Ofcom’s flawed ruling against Mark Steyn

Written by Norman Fenton on August 24, 2024. Posted in Current News

It’s been three weeks since the judge (Justice Farbey) in Mark Steyn’s case ruled against him, upholding Ofcom rulings against him for comments made in two of his GBNews shows back in 2022

Justice Farbey’s full judgement can be found here.

One of the Ofcom rulings (claim AC-2023-LON-001656) focused on a programme in which Steyn claimed that UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency) data showed triple vaccinated people were at much greater risk of contracting, being hospitalised, and dying from covid than unvaccinated people.

Ofcom ruled that Steyn misled the public on these claims.

The other ruling (claim AC-2023-LON-002280) focused on a show in which his guest Naomi Wolf made claims about vaccine adverse reactions.

Ofcom ruled that these claims were inaccurate, and that Steyn failed in his duty as the presenter to challenge Wolf on them.

The Ofcom rulings led to Steyn losing his job at GBNews (while he was in hospital following the second of two heart attacks in quick succession after the rulings).

Ofcom, who act as judge and jury, did not allow him to provide any defence against the rulings and so he decided to mount a judicial review against their rulings in the High Court.

A couple of weeks before the case went to Court on 11 June 2024 I was asked to provide a report about the statistical issues in the case.

As the claim (AC-2023-LON-002280) regarding the Naomi Wolf programme was not about statistics, I focused entirely on the claim (AC-2023-LON-001656) made against Steyn regarding the UKHSA data.

My findings bear on Justice Farbey’s final decision (point 106 relating to claim AC-2023-LON-001656) that:

Ofcom was not “obviously wrong” to insist that broadcasters avoid the risk that vaccinated individuals be caused alarm.

Hence, it is important now to bring the facts into the public domain that show that Ofcom was indeed “obviously wrong”. Sadly, it seems Justice Farbey did not have these full facts at her disposal.

The full Ofcom complaint against Steyn is detailed here. In particular, their ruling (with respect to claim AC-2023-LON-001656) stated:

“Mark Steyn said in the programme that UKHSA data on those people that had, and those that had not, received a third Covid-19 vaccination dose could be compared because the two groups included approximately the same numbers of people.

However, his interpretation that there was “only one conclusion” from this comparison – that the third vaccination caused increased levels of infection, hospitalisation and death – was misleading because it did not take account of key factors such as the significant differences in age or health of the people in these two groups.

The programme also failed to reflect that the UKHSA reports made clear that the raw data should not be used to draw conclusions about vaccine efficacy, due to the biases inherent in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.”

The details of my report, which includes relevant links to the data and evidence, is provided below.

In summary what I found was that:

• Ofcom’s editorial judgement/ruling that “Mark misled the viewer” is based on the narrow examination of the available UKHSA data and only that to which Steyn specifically referred. Ofcom took no account of the full data available at that time which categorically supports (and strengthens) the contention, suggested by Steyn, that the vaccinated were more likely to be hospitalised than the unvaccinated.  Analysis of all the data in fact shows Steyn’s assessment not just to be correct but to underplay or underestimate the negative hospital outcomes for the vaccinated categories when compared to the unvaccinated. Their ruling made no reference to the full data published at that time, which showed negative hospital outcomes for the vaccinated to be the one clear conclusion that could be taken from it.
• It is somewhat ironic that the only editorial criticism they could have validly made was that Steyn did not provide an analysis in support of his contention using the full published data – and that if he failed in anything it was to insufficiently alert the audience to the risks from booster vaccination. Not only were the boosters ineffective, but the covid case rates in the ‘ever vaccinated’ were higher than those in the ‘never vaccinated’ in almost all age groups and at least three times higher in the boosted than the never vaccinated.
• With respect to covid mortality data, Steyn’s comparison between the UKHSA boosted and unboosted vaccine categories was over simplified but this was understandable given the obfuscated way in which the UKHSA presented the data. Even had he broken it down by age to avoid ‘age confounding’ (as the Ofcom counsel claimed he should have done) it would not have changed the overall conclusion to be drawn from the data that, for a reason known only to Ofcom, they failed to take into account.
• What was missing from Ofcom’s analysis, was that for the much more important statistic – all-cause mortality (as opposed to just covid mortality) – in most age groups the all-cause mortality rate was higher in the boosted than the unboosted. And, once we take account of systemic biases in the data, all-cause mortality was higher in the ever vaccinated than the never vaccinated in each and every age group.
• Once the systemic biases in both the relevant UKHSA and the ONS datasets are accounted for, both show a consistent lack of efficacy for the vaccines. Ofcom in its ruling against Steyn has encouraged the suppression of this critical information while the public has continued to be offered booster vaccines, exposing them to risk and thereby subjecting them to harm.
• If Steyn missed addressing the effect of age confounding, Ofcom’s omission was much more serious and fundamental. It is guilty of using this narrow point to ‘disprove’ a thesis which in every other respect stands up. They are in fact guilty of the blowfish fallacy. This is the technique of laser-focusing on an inconsequential methodological aspect of scientific research, blowing it out of proportion in order to distract from the bigger picture. If you persuade people to focus hard enough on specific details, they can miss the gorilla walking through the room.

As stated on its website

“OFCOM’s principal duty is: (i) to further the interests of citizens, and (ii) to further consumer interests in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition.

Ofcom is supposed to be independent and dispassionate.

It is neither their role to endorse Government policy nor to prevent criticism of it.

Yet here is a reminder of an infamous programme segment that was screened on ITV which insisted that the (subsequently withdrawn) AstraZeneca vaccine was one hundred percent effective against hospitalisation and death with no interrogation from the presenters about risk, at great potential harm to the public.

Ofcom did nothing about this despite hundreds of complaints to them about this segment.

This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here substack.com

Header image: WND

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