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January 31, 2023

Government monitoring of Covid-19 policy media critics revealed

Toby Young, Talkradio's Julia Hartley-Brewer and Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens were among those monitored.

By Charlotte Tobitt

Journalists who expressed criticism of measures to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic were monitored by Government units, according to a new report.

The action was taken by Government units set up to tackle disinformation, according to the report from privacy campaigning organisation Big Brother Watch. These include the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Rapid Response Unit (RRU) based in the Cabinet Office which was set up in 2018, and the Army’s 77th Brigade.

Among the report’s findings, made using a series of freedom of information and subject access requests, were that the DCMS unit claimed a Talkradio clip of an interview about vaccine passports may have breached Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policies and that it debated whether to report three posts by Spectator associate editor Toby Young to the platform.

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