He who pays the piper calls the tune...

And Pfizer pays some pretty powerful pipers....(Part 1)

The Pied Pfiper?

I’m old enough to remember a time when mainstream media outlets were in the business of investigative reporting and holding the powerful to account. A time when being on the left of the political spectrum meant being suspicious of the motives of big corporations and when the New York Times—yes, that New York Times— published articles like this:

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I remember when the Guardian—yes, that Guardian—dug deep and came up with stuff like this:

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Heck, if you go back far enough (i.e. before pharmaceutical advertising was one of their biggest sources of revenue) even the major TV networks didn’t always give big pharma a pass (**I accidentally typed “big harma” instead of big pharma just now — Freudian slip?) Check out this old segment from CBS’s 60 Minutes about the history of the disastrous swine flu vaccine, which was, of course, “safe and effective”— until it wasn’t. (What is it they say about those who forget history?)

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Don’t hold your breath waiting for a similarly hard-hitting investigation into the COVID vaccines, though. Pfizer now spends nearly twice as much on marketing as it does on research and development and is a major sponsor of pretty much every legacy news outlet, along with many digital platforms and virtually every peer-reviewed medical journal, online continuing medical education platform, and medical conference. Even the FDA (and comparable regulatory institutions in other countries) receives much of its funding from the industry it is supposed to be policing, and turns a blind eye toward financial ties between its advisers and the industry.

Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies seem to have their tentacles into just about everything, but sometimes the infiltration is not obvious or explicit. Take for example the fact that James C. Smith, a member of Pfizer’s board of directors, is also the chairman of the Thompson-Reuters Foundation—and only retired from his job as CEO of Reuters in 2020. Aside from being one of the premiere newswire services in the world, Thompson-Reuters also provides “fact-checking” services and was contracted by Twitter in August of 2021 to help fight “misinformation.” Given that Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, has called for the criminalization of COVID vaccine “misinformation”, this connection between Reuters and Pfizer is, to say the least, alarming.

I’m indebted to Substacker KanekoaTheGreat for this illustration of the incestuous revolving door phenomenon that should concern us all:

Direct to Consumer Branding

In it’s direct to consumer advertising, Pfizer is often quite up-front with its name and logo, seemingly proud to sponsor various “news” programs and talk shows. This year, bizarrely, they even sponsored the Oscars . (The conspiracy minded among us might think this has something to do with Pfizer having an alopecia drug in the pipeline, but I digress.) Does it not occur to TV news and entertainment viewers that Pfizer must demand something in return for their sponsorship dollars?

If you haven’t already seen the now viral compilation video below, you must click on it. It’s very short, but a real eye-opener. (And, the creator assures us, it is not sponsored by Pfizer!)

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Some news outlets (such as CNBC) even appear to have sold access to their Twitter feeds to Pfizer:

Note the “Paid Post for @Pfizer” acknowledgement. At least they were up front about their shilling in this case

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Comedian Jimmy Dore explores the implications of this incestuous relationship between big media and big pharma in this video—again, if you have a few minutes, its well worth a watch:

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If the direct to consumer portion of Pfizer’s ad budget makes you feel a bit queasy, just wait. In part two of this series on paying the piper (pfiper?) we’ll look at big pharma’s influence on medical “education”, research and publishing. Hint: it’s ugly.