by WorldTribune Staff, March 6, 2022
Team Biden's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) carried out a media campaign in which networks, newspapers, and digital media companies were essentially paid for putting a positive spin on the Covid vaccines, according to reports.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by TheBlaze, HHS revealed that it bought advertising from 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," TheBlaze reported.
Among the examples were the Los Angeles Times featuring advice from experts on how readers could convince vaccine-hesitant people in their lives to change their minds; The Washington Post covering "the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear"; and Newsmax reporting on how the vaccines have "been demonstrated to be safe and effective" and "encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized."
None of the media outlets which HHS advertised with disclosed in news reports that they were receiving taxpayer dollars. TheBlaze noted that "common practice dictates that editorial teams operate independently of media advertising departments and news teams felt no need to make the disclosure."
Team Biden also relied on so-called "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, TheBlaze's report said.
"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, the report said.
HHS ads posted to YouTube have been viewed millions of times and commercials featuring celebrities like singer Elton John and actor Michael Caine have been the subject of news coverage.
Emerald Robinson, who was dropped by Newsmax for reporting on the many thousands of adverse effects the vaccines were causing, called the outlets taking taxpayer money "the largest and most comprehensive breach of journalistic ethics that has ever occurred. Almost everybody took the money. Almost everybody lied about the vaccines (knowingly or unknowingly). Almost everybody refused to report anything negative about the vaccines — because they were paid to close their eyes. Almost everybody is implicated."
Robinson noted in a March 3 op-ed on Substack: "Now that the new COVID vaccines have been shown to be not only dangerous and ineffective but highly dangerous, the American public would naturally expect the American news media to do some investigation into the biggest medical experiment in the history of the world. That’s not going to happen. The American corporate media has been paid off by the Biden Administration, and so they’re running Ukraine war footage 24/7 in the hope that the American public will forget the last two years of media-manufactured COVID mania."
Robinson noted that she "was contacted by top Newsmax executives and told to halt any negative coverage of the vaccines in 2021. I was told that 'it was problematic' for Newsmax. I was given some version of this warning multiple times by multiple executives. Obviously, I did not heed their advice."
Team Biden's cash-for-positive-coverage scheme "did not just pay for pro-vaccine advertising at outlets like Fox and Newsmax: it paid for an outright ban on any negative coverage. There’s a word for that kind of thing, and the word is: propaganda," Robinson wrote.
