Even success story South Korea has been doing a lot worse than you'd think from the BBC coverage. For example, they ran this article about Europe struggling wit

Even success story South Korea has been doing a lot worse than you'd think from the BBC coverage. For example, they ran this article about Europe struggling with Covid that made it sound like South Korea's test and trace is working so well, they can even reopen pubs and nightclubs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54482905 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-54482905 In reality, pub closures and social distancing measures had only been lifted the day before the article, every time they've lifted them before cases have gone up and they've had to reimpose them, and this time was no exception. You wouldn't know that from the BBC coverage, at all. If the UK was doing the same thing, there'd be endless headlines about U-turns, arbitrary and unpredictable measures that change for no reason, the cost to businesses of both the closures and the uncertainty - but because it's happening in South Korea readers are given the false impression that it isn't happening at all. A huge part of the perception that the UK is failing at dealing with Covid-19 due to awarding contracts to cronies comes from exactly this comparison with a South Korean success story that is a complete and utter media illusion. (They're also testing at something like a twentieth the rate of the UK - not enough to offer free testing to everyone with potential symptoms like we do, let alone do regular testing of all medical staff or any of the other things our press says our government is incompetent for not achieving - but you wouldn't know that from the UK media coverage either. Judging from their media reporting on the number of people awaiting results, they're probably not even doing any better at returning the results to people fast either.) Sometimes they even just outright lie. When the UK hit 100,000 Covid tests in a day, the BBC ran a completely false claim that Germany reached that level of testing a month before the UK when in reality they didn't until several months after us. The BBC kept that claim in an article that was prominently featured on their news front page for a month after they were aware it was false meaning a substantial proportion of the entire UK population probably saw it. I still see it popping up everywhere. (They also claimed that meeting the 100,000 a day goal was faked by counting tests when they were sent out rather than when they were completed. In reality, it was met either way, and one of the minsters involved even pointed this out in a BBC interview - but people who followed the BBC coverage wouldn't know about it.)