Thread by @VaporAmerican

Let’s talk about how Bloomberg-backed Vital Strategies @VitalStrat bankrolls reporting at “nonprofit” journalism outlets to further the anti-vaping narrative and provide fodder for prohibitionist campaigns. THREAD 🪡

Vital Strategies funnels huge cash to two nonprofit journalism outlets - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Here’s Vital boasting about these projects on its website:

TBIJ and OCCRP’s nonprofit status is key. Here you can see TBIJ’s list of supporters and the various topics they fund from environmental issues and big tech to global health and, of course, tobacco control.

And here’s OCCRP’s supporters:

This model allows wealthy foundations like the Gates Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society to fund favorable reporting on their pet projects or issues. And it’s paying off in a huge way for Bloomberg and his activist cronies.

That’s completely corrupt of course, not least since it makes a mockery of the objectivity/independence that are supposed to be core virtues of journalism. The subjects of these articles, the framing, the sourcing, the timing, the thesis – it’s all intuitively rigged in advance.

Don’t just take our word for it. Watchdogs like Chronicle of Philanthropy, Columbia Journalism Review, and American Press Institute have all sharply criticized the kind of unholy arrangement that Vital Strategies is manipulating.

Here’s @RickEdmonds from the prestigious journalism ethics group @Poynter Institute.

Notice how insidious that arrangement is. The funding recipients already know the agenda from the get-go. That way they don’t need precise marching orders – and they can publicly pretend they’re just acting on their own initiative.

The other groups in that corrupt network all sing from that same song sheet. Here’s CTFK promoting the above article the same day it published:

Even worse, it enables other members of the same funding network to tout TBIJ’s reporting as if it’s objective, legitimate reporting. No doubt that deceitful reinforcement pleases the donors too.

So the feedback loop works like this:
1. Bloomberg funds Vital Strat.
2. Vital Strat funds TBIJ and OCCRP.
3. TBIJ/OCCRP reporters try to raise fear about alternatives to combustible cigarettes.
4. Bloomberg-backed activists hype the reporting.
5. Rinse and repeat.

In fact, TBIJ and OCCRP often collaborate on stories. Here’s a project they both worked on called “Blowing Unsmoke” which tries to stoke fear over IQOS devices.

TBIJ and OCCRP also hand their content for free to major outlets like The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Intercept, and The Daily Beast to sanitize it and boost the reach:

So Bloomberg et al. are getting a constant drumbeat of anti-vaping coverage and narratives to sway regulators toward prohibitionist policies that will remove the single most effective smoking cessation method ever devised.

This vast network of activists, reporters, and public health groups is part of a holistic strategy to manipulate the public about vaping through astroturf activist campaigns and corrupted journalism. Beltway insiders call this “manufacturing consent.”

One would think that unweaving this vast funding web would be a dream assignment for any enterprising investigative reporter. Yet anytime we bring it to the media’s attention, we get crickets.

That’s why we intend to continue exposing this underhanded campaign.