What Would Woodward Do? An Autism Analogy.
Recently, when I went on Google, I found this YouTube:
WashingtonPost - June 25, 2009
Tips from Bob Woodward on Investigative Journalism
(HERE)
The video is from last June, but for some reason Google was spotlighting it now. It's only about 5 minutes long and I figured one of the reporters involved in exposing Watergate has to be considered an expert when it comes to investigative journalism. It was short and simple. What Woodward said makes sense. He gave us the three ways journalists get their information and he commented on "the future of in-depth journalism in the digital age."
Woodward asked, "Where do we get our information?"
"There are actually three tracks and I think they apply to any story. The first obviously is people. That doesn't mean just going to one person or one source. It means checking everything, talking to half a dozen or even a dozen people for a day story. If it's something longer, you want to totally surround and saturate the subject."
"Second track is documents. I have not really ever seen a story in a newspaper or on television or even on radio that couldn't be enhanced with some sort of documentation that would support or add more detail to what the story is about.
Woodward described the third track as checking information first hand.
Then he added, "I think there will always be investigative or in-depth reporting. Clearly the newspapers are going through a convulsion right now. It may last a long time. But young people are going to develop new business models. ...It's important to have good data, good information about what government does. I asked Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Post, what he thought. ...He said with great passion that there'll always be a group of people...working to get to the under layer of what's going on and they will find a way to publish or broadcast or convey what they believe the truth to be."
After years of watching the media fail time and time again to honestly and thoroughly present the controversy over vaccines and autism, I say that he's got it exactly right.
Can any of us imagine what it would happen if a reporter actually talked to more people than just a local doctor or health official and a parent with an autistic child? Reporters also love go to the website for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and copy what's there. This is why we're endlessly told, "studies show no link." It never seems to occur to members of the press that the people in charge of approving and mandating vaccines are hardly independent experts.
There's an army of doctors and scientists writing about the dangers of an unsafe, unchecked vaccine program, but you'd never know it from the way countless news stories report on the question.
As far as documents are concerned, I'd like to remind the press that telling us that 14 studies have disproved a link between vaccines and autism is phony coverage unless the reporter has actually read one. I've yet to find a single journalist who has. If they did, they'd find that the research supposedly clearing vaccines of damaging side effects comes with a web of financial ties to the drug industry and to the agency in charge of the vaccine program. That's hardly proof of anything except the fact that a lot of people have everything at stake in this fight.
I might suggest that one document worth studying might be the transcript of the closed meeting in Norcross, GA, June 7-8, 2000, known as the Simpsonwood Conference. It was there that top government scientists, CDC and FDA officials, representatives from various pharmaceutical companies and the World Health Organization all met to discuss the possibility of a link between the increased levels of mercury exposure in vaccines and mounting neurological problems in children who had received those vaccines. (HERE)
The third track, that of checking information first hand, is never done. People writing on this debate never actually sit down with health officials and ask the questions I'm always bringing up. That would include things like:
How can you vouch for the safety of mercury in vaccines when thimerosal was never tested or approved by the FDA?
Why has there never been a study done comparing autism rates of vaccinated and unvaccinated children?
Why has there never been a study examining the kids who were normally progressing until they received certain vaccines and suddenly regressed into autism?
Why has there never been a study of the cumulative effect of all the vaccines in the childhood schedule?
I have lots more questions, but these are four important ones.
Woodward ended the video with a cryptic message about getting to the truth. We've had endless years of news stories telling us that all the autism everywhere is just better diagnosing and nothing to worry about, that injecting mercury, aluminum, and other toxins into babies can't hurt them, and that tripling the number of vaccines children receive without a single safety study is good health care. Truth is obviously a rare element in vaccine stories. Things rarely change in the coverage of vaccines and autism. I marvel that the same reporters I've followed for years don't get tired of saying the same things over and over. Maybe if there was an editor telling each of them to "get your ass out of the chair and get over there," like Bob Woodward's editor told him, we'd get some honest coverage of the most heated controversy in medicine today.
--
Anne Dachel is Media Editor of Age of Autism
See how the CDC misled the public about the safety of lead in water: http://www.examiner.com/x-43538-DC-Autism-Examiner~y2010m6d3-Congress-CDC-misled-public-about-Washington-DC-lead-in-water-crisis-lead-was-toxic-for-some
In the article:
"The national media has traditionally defended public health agencies by regurgitating press releases rather than conducting investigative journalism. In fact, national media outlets often forcefully admonish and even riducule parents for researching issues that affect their children rather than blindly following public health guidance, so it often falls on a handful of volunteers to expose scandals."
The Washington Post has done a good job of exposing the lead crisis. If only they would do the same for vaccines...
Posted by: Mike Frandsen | June 06, 2010 at 10:49 AM
I think the media has always been very controlled and agenda driven. The really scary thing is the lack of critical thinking skills on the part of public. Our educational systems beat our critical thinking skills right out of us and we're putty in the hands of the media.
Posted by: Mary | June 04, 2010 at 09:40 AM
You can contact Bob Woodward here:
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20071
woodwardb@washpost.com
Ask him to bring some real investigative journalism to our cause!
Posted by: Twyla | June 04, 2010 at 02:05 AM
With the degree of establishment control of the MSM that this article implicates, it's all the more reason why the autism community needs to laud in spades those members of that fraternity who DO put themselves on the line, and go the extra mile for their commitment to the spirit of investigative journalism. I think of Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News in particular in this regard. She steers close to a major threat to her career in her willingness to 'follow the story' - even to broach 'the story' in the first place. Give her an award of some kind. Maybe the 'Honorary Woodward/Bernstein Investigative Journalist of the Year Award'? It won't hurt her career. She has already dared those rocks. Let's give credit where credit is overdue.
Posted by: Stan | June 03, 2010 at 05:11 PM
If the Watergate Hotel claimed that your room would never get broken into if you stayed there, and the Washington Post was largely funded by advertising from the Watergate Hotel, President Nixon would have finished his term.
Journalism is dead. That is, if it is funded by pharmaceutical companies.
Posted by: Cynthia Cournoyer | June 03, 2010 at 02:21 PM
Yes, media is in control of the message. However, there are far, far more normal people out there than the people that "control the message". Let's start using our numbers. That is what I don't get....if we outnumber "them" by the hundrends of thousands, why are they "winning?" We, normal folks, need to wake up and realize the power in numbers.... the power of us!
Posted by: Stacie | June 03, 2010 at 01:24 PM
Speaking of the media, check this out.
Gulf spill workers complaining of flulike symptoms
By NOAKI SCHWARTZ and MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writers Noaki Schwartz And Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writers Thu Jun 3, 5:50 am ET
NEW ORLEANS – For days now, Dr. Damon Dietrich has seen patients come through his emergency room at West Jefferson Medical Center with similar symptoms: respiratory problems, headaches and nausea.
In the past week, 11 workers who have been out on the water cleaning up oil from BP's blown-out well have been treated for what Dietrich calls "a pattern of symptoms" that could have been caused by the burning of crude oil, noxious fumes from the oil or the dispersants dumped in the Gulf to break it up. All workers were treated and released.
"One person comes in, it could be multiple things," he said. "Eleven people come in with these symptoms, it makes it incredibly suspicious."
I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence.
Posted by: Jennifer Hutchinson | June 03, 2010 at 01:03 PM
Anne,
Are you telling us that Woodward might be suggesting that when he had interivewed the occupants of the offices that were broken into, it would not have been a good idea to use their words and twist them into "just poor desperate people, looking for someone blame", that the Democratic Party officials were just using them for their own illgotten gains, and that President Nixon was just the innocent target of their misguided emotions?
Wow, what a concept.
Posted by: Tim Kasemodel | June 03, 2010 at 01:00 PM
Nice piece Anne! It is exhausting to listen to the same information being regurgitated time and time again. My son will be 8 this summer, so for almost seven years (he reacted to his one year vaccines) I have anticipated media coverage on Autism and Vaccines. Honestly, through the years my interest rarely even peaks when I hear a promo now for an upcoming report. I know exactly what will be said, and who will be saying it (P.O.) and it "P.O's" me to the point where I have to turn off the TV anyway, so I no longer watch anymore!
It is funny though, through those seven years, things have changed amongst the public. When I strike up a conversation in line about vaccine regressive autism (usually brought on by my son's high pitched squeal or blank stare when asked his name) I no longer get the "third eye" look ! Instead I get a response like, "I've heard of that" or "that happened to my friend's child". Hey folks, that's progress!
So the Media will be the LAST to acknowledge the truth we have come to know. And I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, they get few stories right! Recently I saw a local report on the disgruntled flight attendants of a major airline discussing a strike. The reporter assured the public that when the FA's went on strike in 1993, all was well and the planes continued to fly. In fact, he was correct, they did fly (and boy did the media have a field day with the footage of them taking off), BUT (and there is always a but) there were no people on them because the FA's were on the picket line! I know this because I was a gate agent at the time and for five days closed aircraft doors with no folks on board, just pilots and cargo - but yes, the flights did leave :)
So, we'll see....
Posted by: Tracy McDermott | June 03, 2010 at 09:40 AM
"News" is now all about profits for their owners. Altruism left years ago. Read "Into the Buzzsaw" and you'll see many stories killed because of owner/management decisions. We won't hear about chemicals, pesticides, or bad medicine in the news because the owners are friends with the owners of the other businesses.
We have to keep appealing to the common sense of other laypeople. We shall overcome.
Posted by: Deb in IL | June 03, 2010 at 08:50 AM