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Feds Secretly Paid Media to Promote COVID Shots

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | March 9, 2022

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.

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.”

Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

March 10, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Return of COINTELPRO?

By TOM MCNAMARA | CounterPunch | January 21, 2013

“Democracies die behind closed doors” – Judge Damon J. Keith

For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.

The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.

The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.

Or did it?

In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”

The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).

The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p. 61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”

Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.

On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year, even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.

We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which, according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to “the media, the general public or other personnel.”

In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found in their Greenwich Village apartment.

And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly. The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.

But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t “made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently reported in the New York Post’s version of events.

Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr. Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.”

As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.

The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.”

The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.

You know. The real terrorists.

Tom McNamara is an Assistant Professor at the ESC Rennes School of Business, France, and a Visiting Lecturer at the French National Military Academy at Saint-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France.

Sources

“COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens” Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Accessed at:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm

“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001. Accessed at:

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/coinwcar3.htm

“FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), December 22, 2012. Accessed at:
http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html

“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post.   Accessed at:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN

“Manhattan Couple Stored Bomb-Making Items, Police Say” by Wendy Ruderman, December 31, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/nyregion/manhattan-couple-stored-bomb-making-items-police-say.html?_r=2&%29&

“More About FBI Spying” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), June 25, 2010. Accessed at:

http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-fbi-spying

“NYC couple arrested after explosive substance find” December 31, 2012, CBS/AP. Accessed at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57561371/nyc-couple-arrested-after-explosive-substance-find/

“Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” by Naomi Wolf, December 29, 2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation – Mission” The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed at:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/intelligence/mission

“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops” by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/village_bomber_planned_grade_blow_seiuSwWLlcAPyGvfDkPwDM

Related articles

January 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Phony Occupy Link to Weapons Cache

Bad enough, assuming the details are as they seem. (The explosive was reportedly seven grams, about a quarter of an ounce, of a substance called HTMD, which is slightly less explosive than TNT; this amount seems more suitable for blowing off your fingers than for blowing up a building.)

But the Murdoch-owned New York Post gave the story a political angle (12/31/12):

The pregnant daughter of a prominent city doctor, and her boyfriend–a Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street activist–were busted for allegedly having a cache of weapons and a powerful bomb-making explosive in their apartment in a Greenwich Village brownstone.

That’s right–Occupy Wall Street.  This isn’t the first time the paper has reported a link between a criminal case and the activist movement. Back in July, the paper reported that DNA from an Occupy protest was linked to an unsolved 2004 murder. The DNA “match” turned out to be contamination by an employee of the police department lab.

And this time around, the OWS link would seem to be nonexistent. No one associated with Occupy seems to know who this Aaron Greene person might be. The paper notes in the final paragraph that Greene “has five prior run-ins with the police,” which might be more relevant than a seemingly phantom connection to an activist group.

The Post’s report was cited in other news accounts; the Associated Press (12/31/12), for instance, put it this way:

The New York Post reported in its Monday editions that Gliedman is the daughter of a prominent Manhattan doctor. It described her boyfriend as a Harvard graduate and an Occupy Wall Street activist.

And on CBS This Morning (1/2/13), Seth Doane reported:

CBS News has learned that police seized two shotguns, a flare launcher, nine high-capacity rifle magazines, various handwritten notebooks containing formulas, literature on how to make booby traps and homemade weapons, and pages from a do-it-yourself manual called The Terrorist Encyclopedia. The New York Post reported Greene was a member of the Occupy Wall Street movement but the group has denied this.

But CBS doesn’t leave it there. They followed that with a soundbite from Mitchell Silbe of  K2 Intelligence, who spun out this scenario:

The assumption is that the vast majority of the people there were peaceful protestors, but there was a more radical fringe element to the group, and there was a concern that at some point they might turn to violence if they weren’t accomplishing their political aims.

It’s bad enough to treat a unsubstantiated claim by a partisan news outlet, with a record of sensational misinformation on the same subject, as a relevant fact in a story. But how do you justify using this junk journalism as a chance to let a source give free rein to his fantasies of how Occupy might take a turn towards violence?

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January 4, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Bashing Israel New York Post Style

By Philip Giraldi | The Passionate Attachment | June 21, 2012

Most Americans who are actually interested in foreign policy would not expect to learn anything from the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid The New York Post. A brief article that appeared in the paper (but not on their website) and also in Commentary magazine on June 12th was written by Alana Goodman. The piece illustrates precisely why brainwashed readers of either publication should expect little in the way of balance. Goodman is the assistant online editor of Commentary, which focuses on Jewish issues and was founded in 1945 by the American Jewish Committee.

The article is entitled “Unions Back Israel-Basher” and relates to one Charles Barron, a Democrat who is running for a congressional seat in Brooklyn. According to Goodman, Barron is an “extremist, a dictator apologist, and a passionate Israel-basher…” Why? Well, he has a file over at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is headed by the always on the alert Abe Foxman. Barron, who has admittedly crafted a career as a loose cannon, has made the list of anti-Semites because he has referred to Gaza as a “virtual death camp,” has criticized the “Jewish lobby,” and has called the Israeli government “the biggest terrorist in the world.”

Goodman’s problem is that two public service unions have endorsed Barron and she cannot understand how two large “D” Democratic institutions can possibly find him acceptable. Well, the unions in question have many black members and Barron has a history of appealing to supporters along racial lines, meaning that their money and endorsement are a result of his speaking to their interests. But that would not be an explanation that Goodman would find acceptable because, for her, everything is about Israel and her never-ending search for Israel-bashers.

Goodman also reported, in the Commentary version of her article, about the Democratic Party backlash:

“Former Mayor Ed Koch, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Councilman David Greenfield, and Assemblyman Dov Hikind gathered with several other elected officials in front of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park this morning for a press conference billed as an effort ‘to Denounce Charles Barron as Enemy of the State of Israel’ and the Jewish community. The politicos who showed up at the event where longtime councilman Mr. Barron was branded ‘hateful,’ a ‘scary monster,’ ‘anti-Semite’ and ‘bigot’ also expressed their support for his rival in the congressional race, Hakeem Jeffries.”

But equally interesting is the litmus test of what it takes to become an ADL and Ed Koch certified anti-Semite in this country. Gaza is a death camp? Well, it actually is, isn’t it? And the Israelis are the prison guards. The Jewish Lobby is not a force for good? Go read Mearsheimer and Walt, both educated white guys who have made the point very forcefully based on impeccable scholarship. And Israel as the world’s biggest terrorist? Measured by what Israel is up to relating to Iran it is certainly the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.

Barron might well turn out to be a lousy congressman for many reasons, but denouncing him a priori for his views of a foreign country is a bit much.

June 21, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment