HOW YOU CAN HELP JOURNALISTS INVESTIGATE VACCINE SAFETY
By Nancy Hokkanen
Editor's Note: This is the second piece in a two-part series titled "Semantics, Rhetoric and Spin."
For too many years the mainstream media has largely avoided investigating the public’s vaccine safety concerns. The tragic result of that inaction is countless children unnecessarily injured by vaccinations.
For journalists, information overload is an ongoing problem. Internet proliferation has reduced news formatting to bite-sized blurbs. Reporters lack time to read the myriad studies and reports on autism, vaccine injuries and biomedical treatments. To meet deadlines, they regurgitate bullet points from CDC press releases. This results in oft-repeated vaccine/autism cliches, which I detailed in January (here) at The Age of Autism.
More parents of vaccine-injured children must contact journalists, reframing and clarifying vaccine safety issues to simplify and speed the journalists’ job. If you engage their critical thinking skills and spur an unbiased investigative report, you can reach consumers numbering from hundreds to millions – and prevent more injuries to children.
Most newspapers, TV and radio stations now have websites. Start there.
1. Write an online letter to the editor at newspapers in your state.
• Look up the word limits, usually 100-300 words. Focus on one or two aspects, stated clearly in your first sentence. Get in, say it, and get out.
• Relate your content to a story from a recent issue, and/or connect it to current national issues such as the Poling concession.
• Emphasize the science while engaging readers’ senses of compassion and justice. Frame the issue in terms of civil rights and fair treatment for children.
• If you have professional credentials, use them, or quote experts.
• Avoid hot-button rhetoric, but make your language lively.
• Offer a practical alternative. Readers like solutions they can act on.
• Double-space, spell-check, proofread. Accuracy is pivotal for credibility. Before sending the letter, have someone critique it.
• Get someone else to write, too. According to the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting), "If media outlets get letters from a dozen people raising the same issue, they will most likely publish one or two of them."
2. Write longer letters to the newspaper staff.
• Find staff names on the website. Some medical reporters may be too cozy with health department officials, so try investigative reporters
• Let the science speak. Give study names, authors and publications. Use technical references such as “parts per billion” and “statistical significance,” without getting arcane. Provide reliable web references.
• List the timeline of vaccine injury symptoms for your child. Most people don’t know how to identify these signs.
• Point out the paradoxes of vaccine safety. Help the reader process the cognitive dissonance – that a product intended to improve health is having the opposite effect in many children. Show that promoting vaccine protection and investigating vaccine safety are not mutually exclusive, they are symbiotic and necessary.
• Show how positive change can result from media coverage. Dispel the CDC-promoted fear that parents will stop vaccinating their children. Draw parallels between other issues in which media exposure of thorny issues improved children’s lives and restored institutional trust, such as removing pedophile priests from the Church.
• Remind reporters that all government agencies need media watchdogs. Like the FDA and FEMA, the CDC should not be excused from scrutiny due to naïve presumptions that adequate studies are honestly done, and that all employees have wholly altruistic motives.
• Show how skilled reporters write about vaccine injury. Send links to past news articles that examine key aspects of vaccine injury, biomedical treatment and recovery – such as the extensive reports by Age of Autism’s Dan Olmsted, among many others.
• Follow up with a phone call to persuasively address issues.
3. Call your local TV reporter.
• Show what other TV stations are broadcasting. Provide links to CNN clips of the Poling press conference, reports from CBS-TV’s Sharyl Atkisson, TV appearances by journalist/author David Kirby, and the Columbia University graduate school journalism series at KOMU-TV.
• TV news is generated in extreme haste, so prioritize your factoids and plan your responses in terms of brief sound bites. Practice delivery in front of a mirror.
• Consider whether your child should appear on TV, or just a photograph.
• If interviewed at home, set up a photo opportunity. Lay dozens of medical studies on your dining room table. Point to your shelves full of medical materials.
• Provide a list of revealing questions that the reporter can ask the opposition; some are listed below.
4. Talk radio stations need interviewees.
• Call in to talk shows and ramp up your rhetoric to engage listeners.
• Get invited on the air. Use your social network; leverage that friend-of-a-friend.
• “No dead air” is the radio mantra, so organize your notes for quick reference.
• Anticipate arguments; keep a list of bullet points to rebut misnomers.
• Let Republican listeners know how much the autism epidemic will cost taxpayers when these children leave their parents’ homes.
• Inform Democrats that children are being injured by a program with no safety net.
• Tell Libertarians that their rights are threatened by government mandates.
5. Maintain a presence on blogs.
• Write letters to prominent blogs that have run vaccine/autism stories, such as Slate and Salon, and correct misleading or untruthful information.
• Tailor your message to blog politics, using a different spin for the liberal Huffington Post versus conservative Town Hall.
• Many newspapers and TV stations have their own blogs, such as CNN’s “Paging Dr. Gupta” and dozens at The New York Times.
• Start your own blog, which can be set up free at Yahoo and elsewhere, and list keywords to facilitate online searches.
6. Go to journalists’ conferences.
• For one, the American Medical Writers Association Conference is in October.
• A month before, make copies of a media package to hand out. Fill folders with documents that outline vaccine safety issues.
• After class, network with fellow students. That might entail hoisting a brew at the hotel bar.
7. Provide lists of questions reporters should ask government agencies.
• On March 6 scientists at the Department of Health and Human Services conceded a legal case in which a child developed autism from a vaccine injury. How many more children have suffered similar injuries? How do you know?
• What kinds of vaccine injuries are reported to doctors, or to VAERS?
• Vaccine injury is described as “rare.” What are the statistics for the past 1, 5, 10 and 20 years?
• How accurate are these vaccine injury statistics? Is it true that only 1-10% are reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System?
• Why can’t reporters look at the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink? Why did viewing it once take an act of Congress, as per David Kirby’s book Evidence Of Harm?
• When a child suffers a vaccine injury, what treatment does the pediatrician give?
• How do the state Departments of Health, the CDC, and the vaccine manufacturer help families that report a child’s vaccine injury?
• Has the state Department of Health ever looked at lab tests of children on the autism spectrum, such as blood work, biopsies, immune panels, etc.?
• What is the CDC doing to prevent vaccine injuries?
• If more children’s lab work indicate mitochondrial dysfunction, will the CDC alter its one-size-fits-all vaccination protocol?
To work through writer’s block, e-mail other vaccine safety advocates for inspiration. Ask if they have any press releases or lists of bullet points to share. Look at websites such as www.SafeMinds.org , www.A-CHAMP.org, FAIR Autism Media, www.EvidenceOfHarm.com, www.NVIC.org , www.NoMercury.org, etc.
If you’ve read all this but are ambivalent about contacting journalists, consider this seminar at last fall’s AMWA conference. “Introduction to Pharmaceutical Marketing Materials helps attendees ‘gain an inside look into pharma marketing, the jargon used, and how to pitch more ideas to their clients.’ That means get paid to write more stories about drugs… and discover how much time is saved by juggling words from canned press releases.”
It’s ironic that media’s attention deficit is contributing to the ADD epidemic in children, by promoting psychotrophic drugs in place of detoxification, nutrition, and reduction of toxic exposures. But that’s not going to end unless every parent of an affected child provides concise alternate information to journalists, whenever possible. Vaccine safety has been a low media priority because not enough parents have spoken out… yet.
Okay, you’re done reading. Now start writing.
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Nancy Hokkanen lives in Bloomington, Minnesota with her husband and 9-year-old son. She contributes to autism listservs and volunteers for Generation Rescue, A-CHAMP, and the Minnesota Natural Health Coalition.
Fantastic advice, Nancy. Thank you so much!
Posted by: Wendy Fournier | March 21, 2008 at 10:51 AM
Excellent advice Nancy.
With the Poling case, the failed flu strains and South Africans infected from AIDs vaccine trials - there is no better time to say:
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
The vaccine industry has gone unchecked for too long.
Posted by: KarenAtlanta | March 21, 2008 at 09:22 AM
Here is a discussion of a useful study on how often doctors report vaccine reactions: http://insidevaccines.com/wordpress/?p=109
VAERS: What we really know about the reporting of adverse events.
Posted by: Deborah | March 21, 2008 at 08:38 AM
This is outstanding Nancy! I am printing this and forwarding it to friends as well. You brought up a great question: What treatment does a pediatrician give for vaccine injury? Is there a standard treatment? I wonder if vaccine injury is a covered topic in medical school? How many doctors know about the NVICP?
Thanks again Nancy
Theresa C
Michelle's Mom
Posted by: Theresa Cedillo | March 21, 2008 at 07:23 AM