Biden Administration paid media $1 billion for COVID shot propaganda
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Biden administration paid nearly the entire corporate media, including so-called “conservative” media outlets, with taxpayer dollars to engage in a massive campaign to push only positive coverage about COVID shots while censoring any negative information, without disclosing it to their audiences. This is a serious breach of journalistic ethics.
Congress appropriated $1 billion in fiscal year 2021 for the secretary of health to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States.” Then hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the shots as part of a comprehensive media campaign by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The “COVID-19 Public Education Campaign,” a “national initiative to increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines,” was created with the goal of having “trusted messengers and influencers” speak to news organizations to “provide factual, timely information and steps people can take to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.”
This information was revealed in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Blaze Media. This request uncovered that the HHS purchased advertising on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build “vaccine confidence.” Media networks including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Newsmax, MSNBC, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments promoting the COVID shots as effective and safe.
Emerald Robinson, an independent journalist who previously served as the chief White House correspondent for Newsmax (2020-2022) and for One America News (2017-2020), said she was contacted by a whistleblower inside Newsmax who confirmed that Newsmax executives agreed to take the money from Biden’s HHS to push only positive coverage of the new COVID shots. Robinson was also contacted by top Newsmax executives in 2021 and told to stop any negative coverage of the COVID shots. Newsmax told her “it was problematic” and she was warned many times by multiple executives. She was also contacted by PR experts who worked with Newsmax and was told that medical experts and doctors who might say negative things about the injections would not be booked as guests.
Some examples of the media propaganda include Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy who wrote an op-ed about “applauding Biden for his vaccine efforts.” Ruddy wrote, “At Newsmax, we have strongly advocated for the public to be vaccinated. The many medical experts who have appeared on our network have been near unanimous in support of the vaccine. I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine. There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.”
HHS posted ads and commercials to YouTube featuring celebrities. CNN shared “fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from Coronavirus patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units and these ads were discussed on ABC’s “The View.” Facebook also announced a social media plan to “help get people vaccinated.” BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions, etc., to get vaccinated. Other publications, such as the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince vaccine-hesitant people in their lives to change their minds. The Washington Post presented “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.” Newsmax also has reported how the COVID shots have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”
However, the evidence continues to reveal that the COVID shots are definitely not safe and effective.
Last January, a Texas federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to accelerate the release of the data it relied on to license the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 two-dose injection, marketed as Comirnaty. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ordered the FDA to produce more than 12,000 pages on or before Jan. 31 and to “produce the remaining documents at a rate of 55,000 pages every 30 days, with the first production being due on or before March 1, 2022, until production is complete.”
In the first 55,000-page set of documents released last week, the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research allowed the public to access data for the first time that Pfizer submitted to the FDA from its clinical trials in support of a COVID-19 “vaccine” license. Hidden in one appendix is a 38-page report of clinical data for Pfizer’s “vaccine” which lists 1,291 adverse side effects of the shot in alphabetical order.
The list includes acute kidney injury, acute flaccid myelitis, anti-sperm antibody positive, brain stem embolism, brain stem thrombosis, cardiac arrest, cardiac failure, cardiac ventricular thrombosis, cardiogenic shock, central nervous system vasculitis, death neonatal, deep vein thrombosis, encephalitis brain stem, encephalitis hemorrhagic, frontal lobe epilepsy, foaming at mouth, epileptic psychosis, facial paralysis, fetal distress syndrome, gastrointestinal amyloidosis, generalized tonic-clonic seizure, Hashimoto’s encephalopathy, hepatic vascular thrombosis, herpes zoster reactivation, immune-mediated hepatitis, interstitial lung disease, jugular vein embolism, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy, liver injury, low birth weight, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, myocarditis, neonatal seizure, pancreatitis, pneumonia, stillbirth, tachycardia, temporal lobe epilepsy, testicular autoimmunity, thrombotic cerebral infarction, Type 1 diabetes mellitus, venous thrombosis neonatal, and vertebral artery thrombosis among 1,246 other medical conditions following vaccination.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recently admitted that it withheld critical COVID-19 data from the public because the agency thought it would be “misinterpreted” and cause “vaccine hesitancy” since it weakens the case for booster shots in certain demographics. Apparently, the CDC has been collecting detailed data on COVID-19 infections in the United States and organized it by age, race and vaccination status. However, the agency withheld detailed information to the public about breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths, which it has been collecting since the beginning of the COVID shot rollout in 2021.
Led by director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC only recently published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65. However, it did not share the information on those aged 18-49, which is the least likely group to benefit from a booster injection. It has also failed to provide information on child hospitalizations. In a recent New York Times article, Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable. Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted,” Nordlund said.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “People have been injured and died as a result of the most extensive propaganda campaign in U.S. history and it was paid for with our taxpayer dollars. These COVID shots are neither safe nor effective. However, the American public has been given propaganda instead of truth from the news media. Sadly, most of the American corporate media has been paid off by the Biden administration to publish propaganda. The consequence is that many people have needlessly suffered as a result of the censorship and propaganda.”
source: thedesertreview.com
Feds Secretly Paid Media to Promote COVID Shots
The Biden administration made direct payments to nearly all major corporate media outlets to deploy a $1 billion taxpayer-funded outreach campaign designed to push only positive coverage about COVID-19 vaccines and to censor any negative coverage, according to documents obtained by The Blaze.
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The Biden administration made direct payments to nearly all major corporate media outlets to deploy a $1 billion taxpayer-funded outreach campaign designed to push only positive coverage about COVID-19 vaccines and to censor any negative coverage.
Media outlets across the nation failed to disclose the federal government as the source of ads in news reports promoting the shots to their audiences.
According to a Freedom of Information Request filed by The Blaze, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) purchased advertising from major news outlets including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
HHS also ran media blitzes in major media publications including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, BuzzFeed News, Newsmax and hundreds of local TV stations and newspapers across the nation.
In addition to paying news outlets to push the vaccines, the federal government bought ads on TV, radio, in print and on social media as part of a “comprehensive media campaign,” HHS documents show.
The ad campaigns were timed in conjunction with the increased availability of COVID vaccines. They featured “influencers” and “experts,” including Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the White House and director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In March 2021, Facebook announced a social media plan to “help get people vaccinated,” and worked with the Biden administration and U.S. health agencies to suppress what it called “COVID misinformation.”
BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness from COVID, healthcare workers and those at high risk of exposure to the virus to get vaccine boosters, in accordance with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince “vaccine-hesitant people” to change their minds.
The Washington Post presented “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.”
Newsmax said COVID vaccines have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”
Yet, the latest data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System shows 1,151,450 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 24,827 deaths since Dec. 14, 2020.
Numerous scientists and public health experts have questioned the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, as well as the data underlying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the shots.
The media rarely covered negative news stories about COVID vaccines, and some have labeled anyone who questions the shots “science denialists” or “conspiracy theorists.”
“These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety,” The Blaze reported.
Congress appropriates $1 billion tax dollars to ‘strengthen vaccine confidence’
In March 2021, Congress appropriated $1 billion U.S. tax dollars for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States,” with $3 billion set aside for the CDC to fund “support and outreach efforts” in states through community-based organizations and trusted leaders.
HHS’s public education efforts were co-chaired by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins, Fauci, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky — with Vice President Kamala Harris leading the effort from the White House.
Federal law allows HHS, acting through the CDC and other agencies, to award contracts to public and private entities to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”
HHS did not immediately respond to The Blaze when asked if the agency used taxpayer dollars to pay for people to be interviewed, or for a PR firm to place experts and celebrities in interviews with news outlets.
The Blaze also reached out to several news organizations whose editorial boards claimed “firewall policies” preventing advertisers from influencing news coverage, but which nevertheless took money from HHS for targeted ads.
“Advertisers pay for space to share their messages, as was the case here, and those ads are clearly labeled as such,” Shani George, vice president of communications for The Washington Post, said in a statement. “The newsroom is completely independent from the advertising department.”
Although The Washington Post may have several departments, they’re all under the authority of the same CEO and key executive team.
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Times said their “newsroom operates independently from advertising.”
Former Newsmax anchor confirms network paid to promote only positive coverage
According to Desert News, Emerald Robinson, an independent journalist who previously served as the chief White House correspondent for Newsmax and One America News, said she was contacted by a whistleblower inside Newsmax who confirmed the news organization’s executives agreed to take money from HHS under the Biden administration to push only positive coverage of COVID vaccines.
Robinson was also contacted by top Newsmax executives in 2021, and told to stop any negative coverage of the COVID shots as “it was problematic.”
Robinson said she was warned multiple times by executives and was told by PR experts who worked with Newsmax that medical experts or doctors likely to say negative things about COVID vaccines would not be booked as guests.
Robinson was reportedly fired by Newsmax after tweeting “conspiracy theories” about COVID vaccines and was later banned from Twitter for “repeatedly violating the platforms’ rules on COVID-19 misinformation.”
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in an op-ed applauded Biden for his vaccine efforts.
Ruddy wrote:
“At Newsmax, we have strongly advocated for the public to be vaccinated. The many medical experts who have appeared on our network have been near-unanimous in support of the vaccine. I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine. There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.”
In other examples cited by The Blaze, “fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from COVID patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units were covered by CNN and discussed on ABC’s “The View” last October.
HHS ads on YouTube featuring celebrities like Sir Michael Caine and Sir Elton John garnered millions of views.
As The Defender reported in September, a group of people injured by COVID vaccines reached out to the media to tell their stories, only to be told by news agencies they could not cover COVID vaccine injuries.
Kristi Dobbs, 40, was injured by Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. Dobbs spent months pleading with U.S. health agencies to research the neurological injuries she and others are experiencing in hopes of finding a treatment.
Dobbs said she and others who developed neurological injuries after getting a COVID vaccine shared their experiences with a reporter, in hope of raising awareness about their experiences.
Dobbs said she and others knew they needed to tell their stories, without causing “vaccine hesitancy,” to protect others from the same fate — so members of the group started writing and calling anyone who would listen, including reporters, news agencies and members of Congress.
Dobbs said they tried the best they could as simple Americans to reach out to those who would hear their stories. Finally, a reporter from a small media company was willing to do a story. Dobbs and others from the group participated in a 2-hour and 40-minute interview.
“The story never went anywhere,” Dobbs said. She said the reporter told them a “higher up” at Pfizer made a call to the station and pressured staff there into not covering any other stories about vaccine adverse reactions.
As previously reported by The Defender, the same investment firms with financial interests in Pfizer also hold large ownership stakes of corporate media outlets.
Yep! Investment giants BlackRock + The Vanguard Group stand to benefit from their ownership stakes in most of the corporations that imposed COVID vaccine mandates, and in some of the technology firms developing vaccine passports.https://t.co/4hykJNQBsC
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 17, 2022
In addition, Pfizer has contracts with the federal government, which has spent billions of American tax dollars both buying COVID vaccines and promoting only positive coverage to the public.
Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told Desert News, “People have been injured and died as a result of the most extensive propaganda campaign in U.S. history and it was paid for with our taxpayer dollars.”
COVID vaccines are not safe or effective, but the American public has been given propaganda by the Biden administration instead of truth from the news media, Staver said.
“The consequence is that many people have needlessly suffered as a result of the censorship and propaganda.”
The federal government paid hundreds of media companies to advertise the COVID-19 vaccines while those same outlets provided positive coverage of the vaccines
In response to a FOIA request filed by TheBlaze, HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.
Hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the vaccines as part of a “comprehensive media campaign,” according to documents TheBlaze obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration purchased ads on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build vaccine confidence, timing this effort with the increasing availability of the vaccines. The government also relied on earned media featuring “influencers” from “communities hit hard by COVID-19” and “experts” like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other academics to be interviewed and promote vaccination in the news.
Though virtually all of these newsrooms produced stories covering the COVID-19 vaccines, the taxpayer dollars flowing to their companies were not disclosed to audiences in news reports, since common practice dictates that editorial teams operate independently of media advertising departments and news teams felt no need to make the disclosure, as some publications reached for comment explained.
Congress appropriated $1 billion in fiscal year 2021 for the secretary of health to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States.” Federal law authorizes HHS to act through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies to award contracts to public and private entities to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines, and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”
Anyone who has spent time reading the news, watching TV news coverage, or browsing social media in the past year has more than likely been exposed to the government’s advertising. HHS ads posted to YouTube have been viewed millions of times and commercials featuring celebrities like singer Sir Elton John and actor Sir Michael Caine have been the subject of news coverage, such as this feature from NBC News:
“Fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from coronavirus patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units were covered by CNN and discussed on ABC’s “The View” when they were unveiled last October.
Though the federal government was paying each of these companies and others for pro-vaccine advertising while news reports covered the same vaccines, many editorial boards say they have firewall policies that prevent advertisers from influencing news coverage.
“Advertisers pay for space to share their messages, as was the case here, and those ads are clearly labeled as such,” explained Shani George, vice president of communications for the Washington Post, in a statement. “The newsroom is completely independent from the advertising department,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Times gave a similar statement, emphasizing that the “newsroom operates independently from advertising.”
TheBlaze reached out to several other publications that either declined to comment or did not respond before publication.
The COVID-19 Public Education Campaign by HHS also used earned media outreach — word of mouth marketing — with the goal of having “trusted messengers and influencers” speak to news organizations to “provide factual, timely information and steps people can take to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.”
As a result of that effort, various government officials have frequently been quoted by reporters covering the COVID-19 pandemic, offering factual information on vaccine efficacy and safety. An October article from BuzzFeed News featuring the “essential facts” about who is eligible for a COVID-19 booster shot, for example, reported pro-vaccine statements from CDC director Rochelle Walensky, FDA official Peter Marks, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and University of California, San Francisco epidemiologist George Rutherford.
The article stressed how studies show “boosters work” and cited FDA data that suggests getting a booster shot “can reestablish strong protection against the virus.” BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19, those like healthcare workers who are at risk from coming into contact with COVID-19 positive people for work, and anyone in areas with high virus transmission to get vaccine boosters, in accordance with guidance from the CDC.
Other publications, such as the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince vaccine-hesitant people in their lives to change their minds. The Washington Post covered “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.” Newsmax has reported how the vaccines have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”
HHS did not immediately respond when asked if the agency used taxpayer dollars to pay for people to be interviewed, or for a PR firm to place them in interviews with news outlets.
Since the COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson were given emergency approval for use in the United States last year, more than 215 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. An estimated 94.6 million people have also received at least one booster dose. About 65% of the U.S. population has now been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, including 75% of U.S. adults and 88.8% of seniors.
HHS has not yet revealed how much advertising money was spent on each media platform.
source: theBlaze.com
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