COVID-19
The Federal Government Paid Media Outlets to Promote the Covid Vaccine
From the Brownstone Institute
After releasing my three-part series earlier this year showing how multiple media outlets refused to platform dissent on the Covid vaccine, I was asked on multiple podcasts why this was the case. Ideological groupthink, fear of exacerbating institutional distrust, and financial motives were on my list of potential explanations, but I did not have concrete evidence.
As I highlighted in my first piece, the responses I got from editors claiming their publication’s “pro-vaccine” allegiance was quite jarring. More than anything else, a publication should be “pro-truth” — whether that means highlighting the astounding benefits of a therapeutic or exposing its serious side effects. The idea that a whole media corporation would take a firm stance on a novel, experimental product is antithetical to the core purpose of journalism.
As I’ve said many times before, we are a pro-vaccination newspaper, and personally I just wish everyone would get vaccinated already.
Editor response to Rav Arora’s story proposals on vaccine risks
As it turns out, mainstream media’s nearly monolithic coverage of mRNA vaccines and other Covid measures can be at least partially explained by a clear financial interest. Recently, independent journalist Breanna Morello — who left Fox News because of draconian vaccine mandates in New York City — alerted me to a FOIA request filed by the conservative media company TheBlaze, which found a number of major media outlets were paid to promote the Covid vaccine.
Such venues included the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and several others. TheBlaze’s report received little coverage — even in conservative media (perhaps because some of those outlets were also paid by HHS) ideologically predisposed to criticize government-fuelled narratives on the pandemic. As The Blaze reports:
Hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the vaccines as part of a “comprehensive media campaign,” according to documents TheBlaze obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration purchased ads on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build vaccine confidence, timing this effort with the increasing availability of the vaccines.
During the vaccine rollout, the Biden administration made a number of efforts to bolster vaccination rates. The US Department of Health and Human Services’ COVID-19 Public Education Campaign states they employed “both paid advertising and media interviews, presentations, radio/TV tours, and other public events to educate people about the importance of vaccination.”
The HHS website contains public access to all vaccine campaign advertisements for media outlets and beyond. One past advertisement promotes Covid vaccination in children, featuring a montage of selected medical doctors stating in unison,
We can all agree on this: you can trust the Covid vaccine for yourself, or your kids, or your grandkids….I mean it from the heart.
In another ad directed to parents, HHS’ selection of doctors state,
We want you to know, Covid vaccines are ‘safe and effective’.’ My grandkids are vaccinated…what’s not safe is getting Covid.
Is it ethical for the government to dubiously claim Covid vaccines are uniformly beneficial for kids, and contracting Covid is far less “safe” than getting your child double-vaccinated? No such randomized clinical evidence exists suggesting the benefits of the Covid vaccine outweigh the harms in young cohorts with a nearly zero risk of serious outcomes. The concentrated risk of myocarditis in boys and menstrual irregularities in girls suggest the Covid vaccine may be harmful on net. Moreover, is it ethical (for either party) for the federal government to advertise such medical misinformation on platforms allegedly committed to investigating the truth and holding the powerful accountable?
A new government ad on the HHS website now promotes the updated Covid vaccine. It falsely claims the new booster shot prevents long Covid and hospitalization when the only available evidence from Pfizer and Moderna are rat studies and a 50-person trial (with an unexplained 2% rate of serious adverse events).
Rather than critically covering such propagandistic attempts to promote a longitudinally ineffective therapeutic with a 1 in 800 serious adverse event rate, major media outlets allowed the federal government to freely spread its misinformation on their platform. The New York Times’ reporting on vaccine-induced myocarditis, for example, downplayed the side effect at every sight and compared it to misleadingly higher rates of Covid-induced myocarditis:
For over two years, the media and government officials have been peddling dangerous misinformation — the very sin they accuse of the conspiracy web of committing — about COVID-19 posing a higher risk to young people than the vaccine. Instead of examining age, gender, and health-stratified risk-benefit ratios, they elementarily look at aggregate data and cherry-pick seemingly beneficial outcomes to justify their “Everyone should get vaccinated!” campaign. A few of umpteen examples:
CNBC: “Myocarditis risk higher after Covid infection than Pfizer or Moderna vaccination, CDC finds”
Reuters: “Higher risk of heart complications from COVID-19 than vaccines -study”
CNN: “Pediatric cardiologists explain myocarditis and why your teen should still get a Covid-19 vaccine”
The Conversation: “Myocarditis: COVID-19 is a much bigger risk to the heart than vaccination”
As an admittedly biased Zoomer, one of the most discrediting media assault campaigns grew in opposition to Joe Rogan’s claim in a June 2021 podcast that healthy 21-year-olds didn’t need the vaccine. Over two years later, Rogan’s judgment has been vindicated — as it was at the time — given the 0.003% mortality risk among 20-year-olds and unusually high rates of myocardial and menstrual-related vaccine adverse events. However, the mainstream media ecosystem conducted a fierce reputational decapitation in response to Rogan’s impermissible dissent from the CDC and Pfizer’s edicts:
The Washington Post: Joe Rogan is using his wildly popular podcast to question vaccines. Experts are fighting back.
The Atlantic: Joe Rogan’s Show May Be Dumb. But Is It Actually Deadly?
Today: Dr. Fauci says Joe Rogan ‘incorrect’ to tell young people not to get vaccinated
NBC: Joe Rogan’s Covid vaccine misinfo matters
The United States wasn’t alone in spending large sums of taxpayer dollars to promote its agenda. The Trudeau government invested over $600,000 in hiring social media influencers to advance federal directives, including the push for Canadians to get vaccinated and boosted.
As CTV reports, Health Canada spent the most on hiring influencers to promote government information; $130,600 was spent towards an “influencer campaign in support of the COVID-19 vaccination marketing and advertising campaign.”
None of this is to mention Pfizer’s vaccine campaigns paying celebrities to rhapsodize about marvellously ‘safe and effective’ mRNA inoculation. Travis Kelce — a professional football player watched and revered by many young American men in particular — promoted getting the updated booster shot and flu vaccine in the same visit.
The journalists I grew up admiring — such as Megyn Kelly, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson (Unreported Truths), and Matt Taibbi (Racket News) — were known for challenging consensus and providing novel perspectives on complex sociopolitical topics. I relied on select journalistic outlets and individual commentators for an honest, independent evaluation of the facts.
The heavily biased coverage of race relations and criminal justice issues in 2020 following the tragic death of George Floyd was self-discrediting but hardly surprising given the dominance of identity politics in elite liberal discourse.
The deterioration of journalistic standards during the vaccine rollout beginning in 2021, however, was particularly disorienting. The Washington Post, NBC, and the New York Times should have held the Biden administration’s feet to the fire for promoting experimental vaccines in all Americans irrespective of risk and continued revelations regarding concerning side effects.
They miserably failed to do so.
The last standing bulwark against government propaganda and censorship is crumbling before our eyes, losing relevance by the month. Perhaps a solution for media institutions to earn back credibility is to critically cover federal agencies misinforming the public rather than take funds to promote their agendas.
Just a thought.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Author
MxM News
Quick Hit:
A newly uncovered Defense Department report reveals that seven U.S. troops may have contracted COVID-19 during the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan—months before the official pandemic timeline. The Biden administration kept the report from the public for over two years, despite a legal requirement to release it.
Key Details:
- A December 2022 Pentagon report shows seven U.S. service members showed COVID-like symptoms after attending the 2019 Wuhan games.
- The Biden administration withheld the report, which was required by law to be made public in 2022, until it was quietly posted online in March 2025.
- Evidence contradicts Biden officials’ 2021 claims and adds weight to theories that COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab before December 2019.
Diving Deeper:
The Biden administration withheld a critical Pentagon report for more than two years, one that sheds new light on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, seven U.S. military service members may have contracted COVID-19 during or shortly after the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan, China—a full two months before China officially acknowledged the outbreak.
The report, completed in December 2022, was mandated for public release by the National Defense Authorization Act. Yet, the administration only passed it to select Congressional committees and failed to make it publicly accessible as required. It wasn’t until March 2025 that the report quietly appeared on a Defense Department site under a section dedicated to “quality-of-life” issues—far from public view.
This revelation directly contradicts claims made by Biden administration officials in 2021, including then-Defense Department spokesman John Kirby, who stated there was “no knowledge” of any infections among the U.S. participants. The Trump administration had also denied early on that troops were tested or showed symptoms, citing the timing of the games before China’s outbreak announcement.
Held just miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology—where controversial, U.S.-funded gain-of-function research was conducted—the 2019 games have long drawn suspicion from national security and public health experts. Prominent biologist Dr. Richard Ebright told the Free Beacon the report confirms that COVID was already circulating and likely leaked from the Wuhan lab: “This new information strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data.”
Adding more context, athletes from European countries such as France, Germany, and Italy also reported flu-like symptoms in Wuhan, describing the city at the time as unusually empty—a “ghost town.” All seven American service members recovered quickly, and the Pentagon has not revealed when it first became aware of the cases.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) called the report’s concealment an “outrage,” noting it directly undermines the long-promoted narrative that COVID began at a Wuhan wet market in December 2019. “Taxpayers deserve to know the truth,” she said. “This report should have been made public immediately.”
Congressional Republicans have consistently asserted that the Wuhan games were among the first super spreader events of the pandemic. In 2021, House Foreign Affairs Republicans issued findings supporting that theory. Meanwhile, multiple federal agencies—including the CIA, FBI, and Energy Department—now publicly believe COVID most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Former Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Randy Hillier in the Ontario Legislature (Photo credit: The Canadian Press/Chris Young)
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is pleased that the Ontario Court of Appeal has accepted former Ontario MPP Randy Hillier’s appeal and overturned a lower court ruling that had dismissed his Charter challenge to Ontario’s lockdown regulations. These regulations were in effect during the 2021 Covid lockdowns.
The decision was released by the Ontario Court of Appeal on Monday, April 7, 2025.
In the spring of 2021, Mr. Hillier attended peaceful protests in Kemptville and Cornwall, Ontario. He spoke about the importance of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the harms caused by the province’s lockdown regulations. The government’s health orders made it illegal for even two people to assemble together outdoors: a blatant and unjustified restriction of the Charter section 2(c) freedom of peaceful assembly. Other provinces allowed five or ten or more people to gather together outdoors.
Mr. Hillier has outstanding charges in Kemptville, Cornwall, Peterborough, Belleville, and Smith Falls. Prosecutors in those jurisdictions are waiting to see the results of this Charter challenge. Mr. Hillier has faced similar charges in many other jurisdictions across Ontario, but these have been stayed or withdrawn at the request of the respective prosecutors.
Mr. Hillier defended himself against the tickets that were issued to him for violating lockdown restrictions by arguing that these lockdown regulations were unjustified violations of Charter section 2(c), which protects freedom of peaceful assembly.
Four expert reports were filed to support Mr. Hillier’s case, including the report of Dr. Kevin Bardosh, which extensively reviewed the many ways in which lockdowns harmed Canadians. They showed alarming mental health deterioration during the pandemic among Canadians, including psychological distress, insomnia, depression, fatigue, suicidal ideation, self-harm, anxiety disorders and deteriorating life satisfaction, caused in no small part by prolonged lockdowns. Many peer-reviewed studies show that mental health continued to decline in 2021 compared to 2020. The expert report also provides abundant data about other lockdown harms, including drug overdoses, a rise in obesity, unemployment, and the destruction of small businesses, which were prevented from competing with big-box stores.
Justice Joseph Callaghan dismissed that challenge in a ruling issued November 22, 2023. Notably, Justice Callaghan did not reference any evidence of lockdown harms that Dr. Bardosh had provided to the court. Without reasons, the court declared that Dr. Bardosh is “not a public health expert” and then ignored the abundant evidence of lockdown harms.
Lawyers for Mr. Hillier filed a Notice of Appeal with the Ontario Court of Appeal on December 22, 2023.
Mr. Hillier’s Appeal argued that, among other things, Justice Callaghan erred in applying the Oakes test. As the Notice of Appeal states, Justice Callaghan “fail[ed] to recognize that a complete ban on Charter protected activity is subject to a more onerous test for demonstrable justification at the minimal impairment and proportionality branches of Oakes.”
The Oakes test was developed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1986 case R. v. Oakes, as a way to evaluate if an infringement of a Charter right can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. That test has three parts. The first requires that the means be rationally connected to the objective. The second is that it should cause minimal impairment to the right. The third is proportionality, in the sense that the objective of impairing the right must be sufficiently important.
Mr. Hillier’s Appeal focused on the second part of the Oakes test: whether the regulations were minimally impairing of Mr. Hillier’s 2(c) freedom where they effectively banned all peaceful protest.
Justice Centre President John Carpay stated, “It is refreshing to see a court do its job of protecting our Charter freedoms, by holding government to a high standard. There was no science behind Ontario’s total ban on all outdoor protests.”
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