If you the Federal Government, via HHS, purchased advertising to push the efficacy and “safety” of the covid-19 vaccines from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations.
These platforms published countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that was nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine, like “it works” and “it’s safe”.
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. The government also relied on “influencers” and “experts” like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other academics to be interviewed and promote vaccination in the news.
We generally expect newsrooms to operate independently of media advertising, however, the taxpayer dollars flowing to their companies were not disclosed to audiences.
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.” Federal law authorizes HHS to act through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies to award contracts to public and private entities to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines, and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”
There you have it.
About the Author
I actually had “vaccine confidence” before this chemical stew came along, which chemical stew has destroyed any “vaccine confidence” I once had.