The Hidden Truth Tour

by Andrew Smith – Australian Correspondent for Lifesite News

If there is one thing that strikes me the most from the presentations given during ‘The Hidden Truth’ tour, it would have to be the sheer depth and quality of the information. I’m talking about the sort of information that astounds and opens your eyes wider.

The secondary reaction to this is: why haven’t we heard about this before? The revelations on Gardasil, for example, are nothing short of scandalous. It ought to be a major 60 Minutes or Four Corners story in its own right. For a number of reasons, there is a lot of information that we don’t get to hear via the regular mass media.

You might have a mental image of television stations having news crews poised to race out at a moment’s notice to cover the next story as it breaks. Can’t get there fast enough in the car? Just take the helicopter. Similarly again, with newspapers having a plethora of seasoned reporters on the prowl to uncover information in the public interest.

Much has changed in the last five years or so with the internet coming of age and allowing anyone to bypass the need for television transmitters or newspaper presses. In turn, the “rivers of gold” that funded the expensive journalism have been eaten away. Newspaper classifieds have been usurped by sites such as eBay and Gumtree, and their real estate advertising now has to contend with dedicated competitor web sites. Television stations have had their audiences diluted by cable channels and the internet, not to mention the ability to skip past the advertising.

Whilst the traditional media entities maintain the facade, they are in fact a shadow of their former selves. Investigative reporting is now a luxury, journalists are a lot closer to press release regurgitators, and editors are having to consider content for its ‘click-bait’ properties rather than mere newsworthiness. I’ve heard things at The Courier-Mail (in Brisbane) are so bad that they no longer have a proof-reader on staff, relying on ‘spell check’ instead with the occasional hilarious consequence.

In addition to the increased reliance on press releases (which ideally come in the form of a story that is almost ready to run), journalists rarely have the time or specialist knowledge to discover if there is something they are not quite being told by the better resourced PR companies that craft those releases.

And this is all before you have other issues such as personal bias among journalists, sub-editors and editors. Pro-life issues have a particularly hard time getting the fair coverage they deserve.

This all leads me to the point – we need to hear from these talented experts such as those who spoke on the tour. Without their hard yards of research and discovery we’d still be in the dark on these important issues. The truth is out there and it supports the pro-life and traditional family stance.

We have a whole body of pro-life organisations that work. Some are general purpose and cover all the issues with memberships that swing in to action as required. Then there are organisations such as Family Life International that also have special and cultivated competence to do the extensively detailed work that is instrumental in empowering the rest of the movement. The fruits of their work were certainly evident during this tour.