“Bad things happen when good people do nothing.”
I heard those words early in life, and reading about Hitler’s Germany as a young student in the 1970s drove home the point.
I keep the phrase close to me and remind myself when I believe that people are in danger, and that I can help – in scenarios ranging from people walking into traffic while looking at their phones, all the way to billions of people around the world having their physical and mental health put at risk by ill-intentioned leaders.
I heard those words again today in a video sent to me by a loyal BIG Media subscriber in which a scientist addressed catastrophic harm perpetrated by the aforementioned leaders and unquestioning followers in the early years of this decade.
Early in the year 2020, I could see that the medical community and politicians were responding to the COVID-19 outbreak in ways that I was certain would result in tremendous collateral damage.
I also observed that no news organization in my home country Canada was reporting on the outbreak accurately. They were all – and I do mean ALL – either gleefully focusing on daily death counts to increase the size of their audience, or the journalists were not sufficiently competent in key categories of data and logic.
I felt a moral obligation to launch a news platform that could help guide people through the COVID hysteria.
Thankfully, some other good people took action, choosing to support our mission to arm people with critical facts and practical knowledge about COVID and other big issues of the day.
Those who followed our news site did not argue with friends and relatives about lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandate; they simply shared the objective findings compiled by our team of ethical researchers.
Healthy people who followed our news site did not rush out to get COVID vaccines. They understood that the vaccine was a greater threat to their health than the virus.
Five-plus years after the launch of BIG-Media, we have helped many thousands of people understand fundamental principles and critical context regarding big issues such as climate change, energy transition, geopolitical conflict, and artificial intelligence.
Hundreds of good people have stepped up to take action – by subscribing, sharing our content with their network, joining our team of freelance editorial contributors, or donating funds to help drive this important initiative. A few have done all of the above.
But thousands of good people in my network are still doing nothing. And that needs to change.
I am not saying that establishing an extremely accurate, transparent, and trustworthy global source of news on the most pressing matters is the only way to do good and to counter the forces of evil … but it is a great start.
We are more powerful and better aligned when we are properly informed.
Bad things happen when good people do nothing.
So, good people, let’s get to work!
(Rob Driscoll – BIG Media Ltd., 2026)