Reuters seems to be on steroids of propaganda journalism these days. After pushing the left-wing lies about President Trump after his acquittal in the impeachment trial on Saturday, Reuters went on to propagate fake science from Israel as a success story for the COVID 19 vaccine.
On Sunday, Reuters published a story about scientific research in Israel that supposedly shows the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID 19. But there is something important missing in the Reuters story about scientific research: the science and the research.
The story “Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine” says that a certain study in Israel on Sunday reported a 94% drop in 600,000 people vaccinated with the Pfizer’s vaccine for COVID 19. The story names Health maintenance organization (HMO) of Israel as the source for this information. Yet, unlike real journalism that provides important details in a story, Reuters seems to have forgotten about the specifics that make a story credible.
Who exactly conducted the research and when? Who funded it? No information on these important questions. Is the study submitted to any journal? Has it been peer-reviewed? No information. The story does say that the study compared two groups with similar medical histories and found that the vaccinated group is less likely to get COVID 19. But surprisingly there is no specific information as to how such a conclusion was reached? It appears the people who wrote the story are so ignorant of science that they assumed just vaccination implies that the study is complete and no results need to be analyzed to conclude how or why those vaccinated are considered safe. One needs to follow the medical status of such people for quite some time to get such information. Have the researchers been doing so? If so, why is there no mention of it in the story? Remember we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people here.
These are some of the most fundamental questions that a story needs to include, and particularly if the story does not include a link to direct to a source that has the complete or detailed data and analysis as well information on study supervisors and their declaration of conflict of interest. However, given what we know by now about the so-called journalists and press, it is no surprise that today’s mainstream media has been reduced to the status of a loyal servant that caters to the pharma industry as its master. Slaughtering science and dishing it up for the master to devour is the job description of such servants. And Reuters seems to be quite efficient at this job.
