Click here to support Brasscheck

What is the biggest problem facing the U.S. and the health of its people

The total collapse of the integrity of the news media.

It’s always been bad, but we are literally at the point now where there is no distinction between the PR operations of the pharamaceutical industry and the U.S. news media.

Gavin de Becker, author of the book “The Gift of Fear” explains in detail using CV as the case study.

The complete transcript of De Becker’s interview

Gavin de Becker 

I’m sure you observe, as I do, how broken the mainstream media is at the moment in that regard. Where they should be the people asking Albert Borla, or any pharma company, a thousand questions, you know, ‘what about this? How about the trials? Is this long enough?’ They should be the people asking presidents and other politicians the tough questions, and that has to my view, literally evaporated in America.

The catch out of powerful people that the media was for most of my life and for much of your career, I’m a little bit older, seems to have  died on the vine; it’s just gone. And I think it is probably at the center of the – I’ll say differently. It is probably the single problem that has most allowed the erosion of public trust, and the erosion of confidence in government agencies. Because nobody’s holding them to account at all.

I’ll give you a fast example NIAID at the National Institute of Health, which is run by Fauci for – he’s been there for 50 something years. When they’re asked for documents these days, emails and what have you, we get redacted documents. This is not the CIA we’re talking about. These are the people who develop and ultimately approve and push through medical products that people take.

And the public may not be aware, but 25% of the products that are approved by the FDA are later recalled. So approval by the FDA does not mean ‘safe’. And it does not mean effective in all circumstances. And I’m raising it here with somebody who has also raised it, by the way, I know from your work. But not that I’m interviewing you, but do you see what I’m talking about, about the loss of that fourth estate, the media, in America?

Megyn Kelly 

100% And you raise the issue of COVID, and that’s the most illustrative right now. Because it’s one thing when they don’t want to hold Biden to account because most of the media’s left. So they give him a pass on a lot of the things. And they were very active ‘democracy dies in darkness’ when Trump was in the office, right? Like ‘okay, we’re finally going to fulfill our obligation to hold the powerful to account’ but in such an unfair, one sided way with him.

But the COVID example is the best because that’s something where, okay, public health, and private companies, big pharma – no one’s supposed to be on their side – although they are. The media is corrupted. RFK pointed this out in his book. They all take ad dollars from Pfizer and Big Pharma. And they were like sycophants when it came to any messaging we got from Pfizer, or Moderna, or Fauci, or Rochelle Walensky, it just had to be accepted as true. Otherwise, you would be censored. You wouldn’t even make air on a place like CNN. Online it would be censored.

And it’s gotten so bad that you have somebody like an RFK Jr, who came on our show, labeled as a nut. I mean, he’s literally number two on the so-called ‘disinformation dozen’ that the White House put out. The White House – that’s government – trying to silence his speech by pressuring social media not to give this guy a forum. And we took a deep dive into his claims in that book and otherwise, and found, he’s right. RFK Jr., the stuff he’s writing about is well supported. Not to endorse every single line he printed. But he is not a disinformation purveyor.

And so the media rather than just saying, ‘hey, well, let me figure it out for myself, let me do my audience a service of like, taking a look at that’ just marches like lemmings to the beat of whatever – I don’t even know who calls the shots. I think it’s their left wing instincts of getting patted on the head, being good boys and girls, wearing their n95s, getting their 5000 booster shots and saying, you know, they’re compliant.

Gavin de Becker 

Yeah, well, I’m with you on that. It is the best example we have. And it’s the most alarming example – all things related to COVID and related to mass vaccination, and now Paxlovid, which the President has talked about, which has commercials that talk about it being used; and unfortunately Paxlovid, according to Fauci himself yesterday in a video I have, but has been mostly removed from the internet, describes his circumstance – which is that he got COVID, he took Paxlovid, he tested negative, negative, negative, then positive, then got COVID again immediately, worse than before – his words, much worse. What does he do? Another round of Paxlovid. ‘I’ll just take another round.’

And my point here isn’t to make fun of, though I’m happy to, make fun of Fauci or the failed product Paxlovid. But rather, where is the media asking questions of both the government and pharma companies about these things? And I want to actually answer the question rather than just posing it. There is something called the Trusted News Initiative. Not sure if you’ve heard of it, many of your viewers won’t have. But it is run by the BBC. And if you go to the BBC website right now, or after our podcast today, and enter Trusted News Initiative, or even do a Google search ‘Trusted News Initiative BBC,’ it’ll take you to the BBC website. And the BBC has organized a group of previously competitive companies – CNN, Facebook, Google, ABC, CBS, Australian Broadcasting, Canadian Broadcasting – who all are acting in lockstep on matters regarding pharmaceuticals, mass vaccination, and COVID.

And they lay it out, they’re not hiding it, and I’m not describing anything that isn’t on their website. They make it clear that their intent and their purpose is to prevent and counter what they call vaccine misinformation. And to draw their information from the CDC, and the World Health Organization. Well, that’s a problem. Having a bunch of companies that used to be competitive all doing the exact same stories at the same time. And I’ll give you two examples.

You mentioned Robert Kennedy. When he was banned for life from Instagram, that story ran – that’s February 11, or 12, in 2021. That story ran hundreds and hundreds of times with the exact same headline ‘Banned for life for misinformation,’ ‘Banned for life for false claims.’ It was a remarkable story. I would say it’s one of the biggest Robert F Kennedy news stories that’s ever been, is the one of him being banned for life from Instagram. Which is owned by Facebook, which is a member of the Trusted News Initiative. Which is run, in part, by a fellow who used to work for Reuters. James C. Smith. He left his job as the head of Reuters to become – oh, interesting – a board member of Pfizer. Go to the Pfizer website, ask for the board, you’ll see him there. And Reuters is in the Trusted News Initiative group.

My point here being, and going to Bobby Kennedy is a fine example. You have – oh, I didn’t give you the other example. ‘Joe Rogan and horse paste.’ ‘Joe Rogan takes horse medicine.’ That was hundreds of newspapers, bam, in the same afternoon, with all the same narrative. That is the Trusted News Initiative. And that is something that is unheard of in our lives, because it used to be that the Washington Post, which is in the Trusted News Initiative, would be competing with the New York Times and BBC and the Guardian and everybody else, who could get this great story where we caught out this public official doing this wrongful act? Not now, not if it has to do with…

Megyn Kelly 

Or embarrass our competitors. Embarrass our competitors for saying the wrong thing.

Gavin de Becker 

You used to, sure. And also, you know, who would get the scoop? Well, there’s no scoop today. There’s no scoop on the pharma companies. There’s no scoop on the administration. There’s no scoop on the World Health Organization, or Fauci, or – I mean look at this. Here’s an interesting note, and I won’t go too far down this rabbit hole. But you have NIAID, Fauci’s organization, has received $350 million dollars directly paid to scientists and employees at NIAID, including Fauci and including Collins, who was the head of NIH.

Now, five years ago, or 2015, that was a big news story. Actually, Reuters covered it. Because at that time it was a much smaller number. But the fact that most Americans don’t know that government employees, whose salaries we pay, can have patent participation in products they develop on our dime. And they get paid directly for those patents by the pharma companies. Additionally, most Americans don’t know that 45% of the budget – you have to go to the FDA website, it’s there – of the FDA is from pharma. Is provided directly by pharma in the form of fees. So this thing is broken. Right? And normally, as in 2015, there’d be news stories about it. I haven’t seen a news story about $350 million being paid directly to government employees.

Megyn Kelly 

To the contrary, that’s one of the things in Bobby Kennedy’s book – ‘disinformation,’ right, quote unquote – that’s in his book that can’t even get a review. No one – none of the mainstream papers, magazines, etc. – would even touch it. They treat him like he’s a virus. And the guy has devoted his life to environmental law, to try to clean up our rivers and our air and so on for our kids. Is that some sort of a sin? He’s a Kennedy, he’s supposed to be beloved by the left and the people who control these organizations. But he mis-stepped, in their view, on childhood vaccines – by the way, fascinating discussion with him on that, too.

And he’s got a lot of science to back up what he’s saying, you know, he’s not making this stuff up. You can disagree with him, but to just dismiss it all as disinformation is dishonest. And he raised all those claims. And suddenly, there’s a total blackout on his book, on him. There are so few people interested in holding these government agencies to account. Instead, they just want us to shut up and take the 15th booster. So it’s like, the only thing that shut it down is the coming midterms. I mean, truly, politics is the only thing that made these people stop forcing this stuff on us.

Gavin de Becker 

Yes, it’s true, all true. And I saw that interview of yours (with Robert F Kennedy), by the way, and it was great on a few levels. Notably that you checked on the things he said, if something was inaccurate or wrong, you said so. If something was accurate, you said so. His book by the way, which I gave a blurb for, and I’ve read now twice, is called The Real Anthony Fauci. And that book was the number one best seller in America for 12 weeks, it was the number two best seller in America for 16 weeks. And not a single review, as you said, and not a single reference in any potent media other than yours. And even when the New York Times did a hatchet job on Bobby, they wouldn’t even name the book.

They also wouldn’t accept ads for the book; they accepted one, and then they wouldn’t accept any more. And so, they had a choice of how to approach it. Either they could question it on the merits of its facts. It’s really a history book. It’s not an opinion book. It’s a history book on the history of vaccines and how they’ve developed. And vaccines, of course, are different. They’re not a uniform product. Some vaccines are worth it, and worth any risks. There’s always risks with anything you inject into yourself. Some are worth it, some are not worth it.

Many have been recalled, we have to remember. The smallpox vaccine that was given to soldiers, people in the military, 40 million doses, and then they stopped because of adverse effects, including myocarditis, et cetera. And we’ve had a bunch of vaccines stopped. And so vaccines are not all equal. And these vaccines now, we’re not getting a true account of them in the media, because nobody’s asking tough questions. And that’s a problem.

Megyn Kelly 

He’s playing the adversarial role that the media used to play, right? He’s like – we need people like RFK, Jr, because he’s not afraid of them. Now, it’s hard for him to get platformed. And just getting that interview on the air was a whole thing for us. I mean, believe me, it wasn’t easy. But we managed to get it out on platforms, it didn’t get pulled from anybody because we were careful. But you know, the truth is, we shouldn’t have to be. We shouldn’t be able to just interview the guy in the way we want to interview him.

But you know, we’re subject to the same things everybody else is, because we’re not subscription based. We’re ad based. And we need these platforms to get out there, Blah, blah, blah, whatever. It’s a whole different thing. But the media used to love being in that adversarial role. You know, ‘you want to tell us it’s totally safe? You want to tell us we need to vaccinate zero to five year olds?’ Okay, based on experimentation or based on the cases of ten children? Some of the more honest physicians are pointing this out online, you know, Vinay, all these people we’ve had on the show. The media used to go nuts over that.

You can’t make a recommendation for all American zero to five year olds based on looking at ten children. This is insane. But anyway, I’m on board with everything you’re saying. I want to pause because I got to squeeze in a break. And there’s so much more for us to go over. Really enjoying my very first live conversation with the one and only Gavin de Becker. By the way, if you want to watch that RFK, Jr. interview, it was a two part interview. It’s episodes 282, 283. I guarantee you, you will find them fascinating.

Click here to support Brasscheck