Biden Administration Paid Media $1 Billion for COVID Shot Propaganda

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.”

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