Former CEO and director of Reuters is large investor and board member of Pfizer
pfizer.com
pfizer.com
Edit: Added a second citation for Reuter's neutrality policy, highlighting a particularly controversial time when they refused to deviate from neutrality.
[1]: https://www.reutersagency.com/en/about/standards-values/
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters#Policy_of_objective_la...
The test isnt whether they have a page on their website it's how they report on stories that could damage their bottom line (or, in Al jazeeras case, tolerate a saudi imposed blockade).
Nobody is actually netural. What makes a news outfit "neutral" is their adherence to journalistic standards of neutrality, which include both a firewall against executive interests and an editing process designed to temper the biases of individual journalists.
If there is no difference they're neutral. If they downplay or ignore - not so neutral.
>What makes a news outfit "neutral" is their adherence to journalistic standards of neutrality, which include both a firewall against executive interests and an editing process designed to temper the biases of individual journalists.
Which involves more than just talking about neutrality. It involves executives being willing to pay the price when that neutrality would violate their interests - financial or otherwise.
Reuters has historically typified the kind of reporting that's labeled as "neutral." We have no particular reason to believe that their ex-CEO has had any undue influence on their newsdesk's neutrality.
It's a textbook conflict of interest. Most sane places have a policy of addressing even perceived conflicts of interest.
But again: there isn't even a perceived conflict of interest here, unless your perception includes a fatally flawed understanding of how journalistic outfits isolate their executive board. Reuters is not responsible for correcting that fatally flawed understanding.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...
https://telegra.ph/OP-HMG-Trojan-Horse-Part-4-Undermining-Ru...
So?
Edit: The only reason I can think of that anyone would seen any significance in this is if they wanted to imply some kind of conspiracy where major news outlets are pushing vaccines purely out of personal greed. That falls flat for many reasons, particularly that he stopped being CEO of Reuters in Feb 2020 (as noted in a comment), before the pandemic was a pandemic. Otherwise this is humdrum business executive sitting on corporate boards and having ~2.4% of his net worth in stock in that company [1].
[1] https://wallmine.com/people/34254/james-c-smith: "The estimated Net Worth of James C Smith is at least $221 Million dollars as of 8 June 2021." https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001611777/000122520...: "8. Price of Derivative Security (Instr. 5): $59.05, Number of derivative Securities Beneficially Owned Following Reported Transaction(s) (Instr. 4): 90,618.081". 90,618.081 * $59.05 = 5.35099768 million US$, $5.35 million / $221 Million = 2.4%.
Nope, sorry. However, if you take that as an axiom it does free you to believe a lot of nutty self-affirming things without a shred of actual evidence.
What does this have to do with anything? That you'd even quote that screenshot like it means something indicates a significant lack of understanding of many things, including basic chronology: that tweet from "Reuters Fact Check" is from 1/7/2022, Jim Smith stepped down as Reuters CEO nearly two years prior.
> Edit: https://www.bitchute.com/video/sixF3E328RBF/
So? Pfizer buys ads, big whup. Your implication is (probably) Pfizer is dictating content or the sponsored shows making stuff up or hiding things to make their sponsor happy, but you've done nothing to actually show that, and there are good reasons to believe it's not true.
Do you mean "be bad" or "do bad"? I'm quite aware pharma companies can do bad things, but that doesn't mean everything they do is bad, and in any case it's of limited relevance to the kind of conspiracy-theory implications about media coverage that are the topic here.
Both.
> and in any case it's of limited relevance to the kind of conspiracy-theory implications about media coverage that are the topic here.
There is no "conspiracy" in the "tin foil hat" sense. When a corporation brings in a former media exec on their board, its bc they want insight on how to run an effective PR campaign, and pharma cares about that, given how much more money they spend on marketing over r&d. The same should be said for defense contractors - ~80% high ranking military officers went to work for defense companies in 2004-2008, versus 50% in the previous decade [1].
There's no smoky back room in a pizzeria basement where the illumanati get together to sacrifice babies. They join boards and network at conferences.
[1] http://archive.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/12/26/de...
>> Do you mean "be bad" or "do bad"?
> Both.
On the "be bad things" front, I think you need to entertain the possibility that things aren't so black and white.
> When a corporation brings in a former media exec on their board, its bc they want insight on how to run an effective PR campaign, and pharma cares about that, given how much more money they spend on marketing over r&d.
That kinda sounds plausible, but it's too much of a stretch. IIRC, Thompson Reuters' bread and butter is actually accounting software, and that's the part Jim Smith had been focused on for the last 20+ years, per his Wikipedia bio. If "insight on how to run an effective PR campaign" is what they wanted, they'd probably do a lot better by bringing on an actual PR person. Also, is it even plausible for a member of the board to be involved in planning a PR campaign?
You should watch some old episodes of Columbo. It's fiction, but also a fun exploration about how plausible narratives can fall apart if you actually pay attention to the details.
This^^
And those would be?
For instance: ethical codes that reporters in many cases actually care about, the well-established organizational structures news organizations use to manage advertiser-created conflicts of interest, etc.
I'm not saying any of that is foolproof, but it's definitely effective enough to render a lazy compilations of "this program is sponsored by Pfizer" moot as media criticism.
I'd say your POV is incredibly naive and should be more considerate of a lack of morality near the top (which has precedence: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...).
Of course, they gain "insight" into building a media narrative by having Mr Smith on their board. Marketing is very important to pharma companies. [1, 2, 3]
Perhaps having perceived conflicts of interest will be a long term problem for pharma. If the conspiracy keeps gaining momentum, congress might get involved. But on the other hand, pharma has lobbyists. Time will tell.
EDIT - I am very surprised that there is so much resistance to the idea that pharma companies would do anything unethical. Even more surprised that someone flagged this post. The audience here seems to have a great deal of resistance to the idea that pharma companies would do anything criminal - in fact, they have, on many occasions [4] - 2 of the vaccine manufacturers, pfizer and J&J, have paid $4.5 Billion combined in settlements to the DoJ. And to be clear, those settlements to avoid public criminal trials and those are on the violations that they have been caught on - imagine the criminal actions that have not yet come to light.
Pharma's PR must be working - the portion Hacker News audience comes to pharma's defense consistently.
[1] https://www.csrxp.org/icymi-new-study-finds-big-pharma-spent...
[2] The current and last CEO of GlaxoSmithKline have marketing background, not science / medical backgrounds. Most of the time, pharma CEOs do not have scientific / medical backgrounds - https://nbhorwitz.medium.com/the-path-to-power-in-pharma-339...
[3] Just think about all those late night prozac / cialis / etc commercials you see on late night tv.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical...
>> You can't. It's literally a conflict of interest.
> I guess the concept of advertising in media in general is literally a conflict of interest, right?
If you follow the logic of the GP and GGP to its conclusion, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that none of us common citizens can know anything about the world, because it's a contradiction for a adequately-funded media organization to exist that's also funded by no-one.
In the real world, there are methods for managing conflicts of interest like those caused by advertisers and other funding sources (things like firewalls within an organization, etc). They don't work absolutely perfectly, but do they work pretty well.
I run with show dead myself. You'll be surprised what ends up in the refuse bin.
Or that it was secretly funded by the British government:
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-media-idUKKBN1ZC2...
It is important to recognize that Twitter is now relying on big media such as Thompson-Reuters to provide “factchecking” regarding “misleading” information concerning vaccines. Reuters is horizontally integrated with Pfizer at the Board of Directors level, and their “factcheckers” have been harassing me this week because I spoke about the risks associated with SARS-CoV-2 genetic vaccination in children with Neil Oliver on UK-based GB News.
The BBC's Trusted News Initiative is a partnership that includes organisations such as Facebook, Twitter, Reuters and The Washington Post. It is the only forum in the world of its kind designed to take on disinformation in real time. Now we and our partners are going to share what we’ve all learned about how to tackle disinformation, and you are invited.