Sharyl Attkisson

Untouchable Subjects. Fearless, Nonpartisan Reporting.

News

Analysis: The "other side" you don't often see in the news media

The following is an excerpt of a news analysis from Breitbart.com about an interview with CBS journalist Lara Logan.

[Lara] Logan grouped Breitbart News and Fox News as dissident outlets relative to the “mostly liberal” news media landscape. She said:

Visually, anyone who’s ever been to Israel and been to the Wailing Wall has seen that the women have this tiny little spot in front of the wall to pray, and the rest of the wall is for the men. To me, that’s a great representation of the American media, is that in this tiny little corner where the women pray you’ve got Breitbart and Fox News and a few others, and from there on, you have CBS, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Politico, whatever, right? All of them. And that’s a problem for me, because even if it was reversed, if it was vastly mostly on the right, that would also be a problem for me.

My experience has been that the more opinions you have, the more ways that you look at everything in life — everything in life is complicated, everything is gray, right? Nothing is black and white.

News media homogeneity cripples many people’s desire for getting to the truth about political goings on, determined Logan:

How do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage? When they simplify it all [and] there’s no grey. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not. Something’s wrong. For example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. … That’s a distortion of the way things go in real life.

Logan warned:

One ideological perspective on everything never leads to an open free diverse tolerant society. The more opinions and views … of everything that you have, the better off we all are. So creating one ideological position on everything throughout your universities, throughout academia, in school and college, in media, and everywhere else, that’s what concerns me. I don’t have to agree with everybody.

Read the entire article by clicking the link below:

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/02/18/cbss-lara-logan-on-media-bias-unless-you-seek-out-breitbart-you-wont-see-the-other-side/

Watch the interview with Lara Logan on "Mike Drop" podcast (Language Warning):

Analysis: Nine Days in May: Rosenstein and McCabe

Above image: Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe

The following is an excerpt from the news analysis: "Nine Days in May: The Quiet Struggle Between Rosenstein and McCabe. A look at events leading to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller" in Epoch Times by Jeff Carlson

McCabe’s Testimony

During McCabe’s testimony on May 11, an unusual, and underreported, event took place approximately two hours into the hearing. The chair and co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Sen. Mark Warner (D-V.A.), abruptly excused themselves from the hearing to attend a meeting with Rosenstein in an adjoining Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF):

Burr: Before I turn to Senator Cotton, can I say for the members, the vice chair and I have to step out for a meeting that we can’t push off.

Present at this meeting were four individuals: Rosenstein, Burr, Warner and then-acting director of the DOJ’s national security division, Dana Boente, who is now the FBI’s general counsel. Boente was personally appointed by Trump as acting attorney general after Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017. Boente also signed the second renewal of the Carter Page FISA application on April 7, 2017. Rosenstein would sign the third and final FISA renewal on June 29, 2017.

Worth asking: What was so pressing that it required the chair and co-chair of the Senate committee to suddenly depart from the hearing proceedings. NPR reported that “the meeting had been requested prior to Comey’s dismissal and that it was to ‘set up a process for deconfliction’ between the FBI investigation into Russia and the intelligence committee’s own independent probe.”

This explanation appears somewhat inadequate given that the hearing on national security had also been planned prior to Comey’s dismissal. It is not known with any certainty what was discussed, but Rosenstein and Boente felt the meeting was urgent enough to hold it in the midst of McCabe’s testimony. (Continued...)

Read the entire article here at Epoch Times.

Op-Ed: US Government Autism-Vaccine Link Denial is Based on a Malicious Fallacy

Note: Views in this and any other opinion piece that appear on this site do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.sharylattkisson.com and are solely those of the author.

By Jake Crosby, MPH

U.S. public health officials like National Institutes of Health doctor Anthony Fauci deny the vaccine-autism link by repeating disinformation about a seminal autism-vaccine study. That study, published in The Lancet in 1998, examined 12 children treated at London’s Royal Free Hospital Medical School. Most developed adverse symptoms shortly after their routine measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations. 

The study marked the beginning of the first major research undertaking of the autism-vaccine link at an academic institution. Because parents were startled by the findings, and—in my opinion— because there were huge financial implications in terms of possible lawsuits against vaccine makers, the study and its lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, were targeted in a giant campaign to discredit them. Those pursuing this smear campaign, not surprisingly, have ties to vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline.

One of those people was the Head of Medicine at Royal Free Hospital from 1999-2011, Dr. Mark Pepys. He wanted to stop Dr. Wakefield’s work but the witch hunt would look too obvious if the accusations came directly from the medical school that forced him out two years prior. So Dr. Pepys would need a journalist who could take credit for those accusations while insulating the medical school from scrutiny by being the journalist’s protected “source.”

To begin the smear, medical records of children in the study were leaked to a Sunday Times journalist named Brian Deer. He received children’s names, family backgrounds and hospital admissions dates. Deer would later boast about having this information in the BMJ. In 2004, he posted a child’s medical note and a table of children’s names and the dates they were admitted to the Royal Free on his website. This was a serious violation of medical privacy rules, laws and practices. According to study co-author Simon Murch, "the Data Protection Act must have been broken.”

Dr. Pepys had strong ties to GlaxoSmithKline even before the merger that created the company, enjoying substantial support from precursor Glaxo Wellcome. Before he accepted the position of Head of Medicine of the Royal Free in 1999, he demanded Dr. Wakefield’s dismissal. Dr. Pepys ultimately took credit for ousting Dr. Wakefield at Royal Free Hospital in 2001, effectively dismantling the first autism-vaccine research unit in an academic institution. 

After the 1998 study’s publication, Dr. Wakefield’s co-author Dr. Simon Murch was promoted to Director of the Centre for Paediatric Gastroenterology at Royal Free Hospital. Then, in September 2003, Dr. Murch submitted a letter to The Lancet repudiating the notion of any possible link between autism and vaccines. His submission came just two months after Crispin Davis, CEO of Lancet publisher Reed Elsevier, joined the board of directors at GlaxoSmithKline.

With Dr. Murch’s repudiation, the United Kingdom (UK) government’s Legal Aid Board cut off financial aid to help victims in lawsuits against MMR manufacturers, including GlaxoSmithKline. The GlaxoSmithKline alliance with Pepys-headed Royal Free Hospital and the Davis-published Lancet continued as Deer continued to advance the smear. In his reports, Deer claimed Dr. Wakefield’s study was unethical and that he concealed its funding source. The latter claim was “found proved” by a disciplinary tribunal but ultimately overturned. 

Deer also took an unusual step for a journalist: he filed a professional disciplinary complaint against Dr. Wakefield and two of his co-authors including Simon Murch.

A week after the complaint, 10 of the 13 Dr. Wakefield’s co-authors, led by Dr. Murch, issued a fraudulent retraction of the interpretation of the 1998 study. It was a statement of regret over raising an autism-vaccine link possibility that was falsely portrayed as a scientific retraction.

After the fraudulent retraction, vaccine interests falsely misrepresented it as if it was a scientific repudiation of any link between vaccines and autism. That retraction became a basis for rejection of thousands of vaccine autism injury claims in U.S. vaccine court.

Then, the smear machine prompted a medical fitness-to-practice tribunal of Dr. Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield’s medical license was revoked in 2010. The chair of that tribunal, Dr. Surendra Kumar, was a GlaxoSmithKline shareholder. After that decision in 2010, “The Lancet” fully retracted Dr. Wakefield’s study. 

Ultimately, in 2012, a High Court overturned the reasons of unethical research and misrepresented participant enrollment that remains stated in The Lancet retraction. Unsurprisingly, “The Lancet” has not reversed its retraction.

So today, health officials across the pond here in the U.S., including Dr. Fauci and his superior, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, continue to cite the false retraction as if it scientifically proves vaccines do not cause autism. They ignore the factual details on the excuse of “The Lancet” journal’s undeserved reputation.

Jake Crosby has a Master of Public Health degree in epidemiology from George Washington University and is editor of AutismInvestigated.com. 

Editor's Note: Crosby received no response for comment from the relevant authors mentioned in his op-ed.

For government resources and more reports on vaccines and other medical issues, visit: https://sattkisson.wpengine.com/medical-vaccine-links/

The Underreported Surveillance Scandal

Nearly two years ago, Special Counsel Mueller was named to investigate whether President Trump broke the law by somehow conspiring with Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the presidency. We still don’t know the outcome of that. But we’ve learned a lot about what some in our intelligence community have been up to. And some argue that’s proving to be an equally important— and chilling— story.

Click the link below to watch the entire Full Measure investigation.

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/russia-probe-02-11-2019

Rocky Mountain High

We set off for Colorado, the first state to legalize stores selling recreational marijuana. We found great benefits as well as unintended consequences. With recreational pot possibly coming to your state in the future, find out what they've learned.

Watch our Full Measure investigation by clicking the link below:

339 arrested in California human-trafficking sting

The following is an excerpt of an article from The Los Angeles Times

In Los Angeles County, Gutierrez said, sheriff’s detectives arrested a 30-year-old man in connection with child pornography after finding several video clips showing the assault of a 6-year-old.

When San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials arrested a man at a motel in Ontario, she said, the suspect, who responded to a decoy message from law enforcement, had a loaded pistol and meth in his pocket. In his vehicle, officials found seven other firearms, including assault weapons.

In Contra Costa County, a 54-year-old man used a social media site to “groom and entice” what he thought was a 14-year-old boy, she said. The man sent the boy photos of $100 bills and told the child to meet him at a park. When the man arrived, Gutierrez said, he was arrested by members of the task force, including the undercover officer who had posed as the boy online.

Police in Fresno rescued two sisters — one 17, the other 14 — who were sold from one pimp to another for $6,000, Gutierrez said. The first pimp, she added, threatened the sisters with violence and forced them into prostitution. (Continued)

Read the entire article in the Los Angeles Times at link below:

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-human-trafficking-task-force-20190129-story.html

Read the article at KABC 7 at link below:

https://abc7.com/5112123/?fbclid=IwAR27GXdSr0dkbU5_ATomy5VmOV32d1qF5GnkH1hCdOn9VANZAkEmqT0kX6k


Ending Malaria

Malaria is one of the oldest known diseases in the world - and one of the biggest killers throughout human history. It’s developed resistance to every drug designed to beat it. Believe it or not, the small nation of Paraguay has surprised scientists with its success in beating malaria. Read and watch the Full Measure investigation by Scott Thuman by clicking the link below:

To find out a Full Measure TV station near you, click the link below the graphic at the bottom of this page.

http://fullmeasure.news/news/politics/ending-malaria

Analysis: Criminal acts and sloppy facts: Trump is no excuse for them

The following is a news analysis.

The mysterious case of the reported racial attack on actor Jusse Smollett has gone through a dizzying array of revisions in the past 24 hours. It remains the subject of heated speculation and debate.

Whatever the outcome, it seems that in the past few years we’ve heard a lot more about political or racist attacks attributed to specific politicians. Two of the more notorious incidents happened in 2017.

In one instance, some faulted Trump’s rhetoric in the murder of a protester by a white nationalist in Charlottesville, Va.; in the other, the man who shot four people, including a Republican member of Congress, was a Trump-hating supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

There are countless reports of less serious, but still troubling, incidents of politically motivated violence. Journalists were shoved at a recent Trump rally in El Paso. Numerous Trump supporters have been assaulted for wearing “Make America Great Again” or “MAGA” hats.

As a polarizing figure, Trump magnifies the passions of those who would use him as an excuse to act out. It’s easy or satisfying to blame him. And, to them, it’s reasonable to excuse or ignore the anti-Trump crowd doing bad things because “Trump is so bad.”

But there are also those who would use the politically charged atmosphere to advance false accusations for their own purposes.... (Continued)

Read the rest of my article in The Hill by clicking the link below. It includes six times crimes were blamed on Trump supporters but had actually been set up by the supposed "victims."

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/430210-trumps-no-excuse-for-criminal-acts-or-sloppy-facts