Is Big Pharma Behind the Hyperbolic Press Attacks Against RFK Jr.?
By Tom Valovic, Special to The Kennedy Beacon
It has become almost mandatory for journalists in the corporate media writing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to refer to him as an “anti-vaxxer.”
Imagine the media doing that with other candidates. Imagine if, for example, every time Chris Christie was mentioned, he was referred to as “media attention junkie.” Or that Marianne Williamson was consistently referred to as “new-age space cadet.” It’s easy to cast anyone in a negative light and we all learned how to do it in grade school. However, presumably, as adults, we’ve learned to move beyond overt name calling as a way to negotiate the world and make an effective case. In general, the ad hominem attack is a bottom-of-the-barrel form of argumentation. Regularly and consistently engaging in it as a journalistic practice shows a lack of professionalism and journalistic integrity.
The most common ad hominem epithet we see is “anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” This is poison-pill journalism – immediately prejudicing the reader before she or he can read the remainder of the article. It represents a reflexive and intellectually lazy approach to reporting. Beginning an article in this way or making frequent references within the body of the article with this moniker indicates an a priori lack of objectivity and introduces a bias that encourages the reader to be skeptical of what Kennedy may have actually said or what events were being described.
If this is done often enough and on a continuous basis (as is clearly the case with Kennedy), it establishes a kind of cognitive patterning in the mind of the public. When that patterning has been established systematically over a period of years or decades, it becomes embedded in the minds of readers. Such approaches are what might be expected from tabloid journalism but not supposedly well-respected papers such as The New York Times or The Washington Post. These corporate information mills offer us the presumption of their own excellence but often fail to deliver on that promise by skewing their narratives in unabashed support of the corporatist status quo. And has the The New York Times ever really recovered from its well-known slavish and wildly inaccurate reporting on the Iraq War, that aligned so well with the Bush administration’s attempt to falsely justify it?
Why Have Basic Editorial Principles Eroded?
In this context, it seems fair to ask: why has Kennedy’s mis-characterization been going on for so long and why is it such a consistently applied practice? I’m going to suggest that to understand this, we examine some core journalistic principles. By peeking behind the curtain, it’s possible to better see the motivation behind this decades-long systematic series of personal attacks on Kennedy and his tireless work to explore vaccine safety and push for the renewal of our political system.
As a former magazine editor, I learned firsthand about the complexities and nuances of what’s known in publishing as “separation of church and state.” But I would venture to say that most readers of mainstream publications either aren’t familiar with this core principle of journalistic ethics or it’s simply not a top-of-mind consideration for them. This principle and practice refer to the wall of separation that’s supposed to exist between the advertising department of any given publication and the editorial side of the house where decisions about content are made and the assignment of stories is done. The basic idea is simply to keep advertisers from inappropriately influencing editorial content.
Before corporate influence in both government and the media became so widespread, this was the standard practice and everybody knew the rules. However, in recent times, this principle has been strongly eroded, laying the groundwork for the significant decline in editorial standards that’s taken place over the last several decades. The very nature of journalism as a public-spirited endeavor to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” has morphed into a race to the bottom whereby, in many cases, it’s become just another cut-throat business. Further, many publications are now struggling just to stay afloat. This sad state of affairs has eroded editorial independence and made surviving media outlets – especially print publications – much more dependent on big-pocket advertisers.
Advertising: Follow The Money
Enter Big Pharma and its massive investments in marketing which, of course, include advertising.
Kennedy has been a bull’s-eye target for Big Pharma for many decades because of his work to expose medically questionable and possibly unethical practices in the pharmaceutical industry. To better understand this, let’s step back and review two important considerations with respect to Big Pharma’s core business strategies.
First, it’s been a crucial long-term goal to make vaccination a primary means of medical practice for decades but this corporate strategy was being pushed into the healthcare arena with only mixed results before COVID-19. (It’s worth considering whether the advent of COVID-19 presented a “Trojan Horse opportunity” that facilitated the ambitious plans for mass vaccination to become a reality.) Secondly, Big Pharma has a multi-billion dollar marketing budget which it uses to get its messaging across. While Pharma executives frequently try to justify their unconscionable sky-high drug prices by citing the R&D investment involved, what’s missing on the public’s radar screens are the inordinate sums they spend on marketing and advertising.
Kennedy’s research on vaccine safety – and, from its point of view, his audacity to even question it – poses a threat to Big Pharma’s core business strategy. Many billions of dollars are at stake. This is because Kennedy has had the courage to step up and simply ask thoughtful and reasonable questions about whether Pharma is going about its business in an ethical and responsible way. These powerful corporations are undoubtedly aware that Kennedy has a reputation as a successful activist and environmental attorney, who relied on solid research to back up his excellent track record of litigation successes.
I surmise that, because of this threat, Big Pharma has had to engage in a proactive and long-running campaign to marginalize Kennedy’s research and messaging questioning the efficacy and safety of certain vaccination products even though he’s made it clear that he’s not opposed to vaccination per se. His “crime” – punishable by marginalization and character assassination — was simply asking questions, good questions that needed to be answered and, to this day, have not been fully explored by the medical community and the healthcare system.
Given the current shaky state of the publishing industry, ad dollars are more important than ever and Big Pharma is throwing its weight around by leveraging its massive war chest. Undoubtedly, the reader or anyone who subscribes to a print publication has seen the pharma ads. Frequently they consist of three continuous pages – an unprecedented phenomenon in the advertising world. Typically, the first page is pure marketing while the following two pages are cautionary notes and legal disclaimers. (What other business carries such a trail of disclaimers behind them? That, in and of itself, is telling.)
These monster ads now appear in a wide variety of mainstream print and online publications including The Week, Time magazine, and many others. According to Statistica: “Pharma advertising spending in the U.S. amounted to an average of one billion dollars monthly by the end of 2022.” In addition, many of the top ten TV advertisers in 2023 were pharmaceutical companies according to the website mediaradar. That same source also notes that Pfizer is one of the top ten spenders in print advertising.
These ads constitute an important source of income for mainstream publishers and other media outlets who cannot afford to lose them as sources of revenue. It is probably impossible to prove, but given the fact that the wall between editorial and advertising is so thin these days, it’s highly likely that editorial content is subtly or not so subtly shaped by these business relationships. [See The Kennedy Beacon’s series of articles on the Associated Press.] It’s therefore hard to believe that the mainstream publications receiving these massive infusions of ad dollars would not be avoiding the publication of content that “bites the hand that feeds them.”
While, as a longtime media watcher and analyst, I would contend that this dynamic has been going on for years, it mushroomed into full bloom during the COVID-19 vaccine controversy. It’s therefore not at all surprising to see that Kennedy has been targeted by the corporate media and branded as an “anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist.” (Interestingly, implicit in this cleverly constructed meme, of course, is the notion that we should all be pro-vaccine.)
Big Pharma is vulnerable legally and from a liability standpoint. If it loses this battle for the hearts and minds of the public – especially given the boost it received from COVID-19 – its entire narrative could unravel. For Big Pharma, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Its vulnerability is well known in government and medical circles, which is why it required Congressional legislation to shield it from liability for vaccines. (Have you noticed how this elephant in the room is never questioned by the corporate media?)
While vaccine products have immunity from prosecution under the law, others don’t. With the ongoing prosecution of the ignominious Sackler family over its company Purdue Pharma’s marketing of the opioid OxyContin, and Pfizer pleading guilty and paying $2.3 billion to settle charges of fraudulent marketing, we can see the outlines of a much larger story that needs to be told.
Kennedy has both the inside knowledge and strong reputation for personal and professional integrity to tell this story, as he has been doing for so many years. This is why he continues to be targeted by the media.
Further, conventional narratives around COVID-19’s origins are starting to unravel. This story will continue to unfold as the truth gradually emerges, the public becomes more informed, and the weakness of propped up official narratives concerning COVID-19 vaccines are exposed.
Kennedy’s courageous stance – a “profile in courage” – concerning the Big Pharma industry and its attempted takeover of the medical profession will, over the course of time I believe, reveal the full scope of what has been happening in our struggling healthcare system.
Tom Valovic, journalist and the author of Digital Mythologies, served as a consultant to the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and was editor-in-chief of Telecommunications magazine. Tom has written for The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Examiner, Common Dreams, Scheerpost, AlterNet, Counterpunch, and Columbia University’s Media Studies Journal.
Shortly after Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced his candidacy, I read his book "The Real Anthony Fauci" and was amazed at a) how Big Pharma's vaccine industry financed by the like of Bill Gates, etc., is in reality, a highly organized criminal enterprise; and b) Mr. Kennedy's courage in telling us about it in the face of the fake Covid-19 "plandemic." As a writer on financial reform, I can point out that the real controllers of Big Pharma are the investors, including the big hedge funds, who have unlimited access to bank-created money to leverage their escapades at the expense of all of our health and well-being. This, in turn, goes back to what I call the "Insurrection of 1913," when the Wall Street bankers and their international partners took control of the U.S monetary system that our Constitution placed under public control via Congressional authority. Then, and now, Wall Street operates as an alien predatory force squeezing the life out of all of us. I explain how this happened and what to do about it in my new book "Our Country, Then and Now," just published by Clarity Press. Thus far, Mr. Kennedy is the ONLY presidential candidates willing to take on the crimes of Wall Street, Big Pharma, and their ilk.
https://stateofthenation.co/?p=202908
https://www.claritypress.com/product/our-country-then-and-now/
Big Pharma is an Evil entity! With its people like the Diabolical Bill Gates!!!