I. How mainstream health science reporters systematically mistreat members of the medical freedom community
We live in a time of transition. The old paradigms are failing and new paradigms with greater explanatory power are struggling to be born.
Standing in the breach are mainstream health science reporters. They tend to be progressive, just out of college, with little to no graduate education. A quick look at their LinkedIn pages suggests that they were elated to get what appear to be prestigious jobs for Stat News, KFF, Politico, the New York Times, or any of the hundreds of Pharma-funded narrative enforcement (aka “fact check”) organizations that sprang up during Covid. They’re just smart enough to be arrogant but not wise enough to know what they don’t know.
Then they get assigned a story about some facet of the vaccine debate where they encounter a group of people who think very differently than they do — and they suddenly lose all sense of decency.
Proper reporting, back when that was still taught, would require sufficient research to accurately describe the viewpoint of this different social tribe.
“Position switching” (putting oneself in the shoes of another) is the basis of empathy and a slightly more experienced reporter would do everything possible to view the world through the eyes of his/her interviewee.
A skilled reporter might even try to “steel man” this alternative perspective to find the strengths of the opposing argument rather than exaggerating weaknesses that do not accurately represent the views of the people being studied.
Proper editors, back when that was still a thing, would not sign off on an article until the reporter had gotten to the heart of the matter and captured the essence of the other worldview.
But none of that happens in health science reporting today. Instead these wet-behind-the-ears reporters all follow the same script — ‘anyone who disagrees with the mainstream narrative must be a nutter who could not possibly be understood by anyone in polite society.’
Mainstream health science reporters almost never interview the parents of vaccine injured children or vaccine injured people themselves about their injuries. Any reporter who does so quickly resorts to gaslighting as a way of managing their internal distress.
These reporters often seek the opinions of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and others with advanced degrees. Yet if any scholar contradicts the mainstream narrative he or she will be portrayed like a homeless schizophrenic person spinning in circles and talking nonsense (actually, schizophrenics are treated infinitely better than vaccine skeptics by mainstream health science reporters because schizophrenics don’t threaten the narrative).
In the movement for medical freedom we have thousands of peer-reviewed sources, nearly everything we do is public, and our work is meticulous because we get torn to shreds for decades by the Big Pharma media machine if we ever make any mistakes. But mainstream health science reporters almost never actually read our work. It’s not that they disagree with us — they never read enough of our work to even understand our position (at most they do a quick search to find a “gotcha quote” that they can pull out of context and wield like a bludgeon). So their bias leads to bad methods that they try to cover up by portraying us as shadowy conspirators whose beliefs are indecipherable. This extreme “othering” has become a requirement of the mainstream health science reporting profession.
II. They should know better
Nearly all of these reporters are progressives who should know better. If their undergraduate education was anything like mine, it likely included extensive lectures, readings, and research papers on the importance of not “othering” people, the grave injustice of bigotry, the evils of colonialism, and America’s long history of exploitation and violence.
But the progressive worldview today makes an exception for vaccine skeptics who are treated with systematic contempt as a requirement of the faith. Furthermore, to the progressive mind it does not matter if the vaccine skeptic is better educated, more qualified, or more well-versed in the topic — anyone who questions vaccines is treated as subhuman and all of their claims are dismissed out of hand regardless of the sources that they provide.
Because mainstream health science reporters think that people in the medical freedom movement are less than human, these self-righteous stenographers for the drug cartel see no contradiction between their anti-genocidal, anti-colonial, anti-bigotry worldview and the fact that their reporting leads to iatrogenocide, supports Pharma Colonialism, celebrates bigotry, and encourages segregation. Antivax bigotry is the only form of bigotry still allowed in polite society today and progressives are loud and proud of their contempt for this “other.”
I believe it is massively destabilizing for society that supposedly smart people routinely engage in this sort of doublespeak — expressing one set of deeply-held values and then immediately violating those values — without the self-awareness to see their own hypocrisy. This makes mainstream health science reporters look ridiculous. Furthermore mainstream doctors and scientists debase themselves because they never correct the record or demand fairness when it comes to this stigmatized “other.” The emergence of this style of reporting and its persistence suggest that a new form of totalitarianism is in operation in the U.S. that is exemplified by total mental capture of this profession (and many others).
III. Sane people should be able to have a rational conversation about these matters
Let me explain this as clearly as possible.
The work of Children’s Health Defense, the Informed Consent Action Network, the Highwire, Stand for Health Freedom, Health Freedom Defense Fund, the National Vaccine Information Center, etc. is extremely straightforward. They endeavor to understand, scientifically and medically, how toxic exposures cause harm and then work, legally, to reduce or eliminate those toxic exposures. That’s it.
The work of the medical freedom movement is no different from the efforts of the Environmental Working Group — with the exception that the medical freedom movement has the courage to address iatrogenic injury and take on Big Pharma, which most mainstream environmental groups are too scared to discuss.
The work I do is related to, but somewhat different from, the work of the large medical freedom non-profits. I seek to understand the politics, economics, and sociology of the chronic disease crisis. Why do government officials respond with urgency to infectious disease but ignore the much larger problem of chronic disease? How did chronic disease become an industry that is now too big to fail? How does financial capture override previously held beliefs without producing unbearable cognitive dissonance? Brownstone Institute, where I’m currently a Fellow, also works on the politics, economics, and sociology of this crisis.
Anyone should be able to have a rational conversation about these issues. No need to get the vapors and retire to the fainting couch anytime someone questions the bloated junk science CDC vaccine schedules. And yet every single mainstream health science reporter fails this basic test of human decency, and insists, as a requirement of the job, that these damn dirty antivaxxers cannot possibly be understood and must be from Mars.
The dehumanization of people like me who want to keep toxic chemicals out of children’s bodies serves a purpose. It sets up the pretext for systemic violence and discrimination against us. It protects Pharma’s enormous profits. And it enables mainstream science and medicine, and bourgeoise society itself, to pretend that they are not currently engaged in iatrogenocide.
The psychology and sociology of the cowardice displayed by mainstream health science reporters is pretty straightforward as well. It is terrifying to comprehend the total depravity of mainstream science and medicine (and government, corporations, and large swaths of civil society). Many people, and certainly most mainstream health science reporters, lack the courage to stare reality in the face. Furthermore, they lack the moral fortitude to speak truth to power. So they retreat to comforting lies, clichés, and demagoguery of the “other” in order to protect their fragile Polyannaish worldview.
The problem is, this is not a mere difference of opinion. When mainstream health science reporters repeatedly ignore evidence that vaccines cause harm they are engaged in racketeering on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. And when mainstream health science reporters engage in “othering” to protect the genocidal status quo they are committing crimes against humanity. We don’t have enough political power yet to prosecute these crimes, but the pressure is building and things could change quickly.
The only good news in all of this is that the mainstream information distribution channels are dying and the new parallel economy — with heaps of alternative news sources including Substack, podcasts, and publishers including Brownstone Institute, Chelsea Green, and Skyhorse — is thriving. But the mainstream media landscape will be ugly for a while as the old paradigm goes through its final death throes.
Further reading (my prompts are below and the links will take you to the replies from ChatGPT):
Define the social science concept of “othering.”
Blessings to the warriors. 🙌
Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏
Huzzah for everyone building the parallel society our hearts know is possible. ✊
In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.
As always, I welcome any corrections.
The Rogers Test for vetting health science reporters (think of it like the Bechdel Test applied to medical freedom):
Any reporter who wants to interview anyone from the medical freedom movement should first demonstrate their bona fides as follows.
Send a link to an article you wrote where you:
☐ Respectfully interviewed a parent of a vaccine injured child.
☐ Respectfully interviewed someone who was injured by a Covid vaccine.
☐ Cost the pharmaceutical industry money.
☐ Critically reviewed a Pharma-funded study and showed how it was rigged.
☐ Acknowledged that none of the shots on the childhood schedule have been tested against a proper saline placebo.
☐ Acknowledged that Covid shots cause more harms than benefits.
Any reporter who cannot meet these six basic conditions has no business talking with the people who risk their lives every day by standing up to the pharmaceutical cartel.
The only reason the “progressives” don’t know better is that they try very hard not to.