Authored by Blake Fleetwood via RealClearPolitics,
Any NYT reader looking at the buzzy front page headline below would immediately think that Robert F Kennedy Jr. is a madman.
Can he really be an advocate for repealing the polio vaccine, a disease that has killed and crippled tens of millions of kids?
“Kennedy’s Lawyer Has Asked the F.D.A. to Revoke Approval of the Polio Vaccine”
To the ordinary reader, the headline says pretty clearly that Kennedy asked his lawyer to revoke the polio vaccine. The headline makes the shocking accusation that Kennedy is in favor of banning the polio vaccine. There is no other way of interpreting it.
But it is flagrantly false and a gross distortion of the truth. There is not one polio vaccine; there are six different polio vaccines that are used worldwide. Moreover, Aaron Siri, the lawyer in question, does not represent Kennedy in his petition.
Contrary to the misrepresentations the NYT has been making, Kennedy does not oppose vaccines or want to take away anybody’s vaccine. All seven of his children were vaccinated, including with the polio vaccine, and his grandkids were also vaccinated against polio.
Most importantly, Kennedy has long insisted publicly that he is “all for the polio vaccine.” He has said that the polio vaccine has prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths, a seemingly relevant fact that the Times deliberately omitted from its punchy but reckless news article.
Kennedy does question the long-term of some vaccines and wants further studies about them. When RFK is quoted as saying no vaccines are safe, he is saying no vaccines are “completely” safe – they all have side effects.
The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine supports Kennedy’s positions regarding vaccine safety and has called for more funding for “Post Authorization Vaccine Safety”:
“Progress in vaccine-safety science has understandably been slow.”
“We recommend the National Academy of Medicine conduct an independent and comprehensive review to address these important and complex structure and governance issues. The highest quality research should be funded.”
The NEJM also called for a review of the 1986 Act of Congress, which holds that pharmaceutical companies cannot be held liable for adverse reactions to vaccines and cannot be sued.
The main reason Kennedy is a vaccine skeptic is that the widely accepted reality that the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control are hugely influenced by Big Pharma. A nefarious revolving door allows executives to ping-pong back and forth between the regulatory bodies that approve vaccines and the drug companies that profit from them. Nine of the last ten FDA chiefs moved on to well-paid jobs with Big Pharma. This corporate capture inevitably leads to a conflict of interest, a corrupt dynamic not permitted in other countries.
Moreover, Big Pharma receives billions of dollars from the government to prepare the drug studies it submits and which the FDA relies on for licensing new drugs. Today, nearly 45% of the FDA’s $5.9 billion budget comes from the user fees companies pay when they apply for drug approval. These industry-paid fees have increasingly resulted in a lower burden of proof for medication approval, according to Public Citizen (a Ralph Nader spinoff). Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
This latest NYT article and other mainstream media repetitions predictably provoked an outpouring of more than 10,000 comments calling Kennedy “a lunatic” and “a present danger to our health.”
This is but a continuation of a slew of NYT articles seeking to falsely link Kennedy to the misleading position that he wants to ban the polio vaccine and all other vaccines.
What RFK Jr. Has Said About the Polio Vaccine in Recent Years
As Polio Survivors Watch Kennedy Confirmation, All Eyes Are on McConnell
Opinion | RFK Jr. Is a Vaccine Cynic, Not a Skeptic
RFK Jr. Sought to Stop Covid Vaccinations 6 Months After Rollout
How Lagging Vaccination Could Lead to a Polio Resurgence
Millions of people worldwide reading these headlines and other anti-Kennedy articles – echoed by much of the mainstream media – would naturally conclude that Kennedy’s policies would bring on a horrific trail of death akin to genocide.
Kennedy himself has said, “If I believed everything I read about myself in the mainstream media, I would think I was a madman.”
Aaron Siri, the lawyer in question, called the headline “hysterical and an absolute lie” and said that his petition did not ask the FDA to revoke the approval of “the polio vaccine” or any other vaccine.
He accused the Times and other mainstream media of “deliberately stoking fear and outrage about vaccines in an attempt to derail Donald Trump’s nomination” of Kennedy for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The NYT article falsely suggested that Siri (and, by implication Kennedy) sought to eliminate all polio vaccines. This damning and scandalous accusation spread to all the other media in the nation: The Washington Post, the AP, and all the legacy networks – without any independent checking.
Siri also says he does not question “The Polio Vaccine.” In fact, according to the World Health Organization, six licensed polio vaccines are used worldwide. Continuing debates among experts exist about which of the six is most efficacious and provides the most prevention.
Siri’s client is questioning only one of the six polio vaccines: a specific brand of the IPV injection, IPOL, licensed in 1990 by Sanofi. There are a handful of similar brands.
Siri’s petition claims that the IPOL brand was tested for only three days, and there were no controls before approval. According to the petition, a peer-reviewed study found discrepancies between the tested aluminum levels – scientifically proven dangerous – in this novel-formulated injected vaccine and the amounts listed on their FDA-approved labels.
IPOL is not one of the traditional polio vaccines that Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, or Hilary Koprowski developed. It is the newest vaccine approved and may already be falling out of favor.
The IPOL brand was not double-blind tested. The original Salk vaccine was double-blind tested in a massive clinical trial in which 1.5 million schoolchildren were injected with either the polio vaccine or a placebo.
If they only skim the article, NYT readers will not realize the IPOL brand vaccine is not “the polio vaccine.” Moreover, the latest conclusions from the World Health Organization suggest that it is not even the recommended polio vaccine in many places.
After the Times’ piece about Siri was released online, the Times integrated an unrelated rant from Sen. Mitch McConnell, which blasted the idea of eradicating the polio vaccine as “specious disinformation” that will threaten the advancements of “lifesaving medical progress.”
This opinion by Sen. McConnell, a polio survivor, was used by the NYT to further prop up their misleading premise that Kennedy was seeking to do away with “the polio vaccine.”
A WHO report discusses the debate among experts about the various polio vaccines, which may provide a poetic resolution: A combination of both vaccines may be the most effective prevention.
So why is The New York Times, our most distinguished newspaper, abandoning the standards of balance, fairness, and accuracy it has championed for over a hundred years?
Their code of ethics explicitly states that the paper should not be a player in the field of politics.
But the Times must cater to its readers, who are 83% liberal and afflicted with a serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome; hence, reporters and editors are naturally inclined to bash and misrepresent Trump and Kennedy.
Moreover, the Times seems to feel that any skepticism of vaccines or call for further study will lead to vaccine hesitancy. This is a strange position for a newspaper that vows to deliver “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
It prefers to keep its readers in the dark.
They couldn’t defeat Trump at the ballot box, so now they are going after Kennedy via the printed word.
Of the more than 2000 reporters and editors who work at the Times, I have not heard of one who will admit to voting for Trump.
I was a reporter for The New York Times in the late 1970s and early 1980s, writing major front-page articles and magazine stories. You knew what to write about and how to frame articles to please the editors to make the front page – you didn’t have to be told. I was generally more leftish than my editors and tried to slip in small progressive nuggets that were perhaps a bit off-brand.
In 1981, I wrote a negative story about one of the Times’ oldest advertisers: Tiffany’s. The iconic jewelry store was getting a significant financial incentive from New York state for agreeing not to move to New Jersey. My editors moved the Tiffany piece, which should have been the lead, to the 17th paragraph. Deep inside the page, you had to hunt for it. I didn’t cause a fuss. At least it made the front page.
I have read the Times cover to cover for 70 years and still do.
But I always look for their agenda and try to extrapolate the nuggets of truth behind each story from the facts they deliberately omit or downplay. Often, the most relevant facts are hidden deep down in the articles.
The Times and much mainstream media have recently succumbed to political pressure. For example, 15 days before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published a story about Hunter Biden’s lost laptop.
The story, and the salacious facts revealed in it, might have critically cut into Joe Biden’s narrow victory over Donald Trump. However, the Times refused to report on the story even though the CIA had earlier authenticated the laptop. Moreover, the NYT gave substantial coverage and legitimacy to a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials calling the Biden laptop a “Russian information operation.”
None of the intelligence officials had even reviewed the laptop’s contents. Recently, the Republican House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees uncovered evidence that then-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken drafted the letter, which may have helped swing the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.
It took the Times 18 months to acknowledge that the laptop was authentic and that the letter debunking it was a campaign hoax.
Reporters at the Times generally don’t write the headlines to their stories, and I don’t think that reporters Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote the misleading headline, but they certainly didn’t object to it. They mischaracterized the Siri petition to the FDA and neglected to mention that five other polio vaccines are being widely used. Clearly, they cherry-picked the facts and unfairly misquoted and mischaracterized Kennedy’s positions as part of a political agenda.
The goal of The New York Times is to cover the news as impartially as possible — “without fear or favor,” in the words of Adolph Ochs.
Blake Fleetwood was a reporter for The New York Times and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Hill, the Village Voice, The Atlantic, and Washington Monthly on a number of issues.
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