 we've talked a lot on this show about how the British press often seem like they want to cover for government mistakes when it comes to COVID-19. That's especially the case on the most popular broadcast. So something like the BBC News at 6 or 10, where you'll see the political editor Laura Goonsburg or the health editor Hugh Pym, say that we shouldn't be too harsh on the government when mistakes are made, because this crisis is both unprecedented and could not have been foreseen. We talk a lot on this show about why we think that it probably should have been foreseen, even if they couldn't have guessed precisely when it would happen. But it's also interesting to look at how other countries, so not just left-wing podcasts like our own, but centrist establishment media in other countries is approaching and is addressing and is covering the British response to coronavirus. They don't always seem quite as forgiving as the Coonsburgs and the Pym's of this world. I want us to take a look at a CNN report from this weekend to find out how the rest of the world is looking at Britain's response to COVID-19. Britain is close to having Europe's worst death toll. So what did it do wrong or differently? When global alarm bells were ringing loudly, the UK was clear it wouldn't lock down too early and that some spread was unavoidable, even desirable. If people go too early, they become very fatigued. It's not possible to stop everybody getting it and it's also actually not desirable because you want some immunity in the population. Hindsight always gives a clearer, unfair verdict, but new updated government figures show the death toll just in England was a lot larger than known at the time in the days leading up to lockdown. When the Prime Minister said he was still shaking hands. I shook hands with everybody, you'll be pleased to know. And no deaths were announced four people had already died in England when Cheltenham horse races criticised for going ahead ended. The UK toll was officially 10 when really 58 had died and when the lockdown slammed pub doors shut publicly. The toll was 359 but really 847 had died in England alone. Should the UK have moved faster, testing and contract tracing was a problem from the start, partially dismissed and then heavily embraced 100,000 tests per day. Many grand schemes were announced home antibody test apps a volunteer army but this one actually happened nearly on time albeit late. It can't have helped decision making the Boris Johnson was nearly killed by the disease too at its peak still. Despite the huge toll the UK's health service was not overwhelmed. Even huge overflow hospitals like this in London were barely used. Half those who died in England so far were over 80. Did the UK not protect them enough or was there little that could be done? Tough questions that time and grief will answer. I mean how often have you seen that incredibly important actually clip of Patrick Valance saying that suppressing the spread of COVID-19 is not desirable? I mean that seems like that's a key piece of evidence to suggest that the government's policy was herd immunity which I suppose political editors have potentially been intimidated out of out of repeating even though we all know it. That fact that the deaths at lockdown were 847 that's now we know that now because of the Office for National Statistics data. I've seen that in the FT. I haven't seen that on British television and that's on CNN in one of their reports which is summarizing what has been Britain's response to coronavirus. This is CNN. Again it's not a leftist channel in the United States. This is the the most centrist channel they have in fact and again this idea that they say that the the target for testing was reached late. Now that's something that the PPC would admit if you watch the news there but they don't even say it's controversial. They say of course it was it was met late because 100,000 tests did not happen. What did you think of that report? How different did you think that was to what we normally see on the British press and why is it that it is other countries that can cover the reality of what is going on in Britain but are political editors are so incapable of having an objective perspective of what's going on asking difficult questions and admitting what is obviously the truth even if it is uncomfortable for the current government? Well look our media is particularly stupid and that's that that is the best explanation that I can give. I mean American broadcast television you know with the hairspray and the teeth is more obviously deranged but in this country the rot goes much much deeper and you could see it on Friday with the announcement of 122,000 tests being dispatched and immediately the BBC covers that as they've hit the 100,000 people being tested target 100,000 tests carried out so the BBC were leading with a fundamentally misleading headline and that was going out on push notifications that was the top line and it fundamentally wasn't true and then when you bring this up and you go look the expansion of testing capacity to around 73, 74,000 is huge that's amazing however that's not the same as carrying out the tests the use of the tests isn't you know everyone gets to you know feel alive and a little bit kinky by shoving a swab up their nostrils the value of the test is the data that it gives back it gives us a picture of how many people have got it in the community how many people will be immune and how many people are at risk if they're in contact with these people who are obviously infected now if you're counting a dispatch test the same as a successfully completed one there's a huge problem with your data and we've seen immediately after that date the number of dispatched tests has plummeted by over a quarter so now it's around 70,000 being dispatched and before we even get to how many are successfully completed so when you're you know a blue tick shall we say and you see these criticisms you look at the people who are making them so Corbin supportive twitter accounts the usual suspects of Michael Aaron me Owen Jones and you go oh these leftist loudmouth nitpicking again it's obviously a partisan attack I dislike the left so much and I find them so personally aggravating I will make a temporary but powerful alliance with the pestilence here so I'm going to be team coronavirus going to say everything is going swimmingly because I dislike the left so much so yes there are obviously vested interests between the establishment media the government of the day and certain big money interests that's all true but other countries do it better they're not any less capitalists than our country they're not any less driven by class and exploitation than our country ours is just a bit dumber it's I think it's also potentially that distance gives you a bit more clarity although I do agree with most of what you've just said there I'm going to go to Aaron in a second first of all I want to show you that it's not just this one clip from CNN which shows that the foreign press is more capable of applying proper scrutiny to our government than our own um so this was a piece from Australia's paper of record the so the sydney morning herald this was from yesterday the headline biggest failure in a generation where did britain go wrong so unlike italy the united kingdom had time to prepare for the corona virus sumat tsunami but as the death doll climbs critics say britain's response has suffered from a series of deadly mistakes and miscalculations so something that you notice especially when you're looking at the foreign press on on britain is that they notice that britain's response is exceptional is is is is an outlier um whereas what we're always told us you know we're we're in this group of european countries and we're following on the same trajectory but obviously that ignores the fact that italy didn't have any warning um talking of italy which was the country which was hit first and is still the worst hit country in europe although i mean britain looks like it is going to overtake them in terms of the death toll fairly soon um they have been equally damning of britain's response so i first want to take a look at their paper republica um so this is an article from their equivalent of the guardian this is from last week so the united kingdom from herd immunity to masterlays all the mistakes of the johnson government that's the headline and then the a quote here covid 19 is an invisible enemy and in many ways still unknown and many countries such as italy itself have made several mistakes but the confusion and contradictions that have been seen in the british government in recent months have few equals now that that is not the kind of thing that you would normally hear in the british press which would you know it's is wanton to admit the idea that britain could have dealt with this significantly worse than many other countries you know there's say we shouldn't we shouldn't compare at this point in time if you look back at italy's coverage when the key decisions were being made it is even more damning right you know when so when when the bodies were piling up in italy and our government was being particularly cavalier um they were watching on in horror um this is an article from march in their center right newspapers this is the equivalent of the times or the telegraph there um reporting on borris johnson's speech when he said that many of your loved ones will die and we're going to pursue a herd immunity policy good to a quote from that the phrase is shocking many families will lose their loved ones but the reaction is perhaps even more chilling we will do nothing because this is the line chosen by the government of borris johnson forward as if nothing had happened britain separates itself from the rest of europe while governments on the continent take increasingly drastic measures london literally washes their hands the fundamental advice against coronavirus is in fact to use soap and water those who have symptoms are invited to stay home for a week but otherwise its business as usual no closures no emergency life in london continues to flow as normal and no one goes around with a mask now if that kind of thing had been written in the british center right papers back in march that would have been very helpful because potentially we would have entered into a lockdown and had proper social distancing measures much earlier and then we could have you know avoided the mass deaths that we have currently seen if we'd looked at italy and said that's the future we don't want that and responded accordingly we could have had a much much lower death toll but obviously you know the the press here especially the center right press were blinded by their proximity to the uk government and only worked out three weeks late that that response then was irresponsible aron yeah we've talked a lot about herd immunity let's talk about herd mentality i think that the british media has a herd mentality problem which is worse than anywhere else and this isn't actually a personal failing of particular individuals although many of those individuals are failures as journalists there's also structural explanations the bbc accounts for 80 percent of radio and tv news in this country which means that if you have a political editor and a couple of leading lights who make bad calls it reflects incredibly poorly on the entire organization that that's just a fact and when people say oh you're being so hard on laura coonsburg or robert peston or andrew neal peston now itv of course formally at the bbc well you should be because they are playing such a major role in the country's national life alongside the bbc having that extraordinary share of of of broadcast news is the fact that we we live in an incredibly centralized country and i mean really england with london and it's important to say actually oh you shouldn't put you know put shouldn't put the country down etc etc these aren't the kinds of criticisms you get from from scottish public opinion i don't know welsh public opinion is the same extent it's very much an english thing now if you look at the united states you have a national newspaper in chicago in la more so in washington washington post new york times you have multiple senses of opinion if you look in italy you're just talking about lot of publica you have malan you have rome um to less extent you have florans you have napels but you have multiple polls of again public conversation rome is the is the administrative capital will be you know the financial capital is really in malan you've got torino terrain as well and so i think it's this convergence of two major issues the fact we have a public service broadcaster which in actually a crisis situation becomes a state broadcaster combined with the fact we don't really have any major media cities beyond london i think it becomes a really big issue and again that's quite new you know the guardian until i think 1950 was 1950 was based in manchester so it's quite new the idea that all of your journalists live in one city you have a similar issue with france but i don't think it's quite as bad as it is here then finally that idea of news only being the bad stories are only the ones you report abroad that's actually that's quite a traditional thing in the 17th century when you're getting newspapers the first time they'd be given gazette is a venetian word by the way you would get a license to publish news on the condition that you only published bad news abroad that's not a new phenomenon and so to that extent you could understand why cnn might report what's going on in britain perhaps a bit better more accurately than it would in the united states because a foreign eye actually is a bit more impartial has less issues with regards to bias and the bbc in particular of course has issues with regards to the domestic funding the government of the day can just cut the tether or impose new editorial constraints and so on so i think it's always been a problem uh has been for hundreds of years and across many places but the fact that we have such an establishment ensconced in one city and we have this state broadcaster it's a very very very bad mixture actually i think it's a recipe for disaster i think that point about london actually it sort of it's not commented on that often because it seems almost too crude and analysis you know like marx is like to talk about the media as part of the the state apparatus the ideological state apparatus you know so it's talking about how you know their function in society is to shore up support for the government but a simpler explanation is they all are kind of best friends like lots of political editors are married to politicians or people who work for politicians and so you can i think it really does cloud people's judgment when they say well it seems kind of mad the policies they're pursuing but i sat next to patrick valance at a dinner party recently and he seemed like a really reasonable guy so i should probably believe what he said like i i think actually that probably is a reasonable analysis of yeah of how britain's press covered this particular crisis before i go to ash i just want to show uh the most stupid example of our servile press which of course was the front page of the sun this morning a splash on borris johnson of his experience in icu baby gave me will to live so this is on the front page of our most popular newspaper obviously the declining sun but it still is the paper with the widest circulation in this country obviously a couple of problems with this headline one if you're one of his previous children so this is his seventh child so the idea is he was there in icu thinking is it worth me living the first child wasn't enough to get him through it the second third four fifth potentially sixth child they weren't enough to think yeah it's really worth getting through this illness it was only the seventh that made the difference um the other problem is is clearly what does he think about the 28 000 people whose lives were taken by coronavirus did they not have a child they were excited enough to see in the future in any case it's a complete joke that this would get put on the front page of a daily newspaper in a country with a free press where you're not at risk of being sent to a gulag unless you publish this kind of nonsense