Thread by @VaporAmerican

Let's take a close look at @StatNews and reporter @NicholasFlorko, whose work on vaping policy has routinely pushed a prohibition agenda that is remarkably aligned with Bloomberg front groups.
THREAD 🪡

STAT is owned by billionaire John Henry who also owns the Boston Globe. It promises “trusted and authoritative journalism about health, medicine, and the life sciences” and to “examine controversies and puncture hype.”

But a review by AVM of the more than three dozen stories STAT has done on vaping issues and policy since 2019 reveals consistently slanted reporting, discredited claims, and the near total exclusion of any expert sources or info that differs with hardline prohibition groups.

Agenda-driven material like this, over and over again:

Hardline prohibition groups like CTFK, PAVe, and Truth are often and uncritically quoted at length in STAT’s coverage with scant effort at balance, like these Myers quotes. STAT’s coverage mirrors almost perfectly the lobbying position of these advocates.

Apparently that is because STAT itself is quietly receiving funding from the same source as those groups — Bloomberg Philanthropies @BloombergDotOrg. That’s right. AVM has confirmed that Bloomberg is cutting checks to STAT, a for-profit, supposedly independent news organization.

NB: Bloomberg Philanthropies is by far the primary driver of a global campaign to vilify nicotine vaping, lavishing nine-figure sums on lobbying, front groups, advertising, academia, even direct injections to state AG offices and the WHO.

Here the Chronicle of Philanthropy details the extensive and deeply harmful reach of Bloomberg Philanthropies against vaping and tobacco harm reduction.
philanthropy.com/article/bloomb…

But the financing from Bloomberg to STAT has never been disclosed in any of the dozens of articles that it has published on vaping, just as STAT has routinely concealed that Bloomberg is also funding many of its quoted sources in that coverage.

When we pressed Florko and his editor, Erin Mershon @eemershon, for an explanation, he called Bloomberg a “grant funder” and insisted that “we remain entirely editorially independent from Bloomberg Philanthropies.”

He added that "STAT has always been committed to transparency around our funding and safeguarding our editorial independence, and we will continue to be transparent about that.” But when asked the size and duration of the funding, Florko refused to say. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After getting questions from AVM about concealing its funding, STAT today appended this brief line at the bottom of its latest hit piece. (We’ll have more to say on the many flaws in that article).

Also undisclosed:

It’s all plainly unethical and watchdog organizations including Chronicle of Philanthropy, Columbia Journalism Review, Poynter Institute, and American Press Institute have all sharply criticized the kind of unholy arrangement that STAT has with Bloomberg.

@Poynter ’s @RickEdmonds says that “foundation support for journalism…is just plain dicey.” Poynter did an entire report on the many ethical problems with style of bankrolled journalism. It concluded, in part:

In addition there’s the problem that Bloomberg Philanthropies itself can escape scrutiny from the press with these payoffs.

BP is by far the leading driver of prohibition policy in America but do you think Nick Florko and STAT will ever zero in on his benefactor? (Narrator: LOL, no.)

Worth noting too that STAT is hardly some struggling, regional news outlet. It tries to impact national health policy from newsrooms in Boston and Washington, DC. And, we repeat, it is owned by a multi-billionaire, this guy. So what necessitates this funding?

Naturally, the Bloomberg front groups love to hype the articles in STAT that their mutual sugar daddy has bankrolled.

And the slant goes beyond just the reporting. When one of Bloomberg’s paid Johns Hopkins professors wants to write a 2,000+ word piece comparing vaping to deadly thalidomide, Dalkon shield, and salmonella, STAT is happy to publish that garbage, with no mention of the funding.

Or when PAVe activists want to hype bunk claims that vaping causes seizures — again, with zero clinical basis and contrary to the medical literature on the subject — STAT will gladly tout it with no skepticism and no mention that STAT and PAVe get money from the same funder.

When we first broached the many problems with balance and objectivity with Florko in early July, he was adamant that STAT’s coverage was impartial and invited us to provide input that he could include in the reporting. Here’s just some of what we gave him. He ignored all of it.

We followed up more than a month later to remind him and point out another timely angle.

He responded that instead he would do a story on “why the companies she [Amanda] has chosen to represent have chosen to not follow the FDA’s orders.”

Of course, this is exactly the kind of framing that Bloomberg and CTFK are pushing in their own comms and lobbying – that FDA should crack down harder and faster on supposed wrongdoers.

And again, STAT is doing this piece in lieu of far more salient aspects on far more powerful players in the issue.

Let’s be clear—AVM’s entire mission is to help companies properly navigate the regulatory labyrinth and none of our members are out of compliance. Florko has zero basis in fact to infer we are lawbreakers and so the vindictiveness of his focus here is both obvious and unethical.

Here’s a better question. How many other news organizations are on the Bloomberg payroll? We intend to find out. /