Blinded by design: Reuters misses Pfizer 'transmission' bombshell, plays repeater
How did Reuters miss a big story, in favor of a bad story? By overrelying on official sources.
Poor Reuters.
Imagine covering a European Parliament committee hearing on “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic, with testimony by a Pfizer official.
Imagine publishing a story, but somehow missing the biggest headline of the day.
That happened Monday, and it’s not hard to see how.
If all you watched of the Oct. 10 Special Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic hearing was the 5:32 summary put together by the parliament, you’d miss the real news.
What Reuters missed: An admission from Pfizer that it never tested the vaccine for whether it stopped transmission.
The committee wanted Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla to testify. Since shit rolls downhill, he sent an underling named Janine Small, Pfizer’s President of International Developed Markets, in his place.
The biggest headline of the day came when Rob Roos, a member of parliament from the Netherlands, asked Small: “Was the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market? If not, please say it clearly. If yes, are you willing to share the data with this committee?”
Small answered: “Regarding the question around, did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market? No.”
She added: “We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market. And from that point of view, we had to do everything at risk.”
That’s the story, that’s the headline, that’s a bombshell revelation — the kind that rarely emanates from committee hearings.
Pfizer did not know with certainty that its vaccine stopped transmission before it entered the market. That didn’t stop it from saying so, publicly, or claiming 100% efficacy in stopping the spread.
So how does Reuters go up with this story? “Pfizer exec denies CEO negotiated EU COVID vaccine contract via text message.”
It appears an overreliance on official sources is the culprit.
The special committee published a 5:32 snippet from the meeting. If that was all you watched — which included one member urging his colleagues against “headlines” or pushing Pfizer too hard for not sending the CEO — the text message denial would seem the only thing news-worthy.
When Roos does appear, he’s speaking Dutch. But when he questioned Small, Roos made a point of switching to English, “so there are no misunderstandings.”
Neither his question nor Small’s answer — the meat of the event — made the 5:32 video. So they didn’t make the Reuters story either.
Thus ends the mystery on how one of the world’s most powerful news outlets missed the only real news in a meeting it did cover.
Missing the entire meeting would’ve been better than the story Reuters did publish, quoting Small in her denials that Bourla negotiated vaccine rates via text message. That would’ve been far outside normal protocols, “speed of science” or not.
On the day Pfizer exposes the gulf between its private knowledge and its public statements, with the whole world watching, Reuters prints a story meant to exonerate the powerful drugmaker.
That’s as bad as it gets. That’s the path to irrelevance. When your news outlet is no longer viewed as a source of truth. When you miss the big story for the bad story.
Reuters relied on a video that was edited with an agenda. That agenda was to avoid headlines.
The True North Centre, of Canada, told more truth in 2:33 of video, and was rewarded with millions of page views. The Reuters story was a throwaway, valuable only for the rot it reveals.
Stories like transmission-gate are why readers seek independent news outlets, and distrust corporate news. Outsiders investigate. Insiders, like Reuters, exonerate.
Who does the news question? Who does the news explain? Those answers tell you where its bias lies. Trust the skeptics. Ditch the repeaters.
The whole world reads Reuters. Newspapers carry its stories proudly. We all deserve better from a global news outlet.