do we trust?
I think the HiWire have done very well.
They've got six million views and they have quite a slick production.
But their background was from a documentary called Vaxxed.
So a lot of people think, well, they've got an agenda.
They're not.
They're anti-vaccine.
That's the only thing.
But they've done some really good stuff.
But the alternative media scene, or I like to call it the new media scene, is really interesting for me, is to see how We have held.
I think we're behind the resistance movement.
I think we should be proud of what we did and I think the UK was in a favourable position thanks to the alternative new media scene and people like yourself and others putting some shame in it and putting a little bit of balance in.
Freddie Sayers, as I mentioned, there's a lot more I think that we absolutely can look back on the last two years and say, we did a very good job.
We did our best.
Yes.
We were compassionate and courageous.
That's what I say.
I mean, I made mistakes, but I came from, you know, I came from a good place with a pure heart and to see horrific suffering of children in lockdown and the stopping of mental health services and closing the schools.
And I, You know, I look back over those two years and I am proud, but I am a different person and I have got compassion at the moment.
I don't feel quite as warm and caring about everyone as I used to.
I think we've given them their chance.
We have, haven't we?
They talk about this thing called the useless eaters.
Well, I was at Butlin's, right?
And everyone was, a lot of people were overweight with masks on and mobile.
Just going to the show, you know, everything you had to book for and you had to queue up.
And they were just these maskless lumps of people with mobiles at Butlin's and I thought, who are these people?
They are not my species!
I'm like Maura Moore now.
When were you at Butlin's?
You went on holiday?
Oh, I turned up at Butlin's.
I was so excited.
It's the first holiday, because none of us had a holiday, did we, for ages?
No.
It was Butlin's in Minehead.
And I got there, and we got our swimming costumes on, because we hadn't been swimming or something for a year.
I was so excited.
We went to go swimming.
Sorry, it's all booked up for the next three days.
Oh, what's all that about?
Yeah, you have to book everything now.
And I was in a west.
Everything was booked, so I just got a pint of cider.
In the middle of the day and just started to cry.
But anyway, everything was booked and everyone just followed it.
You know, the red shows and there's lots of theatre and everything you have to use a QR code or book and get in.
And I just didn't feel comfortable.
I didn't feel like this place or these people were of the same species as me.
And I fought for you guys.
You know, I fought so hard for my fellow man.
Yeah.
And now I'm not sure that his energy is there to care and fight for these people who don't want us to fight for them.
And I don't feel like somebody who doesn't protect their own children, who doesn't see suffering taking place for their future, in terms of democracy and trust for the future, if these journalists aren't even protecting their own children's future, they're not humans to me.
They're not.
I don't know what they are.
You're not doing it for the ones who don't want to be saved, you're doing it for the ones who can be saved.
I mean, I go... I'm quite outspoken about this and I go riding a couple of times a week and whenever I'm out with any of the mums and hear conversations about jabs, I'll always be saying, do not jab your daughter.
You know, she's a lovely girl.
She's happy in Pony Club.
She doesn't need her health jeopardized by this unnecessary medical procedure.
And I definitely must have talked at least one mother out of jabbing her children.
You know, if that's all I achieved in the last two years, job done.
I've saved two children from From having harm done to them for no reason.
I think we have to think like that.
I agree with you.
It's been depressing seeing how malleable people are.
I mean, I went on holiday recently and it was one of those flights where you were required to wear a mask.
And unless you were exempt.
So pre-boarding, the woman said, have you got a mask?
And I said, no, I'm exempt.
And so is my wife.
So we got on this 12-hour flight.
And everyone almost was wearing a mask.
Can you imagine being on a 12-hour flight wearing a face nappy?
It's crazy.
And yet people were happier going through this indignity and this discomfort than they were to just say, I'm not doing this.
So few people are willing to take a stand.
You know that I know parents, their children had asthma and they wouldn't ask for a mask exemption because they didn't want the shame and embarrassments.
So they put shame and embarrassment over the health of their own children.
And the mask thing, what you've just said, my son had to wear a mask all day and that's only just stopped now.
So in the classroom, the only time he could not wear a mask was when he was eating or peeing.
He was talking to new friends at secondary school and he never saw their faces.
Only now has he been able to.
And not only that, but some children have carried on wearing masks because they've got used to it.
And if you're shy or anxious, it makes you feel safe.
It's not really a health thing, it's kind of like a way of shutting your wells.
And what we've done to our children, like your own children.
I put posters up, we put posters up where I live, which just Try to inform children on the way to school.
If you're struggling, because you're wearing a mask all day, some of them are just 11 years old, if you're wearing a mask all day, or you're struggling, you are exempt, you must tell the teacher.
And people in the village, within an hour, tore those posters down.
They took them down, and then I got a load of reviews.
Oh bad.
Are you in Wales?
No.
Yeah, we called the organisation Choice for Children and I was working with other local parents and a lot of them wouldn't, some of them wouldn't speak out because it would impact on their jobs, but they were very supportive, you know, financially and in time and doing meetings, but even they wouldn't be vocal because they didn't want the backlash.
Only a minority would be vocal.
But yeah, we wanted children to have choice.
We wanted them to know that they are struggling in their masks, they could take them off.
Those posters were taken down.
Do you have any idea by whom?
There's a couple of people where I live, I'm pretty sure, I can guess.
Yeah, I mean, what are they thinking now?
I mean, the thing is, they would read these studies about how masks aren't really working, how they cause a lot of psychological, emotional issues for children.
They just wouldn't read them.
They'd made up their minds.
They had a position.
And I, yeah, right, it's pretty difficult, isn't it?
It just makes you think, I never thought people would behave in this way.
No.
That's what's really been the I never really thought this was possible.
I think that those of us who are awake are looking around mystified.
Why is it that other people don't get it?
And I think what it comes down to is what Matthias Desmet calls mass formation.
It's a sort of collective psychosis which has been induced by the media.
I mean, our trade is really responsible for this, largely.
I mean, it's like, you go to a... Some of the people are more easily led, maybe, but you... Do you know what I... I don't understand.
I just don't understand.
So, for example, right, if my mum and dad had both died of COVID, and I was absolutely sure they died of COVID, I still wouldn't want my son to wear a mask all day at school.
So I talk to people and I always try and put myself in other people's positions.
So this woman, I was having a beauty treatment and she said, well, three of my close family died of COVID and an osteopath I went to again.
I lost my mum.
Um, and I completely try and see things from their perspective, but I still wouldn't put a kid in a mask all day.
And I still don't believe children should be vaccinated even though that's happened.
Um, so it's really difficult because I've separated, uh, from, Other people, because I don't recognise their behaviour as sane, and you do feel like... One journalist friend of mine, he's really cool, he said it's like the invasion of body snatchers or something.
Isn't it interesting?
Yeah, some of us are just like... Like, I've been dating, and you cannot date someone who... I've got a friend who's been on dates as well, and she said, oh, Jacinda did a great job.
Or a guy said to me once, we should have locked down the schools for a year.
You can't date people like that, can you?
Of course you can, but what it does, at least it narrows down the feeling.
I'd rather date a monkey!
But tell me, are there not, like, Sites that you can now specify, you know, I don't want to go out with a masked lunatic or whatever.
I mean there must be, surely, because there must be a... Well, okay, but have there been upsides to all this?
Have you, as I have, found an interesting new community of like-minded folk to relate to?
Well, let's talk about the people that did say something.
You know, there was a teacher, Damiano Pieroni.
He took early retirement, sold his house in the Milton Keynes area just because he could not go to school when they were vaccinating children and he'd saw so much suffering.
As a principled individual, he refused, simply refused to continue working and retired on a lower pension.
So I have met people who have really Yeah, I mean, I've met some incredible people who are just wonderful.
And I'm meeting them on my courses.
You know, every two weeks I've been running these courses.
I'm meeting such a huge range of people.
There was a doctor there.
Now, he was really interesting.
This is something I'd love to talk to you about.
His daughter is Jo Rogers, Lawyers for Liberty.
Do you know Jo?
She's a solicitor.
Right.
He's a doctor.
So I'm sure he won't mind me saying, you know, he's got four daughters, you know, all very professional careers, doctors and lawyers.
He's a former retired GP and he said three of his daughters think he's mad, you know, thought lockdown, vaccines, all of it was really important.
But him and his other daughter, Jo, who like go to protests and are campaigning and Why is there such a difference in that same family?
It's really interesting.
And, you know, my brother and sister, I mean, my sister's really funny.
I love her to bits.
And I sent her something from Dr. Robert Malone about not to vaccinate your children.
And she said, I ain't going to watch it flow.
I just had my booster.
She calls me Flo.
I ain't going to watch it flow.
I just had my booster.
I said, all right, Nats.
Right.
I call her nuts.
But anyway, I just thought, and I sent my brother a link, just a link, there was no commentary with it, and he blocked me!
Yeah, well, it happens.
It's like the Civil War.
You've got, you know, brothers against sisters, uncles against, you know, nephews.
It's extraordinary.
So what's the good thing that you said to me?
Let's focus on the positives.
You said to me, what's the good thing that's come out of this?
We have realized we have to be better prepared when the next crisis comes along, that we've got a better relationship, I think, in understanding how important our political parties and leadership is in the times of crisis.
I think there's a really wonderful opportunity here for independent MPs to come forward.
I love doing training with them, showing them how they can increase their reach on Facebook through geo-targeting and community, in their community to really challenge the established political brands.
We are challenging the established media brands and the established political brands now, and I think it's a bright new future ahead of us.
Yes.
Yeah, we've got to remove the rot.
I mean, we need to find out.
We do need to have that inquiry, don't we, over what happened over the last few years.
Learn what we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
But there's been a huge, massive crisis in trust in our leadership.
And they don't look like us, they don't sound like us, they don't feel like us, these politicians.
And it's the same with the mainstream media.
It's embarrassing.
I could never work at the BBC reading an autocue and sitting on a sofa going, this is not, doesn't look like me, doesn't sound like me, doesn't feel like me.
It's time for something new.
I think you're right.
I think that the media, the mainstream media is going to collapse.
I think that Public trust in the media, as in our political class, is probably at an all-time low.
And the same with people's trust in doctors.
All this thing.
And it's not just people like you and me.
Gradually, that feeling is spreading.
And you're right.
Now that we've all got iPhones where you can record you know, to sort of broadcast quality.
So the process of disintermediation, there were no longer any barriers to entry.
We can all be citizen journalists.
We can all do the job much, much better than the BBC can.
So, and I want you to run a living, Anna.
I think you've been through a lot and I think some of the things people say about you are just like really unfair.
You've clearly played a blinder in this crisis, so please tell me about your... plug the work that you do, your training thing, because I think people ought to give you money for, you know, to help you out.
Tell me.
Well, I can't run these courses.
I've had people come along who, you know, were not interested in talking about Covid at all.
They're focused on the arts, But they can't afford, so I was charging £2.95 for a two-day course, and I'm only, you know, donate what you can afford, and I don't want to turn people away.
So I'm running this on a donation basis, but I've got a Patreon, that just means I can keep going.
So they can find me on Patreon, I'm Anna Brice Patreon, and that means I've got an income coming in to enable me, and not at a profit.
So I can have all sorts of people come along because I have to do them locally at the minute for various different reasons, family reasons.
So they're traveling to the Vale of Glamorgan near Barry.
Barry's beautiful.
Everyone laughs about Barry because of Gavin and Stacey, but I love Barry.
They have to pay to get to Barry and they have to pay for hotels.
So I don't want to charge too much for my courses.
If you can afford to give me a bit more, that's great.
Lovely to meet people and talk about citizen journalism, but whatever your voice is, it's about enabling and empowering as many voices.
And there was a chap who is called Craig Story, came to my last course, and he's doing some fantastic work on Instagram.
And doing a far better job than those idiots I used to work with.
And I'm just showing him how to, yeah, the kind of shots that you need, wide, mid, close-ups, the equipment you need, the microphones, tripods, you know, the autocue apps, how to add subtitles, how to edit in Square, you know, a good punchy headline, how to get a right reply and be ethical, basics of media law, where you can and can't film, defamation, copyright, This is good stuff!
It's a really fantastic app.
KineMaster's changed my life.
There's an app called KineMaster.
So it's basically, I told you the story, I was at BBC Wales Today reporter.
I was in Cardiff doing video marketing for a restaurant, okay?
And while I was there, there was a chap from BBC Wales Today and he saw me filming on my phone and I was doing a little piece for a friend.
I wasn't earning that much money.
And he said, I'm doing that on my mobile.
I said, oh, you said I've just done a court report on my iPhone X. And I said, really?
Do you just get the footage or do you edit it as well?
He said, no, I film and edit straight to broadcast.
And I thought, well, we can all do that.
It's a level playing field.
I just need to show you guys how to do it.
You've got a mobile.
You know, the microphone's 15 quid, eight pound selfie stick.
All then it comes down to is trust.
It all comes down to trust.
What's the microphone?
There's two.
There's one called a Boyer lapel microphone, which is the budget one, which is only 15 quid.
B-O-Y-A.
So it's on my website, reesmedia.co.uk, but you've got a better one called the Rode Smartlav, because it's 45 quid and it's much better in the wind.
So if you can afford the £45 one, it is better.
If you can afford an iPhone, you can afford a Rode.
Not everyone can.
I mean, that's why I want to make it affordable to everyone because these are important and valuable skills that I think, when I teach people, their faces light up and it's like I've taught them how to swim.
This is a powerful, powerful tool and we need to learn how to use it ready for when the next crisis comes along.
You know, when crisis now probably, but these are really powerful and to get that recognition as Not to get overly emotional, to try and keep things balanced, the right language to use.
It's all really important stuff.
But yeah, the NUJ Training Wales have got some fantastic resources on media law.
You don't want to get into trouble with contempt of court, for example, and defamation and copyright.
All sorts of fantastic resources through the NUJ Training Wales.
There's also Centre for Community Journalism in Cardiff.
But I'm really, really focused on that and excited about that.
A lot of people want me to do a podcast.
But I get a bit shy, embarrassed.
I don't really enjoy it.
I'm doing this interview because, like I said to you, I'm very concerned about the future and trust and democracy.
And I can advertise my courses, can't I, by coming on here?
Well, yeah, you can.
All those skills that you describe, I totally don't have.
I'd kind of like to be able to do it.
Well, I imagine that my face would light up after I've been on your course, but it sounds really good.
Anna, thank you for appearing on The Delling Pod, and remind my beloved listeners and viewers, you can support me on Patreon, Subscribestar, and on Locals, and on Substack now.
I'm spreading my net wide.
Thank you for watching.
And Anna, thank you very much for being on the podcast and really good luck with your media training.
I think it sounds a great idea.
That's wonderful.
Nice to chat to you.
All the best.
Thanks for interviewing me.
Thanks a lot, Anna.
Bye-bye.
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