[toyg]

The world tends to respect the anglo press more than the rest, because they work in the world's current lingua franca, they are historically less subject to governmental influence, and effectively report (and affect) the state of the biggest superpower on the planet. In some cases (covid, Judith Miller, etc), it becomes evident that such high respect is often unwarranted. I say this from a place of sadness, not anger. It's not a criticism of anglo countries per se, but of cultural attitudes around certain sectors, inside and outside such countries.

> in particular, New Zealand, which is in the Anglo world that you malign

NZ and Australia largely benefited from their geographical and economic periphery to achieve the level of safety that they did. By the time the virus got there in critical numbers, it had already been taken seriously in the anglosphere as a whole because of the UK debacle. I'm not saying their lockdowns didn't help (they very much did), but it's easier to enforce controls on entrance in far-flung corners of the world rather than around the backbone of the world economy.