How the Media Lie about Why Parents Don’t Vaccinate

Introduction

When it comes to the topic of vaccines, the mainstream media refuse to do journalism and instead serve the government and pharmaceutical industry by advocating public vaccine policy. The fulfillment of this propaganda function inevitably requires the media to lie about why many parents are choosing not to strictly comply with the routine childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The goal of public vaccine policy is to persuade, intimidate, or coerce parents into compliance to ensure high vaccination rates. The pursuit of that goal is incompatible with the very different goal of empowering parents with the knowledge they need to exercise their right to informed consent.

The mainstream media, for their part, are serving to manufacture consent for government policy, which is likewise incompatible with the goal of doing journalism.[1] For public health officials or the media to acknowledge the countless legitimate concerns that lead parents to make the rational decision not to strictly follow the CDC’s recommendations would undermine the goal of manufacturing consent for government policy. Consequently, those legitimate concerns must be ignored and alternative explanations for their non-compliance invented.

A useful case study for illustrating this function of the media is provided by a recent New York Times article titled “How Anti-Vaccine Sentiment Took Hold in the United States”, in which health reporter Jan Hoffman purports to explain the phenomenon labelled “vaccine hesitancy”.[2] Typifying the media’s role, Hoffman repeats all the usual propaganda talking points to demonize non-compliant parents, thereby deflecting attention from the many legitimate concerns parents have about public vaccine policy.

There are two possible explanations for this typical behavior among mainstream journalists. One is that this is intentional, and journalists deceive the public willfully, such as by withholding certain truths that don’t conform to the narrative they’ve chosen to tell. The other is that they are themselves misinformed and convinced of their own propaganda. In Hoffman’s case, as in most others, there is evidence of both, and her recent New York Times article is useful for demonstrating how the greatest purveyors of misinformation about vaccines are not the “anti-vaxxers” but the government and mainstream media.

Notably, Hoffman refrains from applying the usual derogatory label “anti-vaxxers” to dissenting parents and policy critics, but her lack of objectivity is still obvious in her characterizations. As she tells it, the “anti-vaccination movement” is a growing threat to public health, and the reason parents are choosing not to vaccinate is because they persist in false beliefs about vaccines despite the best efforts of public health officials, medical experts, and the media to properly inform them.

The truth is that an increasing number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate because they recognize that public vaccine policy poses a serious threat to both our health and our liberty. They are informed and aware of the systemic biases that exist within the institutions of government, pharmaceutical medicine, and the media. They understand that they are being lied to about what science tells us about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. And the simple explanation for why the full might of government, industry, and media propaganda is failing to persuade them into compliance is the systematic refusal of these establishments to address their legitimate concerns.

That this is so is easily demonstrated by critically examining Hoffman’s New York Times article, which is not journalism but a shameless work of propaganda intended to deceive the public in dutiful service to the state.

Senselessly Demonizing “Anti-Vaccine” Parents

The New York Times article begins by characterizing parents who choose not to vaccinate strictly according to the CDC’s routine childhood schedule as a threat to society, which Hoffman accomplishes by reminding that the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared “vaccine hesitancy” to be “one of the top threats to global health.”

We’re also told that the growth of the “vaccine resistance movement” is “a byproduct of an internet humming with rumor and misinformation”.

Additionally, parents are distrustful of the pharmaceutical industry and have “an infatuation with celebrities” so that they tend to believe “anti-immunization statements” made by people in the entertainment industry, “like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey and Alicia Silverstone” or “the rapper Kevin Gates”.

Hoffman also throws in the name “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” as a “celebrity” personality rather than as an environmental attorney and activist who has successfully litigated against polluting industries and was once named among a list of “Heroes for the Planet” by TIME magazine.[3] Kennedy, whose father Robert F. Kennedy and uncle John F. Kennedy were both assassinated, is also the founder of the organization Children’s Health Defense, which is dedicated to raising awareness about the health threat posed by environmental toxins and to taking action—including litigation—to protect children from that threat.[4]

Following that, Hoffman associates “anti-vaccine sentiment” with “the Trump administration’s anti-science rhetoric” and quotes “infectious disease expert” Dr. Paul Offit describing policy dissenters and critics as people who reject science and instead “simply declare” their “own truth”.

Hoffman attempts to portray her assessment as objective and unshallow by writing, “Labeling resisters with one dismissive stereotype would be wrongheaded.” Quoting a sociologist “who studies vaccine-resistant families”, she cautions that it would be “an easy trope” to “just say that these parents are ignorant or selfish”. So Hoffman avoids the dismissive label “anti-vaxxer” and says that the “disparate groups” of “resisters” include “anti-government libertarians, apostles of the all-natural and parents who believe that doctors should not dictate medical decisions about children.”

In other words, dissenting parents tend to believe that people should not commit aggression against each other. They recognize the harmful impact of environmental toxins on societal health and are concerned about how this is contributing to the epidemic rates of chronic diseases among children. They understand that the body has an innate capability to fight off infections and heal itself. And they insist on thinking for themselves and being involved in any decisions related to their children’s health.

Further into the article, Hoffman elaborates: “Libertarianism also courses through vaccine hesitation, with parents who assert that government should not be able to tell them what to put in their bodies—a position often marketed as ‘the right to choose.’”

In other words, these parents value their right to informed consent, which has been recognized as one of the most fundamental ethics in medicine since the end of World War II and the Nazi experimentation upon unwilling human subjects. They recognize the threat posed to this fundamental human right by the government of the United States, which has committed the same crime against humanity, such as when the Public Health Service in 1932 experimented upon black men by deliberately denying them treatment for the bacteria that causes syphilis against their knowledge in order to research disease progression. Policy dissenters and critics recognize that compelling parents to vaccinate their children through deception or coercion is an equally barbaric violation of their right to make an informed choice.[5]

Since believing in non-aggression, respecting nature, and valuing the right to informed consent are all unassailably positive character traits, Hoffman lazily and mindlessly demonizes parents who hold such views by associating them with a belief in “conspiracy theories”. To that end, she quotes the director of the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Salmon, doing just that.

She then quotes Salmon saying that people who don’t like the government ordering them what to do and who “prefer to believe they can control their health” are rattled by the fact that “many childhood vaccines are not voluntary”.

Of course, it is obviously true that individuals can to a very great extent control their own health, but since the purpose here is to demonize, the idea is ridiculed as though merely a controversial or absurd belief and not simple common sense.

Notice also that we are supposed to unquestioningly accept the idea that a medical procedure is being routinely conducted on children without the voluntary consent of their parents. Uniquely with the practice of vaccination, we are not supposed to believe in the right to informed consent.

Continuing, Hoffman cites a study in which researchers found that the “most resistant” parents highly valued “purity (‘my body is a temple’) and liberty (‘I want to make my child’s health care decisions’).” Additionally, such parents were less likely to value “deference to authority”.[6]

Hoffman suggests that parents should just trust “experts in medical decision-making” who say that “most people are notoriously poor at assessing risk”. In the context of criticizing Donald Trump for lending “support” to “the anti-vaccination movement”, she laments that patients have since “asserted autonomy, brandishing internet printouts at doctors. Shared decision-making became the model of doctor-patient engagement.” She further laments that, “Pediatricians offered to stagger vaccine schedules. Some were even flexible about vaccinations altogether.” The proper role of pediatricians, Hoffman paraphrases Dr. Salmon as saying, is that of “front-line persuaders”.

The underlying message is that parents should not try to make their own choices about childhood vaccinations and instead place their blind faith in “experts” who know better what’s in their child’s best interests. Additionally, doctors should not respect the parental right to informed consent and instead insist that parents comply strictly with the CDC’s schedule. Rather than providing parents with the knowledge they need to be able to make their own informed choice, doctors should limit their role to providing parents only with information designed to persuade them into strict compliance with the government’s diktats.

In sum, according the New York Times, parents belonging to the “vaccine resistance movement” pose a threat to society because they are ideological extremists who are especially incapable of making good medical decisions since they reject science and instead choose to believe “conspiracy theories” and “misinformation” about vaccines.

The problem with this characterization—apart from the transparent bias in dismissing people as being dangerously irrational because they think for themselves and hold correct views about liberty and personal responsibility—is that it’s a demonstrable lie. In fact, virtually every aspect of the narrative presented by the New York Times is demonstrably untrue.