On Wednesday, Tony Lyons, MAHA Action’s president, kicked off the weekly MAHA Media Hub podcast by reflecting on Politico, which has been attacking MAHA and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. without revealing its conflicts of interest.
“I asked a Politico reporter why they chose to investigate the organization trying to stop corporations from poisoning the American public, instead of those companies,” said Lyons. “She said she didn’t know. I think I know. Politico has a conflict of interest. It is one of Washington’s main sources on health, food, chemical, and drug policy, and it sells those same industries privileged access to the policymakers who read it.”
Lyons focused the week’s podcast on media conflicts of interest that he and his guests say are preventing Americans from getting real news.
His first guest was Sharyl Attkisson, a five-time Emmy Award winner and recipient of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Prize, who Lyons called “one of the last investigative journalists in the country” because she consistently pursues stories others won’t touch.
Attkisson, who for more than two decades worked at such news outlets as CBS, CNN and PBS, said she began to notice a shift in how journalism was being practiced.
“It wasn’t impacting me on a daily basis until I began covering the untouchable subjects assigned by CBS News, to look into pharmaceutical products and vaccine safety,” she said. “And at the time, we’re talking early 2000s, everybody was doing that, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, ABC. And we were unearthing some incredible information about risks and misleading information and corruption inside the industry and government. But then in, I would say, five or so years of covering that and Congress holding hearings, which they’ll never do today, honest hearings on these issues, the industry figured out how to get its nose under the tent in newsrooms through advertising and through editorial placement of people in a way that would stop the coverage. And they effectively did so.”
Continued Attkisson, “I see it better in hindsight when looking back than I did when I was in the moment. But the company, CBS, went from encouraging and assigning me to covering these stories, and considering them some of the most important things we could do considering how many people are on prescription medicine and how many take vaccines” to, she said, shaping how such stories were told and later to trying to discredit her.
Attkisson said she couldn’t identify who, within CBS, didn’t want the type of investigative pieces she had done previously, but that she felt the resistance.
“When I see what they’re doing or trying to do to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Attkisson said, “the way to decode that, again, I think people are learning this, is to understand that they are propagandists and that means they consider Robert F Kennedy Jr. highly effective and a huge threat to the things that they want to protect. So, in a way, it’s a backhanded compliment, although it’s not pleasant. And I think we should just keep pointing that out.”
Attkisson, who now hosts her own syndicated show Full Measure, said news organizations should not quote Politico without pointing out the publications’ conflicts of interest, and that they’ve been wrong about many things.
Below is more from Lyons’ exchange with Attikisson, edited for clarity.
Lyons: Bobby Kennedy tells this story that he was at a restaurant once and he ran into the head of one of the big TV news shows and he asked the guy, ‘Why don’t you ever cover Big Pharma corruption or really investigate some of their practices? And the guy said, “Oh Bobby, you know, I’m really sorry, but you know, almost all of our advertising comes from those companies and we would just be out of business if we started doing that.”
This has been going on for a very, very long time. Watching Bobby on CNN with Dana Bash, where she says there are 200 studies that prove that the kinds of things you’ve been saying aren’t true . . . If there really are 200 studies, why not just post them on cnn.com? I mean, that isn’t hard to do. So, this is not real news. They’re not looking for real science. What do you think we can do to counter the fact that Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Ag money is controlling all of the news. How do we get past that?”
Attkisson: “It’s not only controlling the news, but as you know, it largely controls the nonprofit universe such as cancer causing chemical industries, funding the American Cancer Society, which will then make public policy statements as if these things can’t or don’t cause cancer or will deflect from the science that shows that they do. It has really been a wholesale takeover of our information landscape. And my approach has been always just to call it out constantly. When I report on something, I point out when a conflicted interest makes a statement or puts out a supposed news article, I point out who they are and that they’re propagandists or funded by industry. And too often the media doesn’t do that basic job because they’re kind of in on it. But if you just keep reporting it – Dr. Paul Offit, who’s a propagandist for the vaccine industry – but was long held out at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as if he were an independent vaccine expert. I think my reporting every time I spoke to him when I discovered this, I think I was the first one to constantly call him a vaccine inventor and to acknowledge his conflict of interest and not treat him like an independent safety expert. And lo and behold, for a time period, a lot of other media, I guess, was embarrassed into at least acknowledging his proprietary role in the vaccine industry, which they had not done previously. So I think just continuing to call it out and help people become even more savvy at recognizing to look at the opposite when these interests or coordinated interests are attacking the same person using the same language frequently, always taking the same issue and being very one-sided, you should consider that possibly the other side is true and that there are well-funded interests behind getting this message out in a concerted way.”
Lyons: You’ve done a spectacular job and I’m grateful for all the work that you’ve done. And thanks for coming on. We’re going to do a whole series of these kinds of shows in the coming months to push back and try to get out, as broadly as possible, the real stories rather than be defensive . . . just make sure that the world learns how this whole system works. So, I hope to have you on many, many times.
Attkinson: That’s great. Thanks, Tony.
The full MAHA Media Hub, from November 11, can be viewed here.
"Safe and effective." They must mean to be a marketing slogan. Surely not their products.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”- Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels
Sheryl is a true star, so grateful for her! In reference to Bobbie’s desire to eliminate Pharma TV ads I read somewhere that due to a Supreme Court ruling, they cannot be discriminated against. Feel free to correct me. Also, now that the Pharma worshipping Dems (turncoats), even if possible, getting that measure passed through Congress I deem questionable. Pharma’s stranglehold on our media is real indeed. It’s beyond disheartening.