HealthMatters
The Publicis Groupe — one of many world’s largest PR companies1 that represents main firms throughout the expertise, pharmaceutical and banking industries — not too long ago agreed to pay a $350 million settlement over claims that its false and deceptive advertising contributed to the opioid epidemic.
Earlier court docket instances demonstrated how Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, systematically misled medical doctors concerning the drug’s addictiveness to drive up gross sales, leading to an avalanche of opioid habit and subsequent deaths.
Accusations towards Publicis Well being, Purdue’s PR agency, included creating the advertising supplies that satisfied medical doctors to overprescribe the drug, putting unlawful ads for OxyContin within the digital medical data of sufferers, creating coaching supplies for Purdue gross sales reps on fight medical doctors’ objections to the medication, creating methods to counter opioid pointers issued by the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, and creating advertising methods to “humanize” the OxyContin model and counter destructive press about habit dangers.
Whereas $350 million could sound like some huge cash, it’s actually a drop within the bucket when you think about the harm the opioid epidemic has inflicted, and the truth that the cash is being divvied up amongst 50 states. As reported by CNBC:2
“New York will obtain practically $19.2 million from the full settlement, in line with the state’s consent order with Publicis Well being. The very best settlement quantities had been allotted to California, Florida and Texas, which respectively obtained $34.4 million, $24.1 million and $21.6 million.”
All through, Publicis has insisted it did nothing improper; it merely offered a service to its buyer. Publicis additionally doesn’t admit wrongdoing or legal responsibility as a part of the settlement.
Publicis Is A part of the Censorship Community
Publicis, which is now paying its approach out of authorized hassle over false advertising, can also be funding the censorship of reality. Discuss placing its cash the place its mouth is. As detailed in “New Thought Police NewsGuard Is Owned by Large Pharma,” Publicis was the lead investor amongst a bunch of 18 that helped make NewsGuard a actuality. Publicis can also be formally partnered with NewsGuard “to battle the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.”3
Like Publicis, NewsGuard’s major function is to deceive the general public about what’s true and what’s not. It set itself up because the self-appointed international arbiter of what info is “reliable,” based mostly on 9, self-described “credibility and transparency” components — all of that are completely subjective.
Utilizing these arbitrary “trustworthiness” standards, NewsGuard successfully helps suppress dissenting viewpoints by guiding folks towards industry- and government-backed narratives and away from the whole lot else, irrespective of how legitimate the knowledge could also be.
Working example: In April 2020, NewsGuard declared my website was “pretend information” as a result of we reported that SARS-CoV-2 could have been leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In line with NewsGuard, there was “no proof that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the supply of the outbreak, and genomic proof has discovered that the virus is 96% an identical on the whole-genome degree to a bat coronavirus.”
NewsGuard’s place was in direct battle with revealed scientific proof then, and it’s much more so now. In a January 25, 2024, article4 within the Metropolis Journal, science author, editor and writer Nicholas Wade particulars new proof5 obtained by U.S. Proper to Know (USRTK) that additional strengthens the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was certainly made in a lab.6 For extra particulars on this, try the featured video.
Snopes Is Not an Neutral Truth Checker Both
Whereas we’re on the subject of reality checks confirmed improper, Snopes.com is one other “reality checking” website that repeatedly claimed the COVID lab leak concept was full bunk. Curiously, in late February 2023, Snopes reality checker David Emery abruptly tried to backtrack, claiming that “Snopes didn’t say the lab leak concept couldn’t be true,” and challenged folks to current an occasion the place Snopes had made that declare.7
As famous by Matt Orfalea at Censored Information:8
“The boastful ignorance of this Snopes fact-checker is really one thing to behold … Not solely did Snopes say the lab leak concept couldn’t be true, however Snopes did so repeatedly in not less than 9 separate ‘fact-check’ articles by 4 different Snopes ‘fact-checkers,’9 together with the founding father of Snopes! And not less than one of many ‘fact-checks’ was shared by Emery himself on Twitter.”
Orfalea goes by means of them one after the other in his article. As beforehand detailed, Snopes is NOT a reality checker to be taken critically. Whereas some nonetheless consider Snopes will present unbiased suggestions on broadly circulated tales, the reality is, it too merely regurgitates {industry} speaking factors with out crucial analyses of any variety.
How BrandGuard Can Bankrupt Alt Media
Getting again to NewsGuard, as dangerous as it might be to obtain a poor NewsGuard ranking, that’s not the top of your troubles in case you’re within the various media house, as a result of NewsGuard additionally has a software referred to as BrandGuard that sends out “exclusion lists” to advertisers. For those who’re on that listing, it means you’re a reputational legal responsibility to the advertiser.
By getting advertisers to drag its advertisements from “problematic” media shops, NewsGuard is immediately contributing to the elimination of other media, as few can afford to maintain going with out the income stream that advertisers present.
The scope of this various media suppression is bigger than most understand, and that’s once more in no small measure because of Publicis, which has built-in BrandGuard into its fleet of internet marketing subsidiaries. As reported by investigative journalist Lee Fang:10
“The query of conflicts arises as a result of Publicis represents a spread of company and authorities shoppers, together with Pfizer – whose COVID vaccine has been questioned by some information shops which have obtained low scores …
NewsGuard has confronted mounting criticism that reasonably than serving as a impartial public service towards on-line propaganda, it as a substitute acts as an opaque proxy for its authorities and company shoppers to stifle views that merely run counter to their very own pursuits.
The criticism finds help in inner paperwork, such because the NewsGuard proposal to Twitter, which this reporter obtained throughout Twitter Information reporting final 12 months, in addition to in authorities data and discussions with impartial media websites focused by the startup.”
Consortium Information Sues NewsGuard
One media website focused by NewsGuard is Consortium Information, based by Polk Award-winning investigative journalist Robert Parry in 1995. In 2023, NewsGuard tagged Consortium Information with a cautionary label, advising readers, advertisers and information aggregation portals to “proceed with warning” as a result of the positioning had “revealed false claims concerning the Ukraine-Russia warfare.”
In response, Consortium Information sued NewsGuard for First Modification violations and defamation.11 In an amended grievance, Consortium Information legal professional Bruce Afran additionally added the accusation that NewsGuard is suppressing international coverage dissent on the behest of the U.S. army. As reported by Fang:12
“… NewsGuard … Consortium claims, is hardly a disinterested fact-checker due to federal affect over it. NewsGuard connected the label after urgent Consortium for retractions or corrections to 6 articles revealed on the positioning.
These information articles handled broadly reported claims about neo-Nazi parts within the Ukrainian army and U.S. affect over the nation – points substantiated by different credible media shops.
After Consortium editors refused to take away the reporting and supplied an in depth rebuttal, your complete website obtained a misinformation label, encompassing over 20,000 articles and movies revealed by the outlet because it was based in 1995.
The left-wing information website believes the label was a part of a pay-for-censorship scheme. It notes that Consortium Information was focused after NewsGuard obtained a $749,387 Protection Division contract in 2021 to establish ‘false narratives’ referring to the warfare between Ukraine and Russia, in addition to different types of international affect …
‘There’s a terrific hazard in being maligned this fashion,’ Afran continued. ‘The federal government can’t evade the Structure by hiring a non-public social gathering.’”
Publicis Is A part of the Nice Reset Cabal
Publicis can also be a associate of the World Financial Discussion board, which is main the decision for a Nice Reset. In actual fact, as detailed in “The Net of Gamers Making an attempt to Silence Reality,” Publicis seems to be coordinating the worldwide effort to suppress info that runs counter to the technocratic narrative about COVID-19, its origin, prevention and therapy — suppression and censorship that has been repeatedly geared toward this web site particularly.
Publicis is a part of an infinite community that features worldwide drug firms, reality checkers and “credibility raters” like NewsGuard, Google and different search engines like google and yahoo, Microsoft, antivirus software program firms like Pattern Micro, public libraries, colleges, the banking {industry}, the U.S. State Division and Division of Protection, the World Well being Group and the World Financial Discussion board.
Thoughts you, this isn’t a complete assessment of hyperlinks. It’s merely a sampling of entities to provide you an thought of the breadth of connections, which when taken collectively clarify how sure views — reminiscent of details about COVID-19 and vaccines — may be so successfully erased.
To grasp the ability that PR firms reminiscent of Publicis wield, you additionally want to understand that PR has, by and huge, changed the free press. In a long time previous, pro-industry promoting stood in stark distinction to the free press, which might incessantly expose issues with merchandise and industries, thereby serving as a counterbalance to {industry} propaganda.
Right now, the one counterbalance we have now to PR, authorities propaganda and the mainstream press, is various media, which NewsGuard is now undermining.
Publicis Is an Arm of Notoriously Untruthful Industries
What Publicis and NewsGuard name “misinformation” is solely info that contradicts the propaganda being put out by the drug {industry}. Historical past tells us firms pushed by revenue curiosity make poor reality tellers, as destructive info will clearly have a detrimental affect on their backside line. So, they lie and obfuscate for so long as they’ll get away with it. It’s that straightforward.
Public relations companies like Publicis are mere arms of those notoriously untruthful industries. They do their bidding as a result of that’s what they’re paid to do. To assume that Large Pharma and paid propagandists are searching for anybody however themselves is dangerously naïve.
It’s ironic within the excessive to listen to Publicis speak about the necessity to shield the general public from misinformation that may put their well being in danger, all whereas having performed a vital function in one of many deadliest well being care schemes involving lies and deceit — the promotion of opioids as nonaddictive.
In line with The Nice Reset plan, we’re in for unprecedented adjustments — adjustments few if any would willingly conform to. That’s why dissenters have to be silenced. The plan can simply get pushed off-track if the general public doesn’t go alongside, and that’s exactly what can save us.
We should expose the machinations that enable this agenda to be pushed ahead. A part of that publicity is wanting on the function of huge PR firms like Publicis, which helps affect the general public thoughts in order that the technocrats can keep their lies till it is too late to do something about it.
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