Thread by @VaporAmerican

Let’s talk about how Bloomberg-funded prohibition groups use deceptive content farms to pretend their bunk research and pronouncements are actual news.

THREAD 🧵

Both CTFK and PAVe are hyping an article that appeared yesterday on something called HealthDay and was reprinted in other outlets including UPI, USNews, and WebMD.

But HealthDay is not an actual news outlet. It’s what’s called a media “chop shop" that takes press releases, lightly re-edits them, slaps on a byline, and then sells that material to customers — media organizations that are trying to fill space cheaply.

And guess who produces a lot of serious-sounding press releases on health topics? Bloomberg Philanthropies and CTFK! HealthDay gobbles this content up routinely and regurgitates it to its customers.

Here’s a ridiculous puff piece they did for Truth Initiative.

Here’s another they did just outright parroting CTFK talking points.

Passing the content through a chop shop, CTFK can then point to its appearance in legit news outlets as if it’s actual journalism. That also pleases CTFK’s donors which, after all, are paying them to hype anti-vaping angles.

CTFK has done this routine endlessly, for many years. When a leading and widely-recognized news media watchdog, Health News Review, took a close look at HealthDay, they were horrified. Read the whole thing.
healthnewsreview.org/2017/11/health…

They said HealthDay is mostly “rehashed PR that is likely to exaggerate benefits, minimize or ignore harms, and gloss over key limitations in the evidence.” Often, “there’s no information in the story that couldn’t be traced directly back to the news release.” 🤔

Health News Review added there are “many other recent stories, all based on news releases, that are likely to misinform readers on important health topics [which is] deceptive to readers and a problem for health care journalism as an industry.”

Is HealthDay somehow being paid behind the scenes to launder these press releases? It’s unknown. The top editor at HealthDay refused to answer any questions from Health News Review.
Repeat: he evaded journalistic scrutiny.

Another huge problem, Health News Review said, was that often “no independent sources are quoted” in HealthDay’s articles. That’s for sure! In all of the countless dozens of stories HealthDay has barfed up for CTFK, *not once* was any skeptical or countervailing source quoted.

The deceit is so brazen that HealthDay even gave space in yesterday’s piece for yet another Bloomberg-bankrolled hack to complain that they are overwhelmed by funding on the pro-vaping side and that somehow there’s too many pro-vape government officials!

CTFK alone spends millions each year on high-end PR and lobbying firms and has a huge in-house PR staff as well. That’s how they built the relationship with HealthDay in the first place!

So when you encounter stories like this, check the source — and if it’s HealthDay, let the vape community know that it’s wet, hot garbage.