Would the dice be loaded? Would global information now be controlled by a few planetary industrial groups? The question is raised with each election, with each crisis, in the United States, in France, and elsewhere. Social networks and lobbies have taken control of our brains.
Digital social media has gradually replaced local newspapers to inform citizens. With Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other LinkedIn platforms, journalistic information freely mixes with communication, advertising, propaganda, and… lies. In this formless mass, each user finds what they are looking for.
In just a few years, journalistic information (that which is verified, cross-referenced, classified, and hierarchized) has given way to this monstrous mass of information managed by powerful algorithms that decide what can or cannot be published.
A Global Disinformation Enterprise
How can one make sense of it? How to sort truth from falsehood? The whole question is: who decides the truth? If I say “God exists”, is that a fake news? And who can verify? What fact-checking can provide the answer? Nobody, obviously, since it’s a matter of belief. Believing is not knowing.
The health crisis is exemplary of the gigantic disinformation campaign led for two years by major media outlets who, with rare exceptions, categorically assert that vaccines designed to combat Covid-19 are safe. In doing so, they reinforce the health policies of states that impose vaccination under constraint. Media, States: same battle!
But why do all the world’s media say the same thing at the same moment about the same subjects? Why do they claim vaccines are safe and that one must get injected two, then three, then four doses, perhaps more? Why do authorities in all countries follow the same blind logic? Why is there no possible scientific controversy on television or in newspapers to allow debate and balance information?
It’s simple: because the world’s major media are in the hands of a few very powerful industrial and financial groups, relayed by well-compensated lobbies.
These major press organizations and global digital enterprises have decided to group together to form an immense cartel aimed at controlling information. They gathered in 2019 within the Trusted News Initiative (TNI) “to protect the public and users against what they consider to be disinformation, particularly in ‘high-risk’ periods like elections.” But also like managing the health crisis or the war in Ukraine.
Combating “Dangerous Lies”!
To be clear, the TNI published a press release with a crystal-clear title: “TNI Tackles Dangerous Vaccine Disinformation.” Specifying: “TNI partners will alert each other in case of disinformation presenting an imminent vital threat, so that targeted content can be quickly reviewed by platform managers, while publishers will ensure they do not unwittingly spread dangerous lies.”
In other words, all partners consult to track and eliminate “anti-vaccine” false information from their respective platforms.
The partners? The major press agencies that supply all the world’s newsrooms: Agence France Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), Reuters, but also BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Microsoft, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, and The Washington Post.
The case of Reuters is particularly interesting. Bought in 2007 by the Canadian group Thomson Financial, the international press agency, which became Thomson Reuters Corps, was presided over by James C. Smith from 2012 to 2020. He currently directs the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charitable organization based in London.
However, James C. Smith has also been a member of Pfizer Inc.’s board of directors since June 26, 2014. And he was one of the laboratory’s first investors. It’s worth noting that Mr. Smith is also a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and numerous international advisory boards.
The most serious issue is not that Reuters continues to promote Pfizer’s pharmaceutical products, but that it intends, like its other TNI partners, to silence those who disagree with them.
How? By practicing fact-checking, which in itself is not reprehensible. But especially by practicing large-scale censorship.
Censoring Unwelcome Information
Once again, digital giants have associated to fight against (supposed) disinformation on their sites. And to fight disinformation, nothing works better than censoring unwelcome information by simply removing it, without informing the author. And when information seems too radical, the account holder is banned, fired, eliminated. “Your publication did not meet our community standards!”
Gradually, an “official truth” is being established – one decided by a small group of industrialists who impose their vision of the world. A world shaped exclusively around their gigantic profits.
Digital mass communication media and their algorithms are so powerful that they have taken control of ideas and opinions worldwide by arbitrarily deciding what is true and what is false.
To fight disinformation, social networks and major media have decided to attack “fake news” concerning Covid-19 and vaccines. But the “verifiers” do not necessarily have the required competence and talent to distinguish truth from falsehood in scientific matters. It is often fact-checking in the style of Pfizer, Moderna, and others.
A New Dogma, a New Religion
Are Covid-19 vaccines truly safe? Asking the question and, above all, allowing experts to answer, is to participate in healthy scientific controversy – the kind that advances the world and distances it from obscurantism. It’s about enlightening the general public on highly technical subjects to allow them to form an opinion by evaluating various arguments.
But since the beginning of the pandemic in late 2019, it’s clear that the debate is biased. Digital giants, undoubtedly unaccustomed to contradictory debate, have taken sides for vaccines, which they categorically affirm are both effective and safe. It’s a dogma, a truth revealed by Big Pharma. Consequently, they impose their viewpoint by censoring posts they consider “inappropriate” on digital social media, restricting or closing the accounts of seditious internet users.
Converted to this new religion, health authorities in all countries, at least in Europe, have decided to vaccinate populations through constraint.
Media worldwide have adhered to this vision imposed by massive global industrial groups. They have even decided to hunt down false information that might challenge their own certainties and total omniscience.
The Blindness of Scientists
On May 16, 2022, frenchdailynews.com published an article titled “Vaccines and Boosters Becoming Less Effective and More Harmful”. Based on several studies, we could write that cardiovascular conditions directly linked to mRNA vaccine side effects are sharply increasing.
At the end of the article, Jean-Marc Sabatier explained why vaccines are harmful: “Repeated vaccine injections of the same antigen, whatever it may be, (here the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 produced by our cells following mRNA injection), at levels exceeding the ‘critical’ threshold, inevitably lead to disruption of innate immunity and the potential emergence of autoimmune disorders. Thus, for current anti-Covid-19 vaccines, there are at least three solid scientific reasons to avoid multiple vaccine injections.
- The direct and harmful action of the Spike protein on innate immunity (via the overactivated renin-angiotensin system),
- The repetition of vaccine injections which also disrupts the host’s innate immunity,
- The potential direct toxicity of lipid nanoparticles or adjuvants used in these vaccines.
According to Sabatier, SARS-CoV-2 – via the Spike protein – causes blood coagulation disorders, including thrombocytopenia (decrease in blood platelets that help blood clot). This is due to a phenomenon called hemophagocytosis that occurs during macrophage activation syndrome induced by the virus or vaccine Spike protein. Simultaneously, hyper-reactive macrophages produce pro-inflammatory cytokines leading to blood platelet recruitment causing thromboses.
How to explain this blindness of scientists and doctors, and should we be concerned? Jean-Marc Sabatier’s response: “In my opinion, many doctors do not ask questions and rely on recommendations issued by our health authorities, while health authorities follow state directives that unconditionally promote vaccination (and boosters) of the population. This genuinely endangers our health, and there is fear that we are heading towards a health catastrophe in the near future. The precautionary principle is not being applied today, and we are moving towards a wall… The shock could be violent and it will unfortunately be impossible to go back. The health damages will be irreversible.”
A Shameful Fact-Checking
This warning against vaccines and boosters was highly displeasing. To whom? Particularly to AFP, which did not accept that the sacred official narrative about vaccines be challenged. The Agency, which supplies numerous newspapers worldwide, dedicated a long fact-checking piece to the infodujour article.
We wanted to verify the reliability of these lesson-givers. To understand whether the fact-checking by AFP Factuel (now untraceable) constitutes disinformation regarding our article. Because to give lessons to a scientist of Jean-Marc Sabatier’s caliber (he is a doctor in Cell Biology and Microbiology, among other credentials) and catch him off-guard in his professional domain, one must be sufficiently robust and solidly equipped in matters of the infinitesimally small to find the right experts. Is this true of our fact-checker, who, incidentally, is graduated in history? One can doubt this, given the responses Jean-Marc Sabatier provides here.
We certainly would not have responded to the too numerous know-it-alls surrounding us if, in this sad affair, the life and health of ourselves and our loved ones were not at stake. For nearly two years, thousands of men, women, and young people have been suddenly struck by stroke, heart attack, vision disorders, or sudden death on a football field or ski slope. Fault of the vaccines? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the question deserves to be asked and debated.
“The world is dangerous to live in,” said Albert Einstein, “not so much because of those who do evil, but because of those who watch and let it happen.”
We will not let this happen. Our profession as journalists and scientists requires us to publish information about anti-Covid-19 vaccines, even – and perhaps especially – when they are disturbing.
After thoroughly verifying them, obviously.
The Business of Subsidized Information
By transitioning from the artisanal era to the industrial era, the information business has attracted industrialists of all kinds, more concerned with influence and reputation than journalistic ethics.
In France, most media belong to industrial or financial groups, and their concentration poses serious problems in terms of press plurality and therefore democracy.
To such an extent that the President of the Republic requested a report on disinformation and conspiracy theories from sociologist Gérald Bronner. Titled “Enlightenment in the Digital Era,” this document developed by a commission of university professors, lawyers, and journalists was submitted to Emmanuel Macron on January 11.
The government also adopted a law in 2018 regarding information manipulation during electoral periods and created, a few months ago, an agency called Viginum to protect democratic debate from external intrusions.
The Senate, for its part, created an investigative commission to assess the impact of press concentrations on democracy. The major press leaders were heard one after another in early January 2022. It is true that these press leaders are, above all, major industrialists or financiers (whose activity depends on state orders for many of them) who bought newspapers (print, audio-visual, internet) to establish their reputation.
Should we believe everything written in newspapers, heard on the radio, seen on television? The question of media education is raised each year during Press Week at schools.
The objective is to train young people to discern truth from falsehood, to develop critical thinking, to become responsible cyber-citizens.
Let’s recall that the French press is largely subsidized by the State. The amount of public aid amounts to approximately 400 million euros per year. An essential windfall for press survival, while simultaneously being a barely disguised state tutelage over the editorial line and thus the information of these generously subsidized publications.
If the press is no longer a counter-power, it has therefore become a relay of power. This was quite useful during the health crisis. It is just as useful during conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Who can doubt it?
[Excerpt from the book “Covid-19: The Shipwreck of Science” by Marcel GAY with the complicity of Jean-Marc Sabatier (Amazon)].