We already know that Hollywood is responsible for reviving Andrew Wakefield’s murderous pseudoscience supporting anti-vaccine activists. For example, the movement’s biggest propagandist, Jenny McCarthy, is still publicly employed by the Disney-owned Fox Broadcasting Company.
But in his new book, Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow exposes that it’s not just the entertainment media, but also the news media at NBC that is attempting to promulgate anti-vaccine propaganda.
Farrow alleges that while co-hosting a charity concert promoting vaccination, he filmed an interview with No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani and asked her about vaccination.
“She said she supported vaccines and advised people to talk to their doctors,” Farrow writes. But someone at NBC News sent Stefani’s camp an interview transcript — such “prior review” is a known form of journalistic malfeasance — and they asked the network to selectively edit the interview “to make it sound like she was ambivalent to negative on the vaccine front.” Even more egregious, the network wished to comply, with an MSNBC producer asking Farrow to make the edits.
Farrow pushed back, leading MSNBC president Phil Griffin to berate Farrow in his office.
“There are literally kids dying over this issue,” Farrow recalls telling Griffin. “She’s a famous person. Since when do we send transcripts of interviews outside the building anyway?”
“Who cares?” Griffin responded, explaining that he’d rather violate basic journalistic ethics and promulgate potentially lethal pseudoscience than risk losing Stefani’s partnership and associated corporate sponsors.
Even after Griffin’s adamant demands that Farrow air the deceptive edit, Farrow stood his ground at least so far as to kill the clip entirely. He instead reproduced the package into a “five-minute clip of small talk.”
Now Farrow is out at NBC News, and Griffin still reigns supreme.
