New York Magazine 
 
Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson left her position at CBS today, she announced on Twitter, over what Politico reports was growing frustration "with what she saw as the network's liberal bias." Although Attkisson insisted the split was "amicable," she's been hit repeatedly in recent months for what some co-workers called "agenda-driven" reporting on the Obama administration, including, of course, the Affordable Care Act and Benghazi. (Less politically, her anti-vaccine reporting is also iffy.) Attkisson just happens to have a book coming out this year tentatively called Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington.
 
Politico.com also covered the Attkisson story.
 
Liberal media watchdogs have tried to discredit some of Attkisson’s work. Media Matters For America has accused her of “shoddy, irresponsible reporting” and pointed to holes in her reporting on green energy and autism [and] vaccines.
 
Politico.com also made a reference to what could seen as the power and influence of drug industry sponsors.
 
Attkisson, who had been with CBS News for more than two decades, had grown frustrated with what she saw as the network’s liberal bias, an outsize influence by the network’s corporate partners, and a lack of dedication to investigative reporting, several sources said. She increasingly felt that her work was no longer supported and that it was a struggle to get her reporting on air.
 
Although her investigative reporting on vaccines and autism wasn't mentioned in most of the coverage of Attkisson's leaving CBS, the question remains: How did the "outsize influence of the network's corporate partners" react to her "iffy" "anti-vaccine reporting"?
 
ABC News
(VIDEO)
 
Parents act out scenes from Disney animated movies and it helps their autistic son.  There's an upcoming documentary about this young man.
 
Owen Suskind was a normal three year old who all but vanishes.
 
All of a sudden, he's speaking less and less. And then he wasn't speaking at all. Where did he go?
 
That was two decades ago. He stopped talking for years.
 
I think this is wonderful. I remember trying to connect with my son who didn't really talk as a little kid. He loved the Weather Channel, maps, trains and hot air balloons. We could get him to notice us if we watched the Weather Channel ALL DAY LONG, took long rain rides, went to hot air balloons launchings, and covered the walls of his room with maps.
 
BUT this child in the story suddenly lost learned skills. He stopped talking.
 
The news team asked ABC's Dr. Richard Besser about regressive autism:
 
Besser: "t's a term many haven't heard of. Regression means loss of function and you'll see that actually in about one in four kids with autism, where they either have some function or they're going normally and they start to loss things, usually between a year and a half and two years of age."

George Stephanopoulos (about the documentary): "Does it teach us anything more about the disorder?
 
Besser: I think it tells us how little we know. We tend to lump together autism under this big umbrella, when within there there's so many different things going on. The more we can understand about different types of autism and what may be causing them. That can give us ideas, not only in terms of hopefully prevention, but how to reach each of these children in their own way.
 
This of course is the nice side of autism. This charming young man is doing well. It's an encouraging success story.
 
Dr. Besser meanwhile can't tell us why any of this happened. Why did this child stop talking?
 
Look at the horrific statistic he gave us: One in every four children with autism regresses. With an autism rate of one in 50 or one in every 88 kids---that's happening to thousands and thousands of children.
 
I have an idea for a documentary. How about one where experts study these kids--the ones who were fine and then lost everything?

We could hear their stories and maybe find what happened to make them disabled.
 
There's no comment section here or I would have asked Dr. Besser why no one ever wants to do a study like this.

Huffington

Until someone proves otherwise it is not vaccines that cause Autism -- no serious scientific study has been able to prove it -- but rather an assortment of factors including genetics and environmental factors. Recent studies revealed that fathers over 40 are six times more likely to have a child with an ASD, which indicates a possible link between spontaneous mutations in the sperm and ASD (Neale, B.M, 2012).

Here's an autism mom telling us old dads are linked to autism, but not vaccines. I posted six comments.  (Five have been removed.)


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