Do fact checkers provide Facebook’s muscle to rob us of free speech? By Paul D. Thacker Emmanuel Vincent is a hunted man. On June 24, an officer of the French Ministry of the Interior, acting under the terms of the Hague Convention, summoned him to a police station...
As scrutiny increases on the NIH funding for dangerous virus research, Buzzfeed’s Peter Aldhous tries to shift blame and spotlights an obscure animal rights group. No, seriously. By Paul D. Thacker Investigative reporters and watchdog nonprofits have shone a harsh...
At this week's conference, AHCJ reporters might be the only group walking around Austin wearing N95 respirators. "They're gonna look like Martians." By Paul Thacker The Association of Health Care Journalists will kick off their annual conference in Austin, Texas, on...
Scott Gottlieb denies pharma manipulation, but ties to opioid industry have dogged him for years. By Paul Thacker If not for the COVID-19 virus, the American media would be consumed by the opioid pandemic. Since 1999, more than 500,000 Americans have...
Touting themselves as the solution to disinformation, OpenMind platforms climate denial and Big Tobacco disinfo peddler By Paul D. Thacker Stop me if you’re heard this one before. A smug, self-satisfied science writer quotes a young, know-nothing staffer at APCO PR as...
Handicapped by advocacy and meager reporting skills, science writers settle for constructing and defending "decoy" narratives. By Paul Thacker Last summer, Amy Maxmen wrote a couple of audacious articles in Nature attempting to downplay the possibility of a lab...
Newly disclosed documents raise more questions than answers about federal funds diverted to set up the pandemic project, current financial supporters, and China’s involvement. By Paul D. Thacker New documents further detail the hundreds of thousands of dollars in...
How a Pfizer vaccine press statement became CNN headline, became CDC's optimistic vaccine policy. By Paul Thacker A viral video of CDC Director Rochelle Walensky discussing COVID-19 vaccines makes clear the pharmaceutical companies have been gaming pandemic policy by...
Blinded by bias, some reporters struggle to see misinformation that buttresses their own bigotry. By Paul D. Thacker Many reporters seem unconcerned that social media platforms are censoring what people can read. In just one recent example, Washington Post technology...
Beijing officials have disappeared seven media members for reporting on COVID-19, but allow Jane Qiu access to government researchers for celebrity interview on hair? By Paul D. Thacker with commentary by Michael Lerner Paul Thacker is among the best US investigative...
Why can't media outlets like MedPage Today do some reporting on vaccine clinical trials instead of resorting to silly "debunking" articles? By Paul Thacker ~ Originally Published November 30, 2021 in The Disinformation Chronicle This article by the well regarded...
ELAINE DEWAR: DICHRON INTERVIEW By Paul Thacker As the pandemic broke in January of 2020, author Elaine Dewar began clipping and saving news articles because the coverage reminded her of the 2003 SARS outbreak in Toronto, when Canadian authorities gave false...
When errors are not corrected and false narratives persist, should we still trust science? By Paul D. Thacker Shortly after the pandemic’s beginning in late 2019, virologists allied with the National Institutes of Health sought to shout down any mention of a lab...