COVID-19
The Federal Government Paid Media Outlets to Promote the Covid Vaccine

From the Brownstone Institute
BY
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
2025 Federal Election
Conservatives promise to ban firing of Canadian federal workers based on COVID jab status

From LifeSiteNews
The Conservative platform also vows that the party will oppose mandatory digital ID systems and a central bank digital currency if elected.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party’s 2025 election platform includes a promise to “ban” the firing of any federal worker based “solely” on whether or not they chose to get the COVID shots.
On page 23 of the “Canada First – For A Change” plan, which was released on Tuesday, the promise to protect un-jabbed federal workers is mentioned under “Protect Personal Autonomy, Privacy, and Data Security.”
It promises that a Conservative government will “Ban the dismissal of federal workers based solely on COVID vaccine status.”
The Conservative Party also promises to “Oppose any move toward mandatory digital ID systems” as well as “Prohibit the Bank of Canada from developing or implementing a central bank digital currency.”
In October 2021, the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector. The government also announced that the unjabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.
This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance. It also trapped “unvaccinated” Canadians in the country.
COVID jab mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as death, including in children.
Many recent rulings have gone in favor of those who chose not to get the shots and were fired as a result, such as an arbitrator ruling that one of the nation’s leading hospitals in Ontario must compensate 82 healthcare workers terminated after refusing to get the jabs.
Beyond health concerns, many Canadians, especially Catholics, opposed the injections on moral grounds because of their link to fetal cell lines derived from the tissue of aborted babies.
COVID-19
RFK Jr. Launches Long-Awaited Offensive Against COVID-19 mRNA Shots

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
As millions of Americans anxiously await action from the new HHS leadership against the COVID-19 mRNA injections—injected into over 9 million children this year—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has finally gone publicly on the offensive:
Let’s go over each key point made by RFK Jr.:
The recommendation for children was always dubious. It was dubious because kids had almost no risk for COVID-19. Certain kids that had very profound morbidities may have a slight risk. Most kids don’t.
In the largest review to date on myocarditis following SARS-CoV-2 infection vs. COVID-19 vaccination, Mead et al found that vaccine-induced myocarditis is not only significantly more common but also more severe—particularly in children and young males. Our findings make clear that the risks of the shots overwhelmingly outweigh any theoretical benefit:
The OpenSAFELY study included more than 1 million adolescents and children and found that myocarditis was documented ONLY in COVID-19 vaccinated groups and NOT after COVID-19 infection. There were NO COVID-19-related deaths in any group. A&E attendance and unplanned hospitalization were higher after first vaccination compared to unvaccinated groups:
So why are we giving this to tens of millions of kids when the vaccine itself does have profound risk? We’ve seen huge associations of myocarditis and pericarditis with strokes, with other injuries, with neurological injuries.
The two largest COVID-19 vaccine safety studies ever conducted, involving 99 million (Faksova et al) and 85 million people (Raheleh et al), confirm RFK Jr.’s concerns, documenting significantly increased risks of serious adverse events following vaccination, including:
- Myocarditis (+510% after second dose)
- Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (+278% after first dose)
- Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (+223% after first dose)
- Guillain-Barré Syndrome (+149% after first dose)
- Heart Attack (+286% after second dose)
- Stroke (+240% after first dose)
- Coronary Artery Disease (+244% after second dose)
- Cardiac Arrhythmia (+199% after first dose)
And this was clear even in the clinical data that came out of Pfizer. There were actually more deaths. There were about 23% more deaths in the vaccine group than the placebo group. We need to ask questions and we need to consult with parents.
Actually, according to the Pfizer’s clinical trial data, there were 43% more deaths in the vaccine group compared to the placebo group when post-unblinding deaths are included:
We need to give people informed consent, and we shouldn’t be making recommendations that are not good for the population.
Public acknowledgment of the grave harms of COVID-19 vaccines signals that real action is right around the corner. However, we must hope that action is taken for ALL age groups, as no one is spared from their life-reducing effects:
Alessandria et al (n=290,727, age > 10 years): People vaccinated with 2 doses lost 37% of life expectancy compared to the unvaccinated population during follow-up.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
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