The Media is The Message > Muzzled Reporter Unleashed - Is Big Pharma Controlling The News?

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Rogue ex-Fox 26 reporter accuses station of bias &

self-censorship to please advertisers

16 Jun, 2021 09:00

Screenshot © YouTube / Project Veritas

Ivory Hecker, who went viral after accusing her now-former employer Fox 26 of “muzzling” her, has presented the records she kept to make the case of entrenched “corruption” at the news station.

Hecker, who was suspended and later fired by the Houston affiliate of Fox News after her Monday live report stunt, was interviewed by Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe. Her story, however, fell short of the smoking gun that some viewers expected. The substance of her allegations was that Fox 26 was putting profits and other corporate interests before the interests of its viewers.

I suspect she consulted with a lawyer and came to the realization that she couldn't say a thing like - 'the leadership of Fox26 was heavily influenced by Big Pharma', without getting sued into oblivion. 

As a conspiracy theorist, I can't help but think that Big Pharma spent a fortune hiding stories about Hydroxychloroquine. Big Pharma made incredible fortunes on their various vaccines, most of which had some dreadful side effects for some people. Hydroxychloroquine is off-patent and cheap. It could potentially have saved millions of lives, but that's not what Big Pharma is about - millions of dollars, not lives.

It will be interesting to see if Ivory ever gets another reporting job, or if the entire industry turns against her. If there is a news network interested in the unbridled truth, she should be picked up in a flash. However, I don't see that happening.

Video 17:27

One part of her argument was a recording confirming the station’s refusal to cover bitcoin in its five o’clock segment. Assistant News Director Lee Meier said it was her choice not to pursue the story because “Bitcoin for poor African-American audience at five – it’s probably not going to play.” Meier’s words seem to be an example of how the editorial decision-making process works based on who watches the early evening news.

A large portion of the interview was dedicated to the coverage of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-malaria drug that was at one point considered a promising treatment for Covid-19, and became a hot political topic in the US after then-President Donald Trump endorsed it.

Among other things, Trump shared a video of a controversial HCQ enthusiast, Houston-based doctor and pastor Stella Immanuel. After going viral, her videos were suppressed by social media as Covid-19 misinformation.

Hecker says she was harshly reprimanded by management for sharing a clip from an interview with Dr. Joseph Varon, the chief of critical care at UMMC Houston, which her crew filmed while doing a story for Fox 26. In it, Varon said that HCQ was “politicized up to the wazoo,” and that he used the drug in the treatment of Covid-19 patients “with good success.”

Fox 26 Vice President and News Director Susan Schiller told Hecker to “cease and desist posting” about HCQ and said she “failed as a reporter to not know more” about the drug beforehand, according to a recorded conversation, which was played during the Project Veritas interview. The journalist rejected the accusation, citing an earlier piece she did about the controversy surrounding Dr. Immanuel. The criticism was apparently motivated by potential negative reactions to the post from senior management at Fox News.

Project Veritas also played some of its own secret recordings of Fox 26 employees, confirming that the station sold advertising time to the CDC. O’Keefe insinuated that Fox subjected its news reporting on health issues and Covid-19 to the considerations of advertisers, including vaccine producers, but failed to produce solid proof. The closest thing to an admission was a remark that “a lot of stuff can happen,” which was made by a sales coordinator after she was asked if the Ad Council could call and ask not to run “any anti-vax stories” as a precondition for buying some spots.

Hecker accused Fox News of enforcing “the corporate narrative” and failing its viewers and the principles of journalism, which amounts to “corruption” of the profession. Fox 26 said it “adheres to the highest editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality” and called the journalist “a disgruntled former employee seeking publicity by promoting a false narrative produced through selective editing and misrepresentation.” Asked about her motive for turning on Fox, Hecker said she wanted to protect viewers from corporate deception.

US Big Pharma Allowed to Continue Hiding ‘Intimidating’ Price Info from Customers in TV Ads

Corruption is Everywhere - While this may not technically fit the definition of corruption, what do you call it when Congress puts the profits of lobbyists over the welfare of the people they are supposed to be serving?

© Pixabay / TBIT

A federal judge has stepped in to save drug companies from a new rule that would have forced them to disclose drug prices in TV ads, ruling that the Department of Health and Human Services lacks authority over the industry.

“No matter how vexing the problem of spiraling drug costs may be, [Health and Human Services] cannot do more than what Congress has authorized,” US District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday, blocking the order, which was due to go into effect on Tuesday.

Amgen, Merck, and Eli Lilly, three of the largest US drug companies, and the Association of National Advertisers filed the lawsuit last month, claiming HHS lacked the legal authority to enforce the rule, which would have mandated that pharmaceutical ads display the list price of a 30-day supply of any drug covered under Medicare or Medicaid costing more than $35. The suit also claimed the order violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, but Mehta’s ruling didn’t address that argument.

Drug companies complained the rule would “confuse” and “intimidate” patients because insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid, negotiate discounts with drug companies, meaning the list price, often much higher, could cause sticker shock. But that argument got little sympathy from HHS secretary Alex Azar, who told the companies when he announced the rule in May:

If you’re ashamed of your drug prices,

change your drug prices. It’s that simple.

The US is one of only two countries worldwide where direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs is legal, and it is a massive market – $5.2 billion in 2016, according to CBS. According to HHS, the 10 most-advertised drugs have list prices from $488 to $16,938 per month or for a typical therapeutic course, numbers that would surely terrify the average consumer. 

President Donald Trump has made lowering the costs of prescription drugs one of his signature domestic issues, and the HHS rule was designed to bring those costs down, under the reasoning that pharmaceutical companies would be so embarrassed to float those gargantuan numbers on their ads that they’d cut the prices voluntarily.

Much of pharmaceutical advertising remains TV-based and the pharmaceutical industry has argued that it should be allowed to include pricing information on a dedicated website named in the ad. While it might seem absurd to expect consumers to drop everything and open their web browsers after seeing a TV ad they weren’t looking for in the first place, drug companies’ influence in Congress – they spent $4.1 billion on lobbying over the last 20 years, according to OpenSecrets.org, more than any other industry – means they tend to get what they want.

And the people have to pay the exorbitant profits of big pharma as well as the lobbying money that goes into the pockets of the country's lawmakers. As if they weren't already paying them enough.

Denmark Publishes Reduced Benefits to Dissuade Asylum Seekers

Denmark, the only EU country that's awake!

In response to human traffickers publishing information about lucrative refugee benefits in EU countries, the Danish government plans to launch a public campaign designed to dissuade asylum seekers from heading to Copenhagen.

Integration Minister Inger Støjberg said earlier this week she is going to run advertisements in foreign newspapers, which will include information deterring refugees from coming to Denmark.

The announcement was made shortly after Denmark's Jyllands-Posten daily published a document people traffickers use to help asylum seekers compare different levels of welfare benefits in Europe.

According to the Local, the document revealed monthly waiting times for family reunification and the amount of monthly benefits available to refugees in prosperous EU nations, including Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

“Of course, living conditions – including finances – is something asylum seekers are looking for. Why else would human smugglers have developed and published this systematic review of countries, including Denmark, on a website where they provide services based on this kind of information,” Støjberg wrote in a Facebook post that featured a screenshot of the document.

Benefits Cut
The integration minister said the document justified the government's decision to cut benefits for refugees by up to 45 percent. 

“There is something strange about the fact that a refugee would travel through several countries before ending up in Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Germany,” Minister Støjberg told DR TV, according to the Local.

In an attempt to counter the Danish refugee deluge, special ads will be introduced in newspapers, featuring “factual information” on the benefits, as well as details of the new restrictions the government plans to enact. “That kind of information spreads very quickly,” the minister said. She added the campaign could be potentially run in countries such as Turkey and “other places that human smugglers keep an eye on.”

Last week, a similar idea was voiced by the Danish People’s Party (part of the new coalition governing the country), which suggested launching a video campaign dissuading asylum seekers from coming. But the proposal came under fire, leading Venstre spokesman Jakob Ellemann-Jensen to dismiss the idea as “un-Danish," the Local reported.

Asylum seekers doubled
Denmark saw its asylum numbers almost double last year, with 14,815 people arriving in 2014 compared to 7,557 in 2013. The number of asylum seekers had increased from 6,184 in 2012 to 7,557 in 2013, according to the Danish Immigration Service.