Natural News announces recipients of the 2015 Corrupt Journalist Awards

Thursday, December 31, 2015 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Corrupt Journalist Awards, corruption, journalism

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(NaturalNews) In recent days, Natural News published the names of the 2015 Journalist Courage Awards to recognize some of the country's most innovative and fearless investigative journalists dedicated to honest reporting. Conversely, today we announce the names of journalistic hacks, phonies, charlatans and frauds who attempt to use the power of the press to distort, lie, misdirect and misrepresent issues and events.

Aaron E. Carroll: A professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine who blogs on health research and policy, Carroll spends much of his journalistic time promoting vaccines and the vaccine culture. In a September piece for The New York Times, he wrote "all vaccines save lives" and that isn't even "up for debate."

"Whenever I sit down to watch a presidential debate, I have one sincere hope: that vaccines won't come up at all. Besides the fact that there really is no 'debate' when it comes to the science of how they work or how they may harm, merely talking in public about denying vaccines often leads to the solidifying of people's views," Carroll wrote.

All vaccines are good, says the professor (except when they're not). There is NO vaccine-autism link (except this one). And so on.

Shame on you, Prof. Carroll. But you definitely should be on this list.

Shaun King: Mr. "Black Lives Matter" himself, King initially professed to all who would listen that he suffered a brutal racially motivated beating in 1995 at the hands of a mob of bigots at a rural Kentucky school. None of it was true, and that's according to police reports of the incident, not some "right-wing conservative blogs." As reported by The Daily Caller:

While King has said that he was attacked by up to a dozen "racist" and "redneck" students, official records show that the altercation involved only one other student. And while King has claimed that he suffered a "brutal" beating that left him clinging to life, the police report characterized King's injuries as "minor."

At least two profiles written about King have asserted that the assault was one of Kentucky's first registered hate crimes. But Keith Broughton, the former Versailles police detective, told TheDC that the case was never classified as a hate incident.

Not only that, but the police report listed King's race as white. And, as he wrote at the liberal blog site The Daily Kos, "The reports about my race, about my past, and about the pain I've endured are all lies." And yet, he continues to attack his truth-in-reporting critics as people just trying to get him to "shut up."

Well, that's great advice, Shaun, because the more you say, the worse the lies become. And that's why you made the list.

William Saletan: This GMO promoter is not just a shill for the industry but he's a slanderer as well, tarring and feathering anyone in the media who dares to question the GMO food orthodoxy (that it's always safe and never has any ill side effects, when it does – see here, here, here and here, for starters).

So critical is he of critics of phony GMO science that some have even said it taints legitimate research. And that explains why he is on this list.

Kevin Folta: Speaking of phony researcher, Prof. Folta of the University of Florida is one of the principle offenders. At once claiming to be an unbiased scientist, it was discovered that he was actually being paid to produce "scientific studies" for Monsanto.

As noted at TruthWiki, earlier this year The New York Times published details of email exchanges between the self-proclaimed "public scientist," Monsanto representatives and public relations firm Ketchum documenting "money trails and even instructions for Folta (with his agreements and volunteered suggestions to do so) of EXACTLY what to say, when, where, and how to promote the biotech agenda of deceit and lies."

Want to make this list? Publish bought-and-paid-for research and "science" that promotes the agenda and point of view of your corporate master.

Jon Entine: This GMO shill is probably one of the most prolific in terms of pushing the "safety" and overall "goodness" of genetically modified foods. Entine, too, does so on behalf of corporate sponsors, as Natural News editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has extensively documented (here, here, and here).

TruthWiki notes:

Jon Entine is a corporate propagandist and pseudo-journalist who utilizes his media savvy to promote the opinions and positions of chemical corporations, by posing as an independent journalist. Entine has multiple, documented ties to biotech companies Monsanto and Syngenta, and plays a key propaganda role via another industry front group known as the American Council on Science and Health, a thinly-veiled corporate front group....

Corporate GMO shills will make this list every year. Congrats, Jon.

Henry Miller: It seems there is no shortage of GMO shills, and Miller is one of them. But he's not just your ordinary shill; he's an educated and credentialed shill whose previous public relations clients include none other than the tobacco industry.

"A former medical researcher of fifteen years at the FDA, Henry I. Miller became a columnist and one of Stanford University's 'think tank' fellows for scientific philosophy via the Hoover Institution. Educated at MIT and Harvard, Miller has studied gene expression in the laboratory at NIH, the National Institute of Health. Miller medically reviewed the first genetically engineered drugs and has been involved in rapid licensing of other GE projects with hormones and insulin," TruthWiki documented.

Miller's 2015 claim to fame? Engineering a "colleague" letter demanding Columbia University fire Dr. Oz from his prestigious position as professor of surgery, just because Dr. Oz doesn't toe the corporate Big Pharma line.

If you want to make this list, you do things like that. Welcome, Prof. Miller.

Brian Williams: Come on now, you knew we'd get to the former NBC Nightly News reader, right? This guy has talked more whoppers than Burger King – so many, in fact, and for so long, that the meme train online is still steaming. Oh, and what did he choose to lie about? War hero stuff – during an actual war. In America, that ranks just above, well, being a mainstream media guy or a politician.

Bad, Brian. Just – bad.

How bad? How about getting demoted to MSNBC, the least-watched of all NBC properties and consistently the least-watched cable news outlet, period. So Brian is still in the broadcast news business – sort of. Guess the next time he tells a whopper on the air, though, he has far less of a chance of being caught, because so few people will actually be watching him.

Nevertheless, you tell great big lies about war experiences that never happened, and you're a host of a legacy network news broadcast, yeah – you're gonna make this list.

Leslie Anthony: Are you someone who thinks it is wise to be prepared for any emergency, whether it be a tornado or flood that destroys your house or chaos caused by a massive cyber attack that our government is actually already preparing for? If so, then you're an idiot, according to Anthony (never mind that even FEMA recommends you keep an emergency kit handy).

In answering the question of who and what are preppers to her readers, this quintessential judgmental liberal wrote:

Other than religious fundamentalists, tea-partiers and chem-trails believers, one might rightfully ask: Just who are these people? Actually, that's pretty much it. Think uninformed pseudoscience-nerd meets survivalist meets anarchist militia with a touch of DIY and homemaker thrown in (picture Bill Ny [sic], Les Stroud, Red Green and Martha Stewart with swastika tattoos and a schwack of guns — e.g., Idaho Hillbilly).

Besides spelling Bill Nye the Science Guy's last name incorrectly, this intolerant journalistic reprobate gets pretty much everything wrong about "preppers" (and people who live in Idaho), but we digress. The point is, her ignorance is as blatant as her dishonesty, and that earned her a place on our list.

Geraldo Rivera: This daytime trash TV-turned-pseudo-journalist and grotesque naked selfie-taker fancies himself a constitutional scholar not in the mold of our founding fathers, but rather an intellectual cut above. In recent weeks following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., he tweeted out before all the facts could even be confirmed, "Mass shooting in San Bernadino California at a Center for the Developmentally Disabled WTF! The 2d Amendment is Stupid!!! Don't rationalize."

Here's WTF, Geraldo – the Constitution's various amendments all have a purpose in promoting or protecting specific rights and responsibilities of government and citizens. If the one guaranteeing you have a right to be armed to protect yourself against enemies foreign and domestic is stupid, then so, too, must be your precious First Amendment right to be judgmental and ignorant – right?

Speaking of the First Amendment, we will use it to ensure that our readers know we've put you on our list, and why.

The editorial board at The Washington Post: Yes, even groups of journalists can be lumped together for the purposes of making this list, and the Post did so this year.

There are many reasons for the board's inclusion, but one of the most profound was the board's op-ed pooh-poohing the notion of labeling genetically modified foods.

Under the headline, "We don't need labels on genetically modified foods," the board opined:

The GM-food debate is a classic example of activists overstating risk based on fear of what might be unknown and on a distrust of corporations. People have been inducing genetic mutations in crops all sorts of other ways for a long time.... There is also all sorts of genetic turbulence in traditional selective plant breeding and constant natural genetic variation.

Oh, well then. Since it's been happening for a "long time," and even naturally breeding plants can produce genetic changes, what's the big deal?

Here's the "big deal." Every kind of food or food product, to include bottled water, is required by law to be packaged with an ingredient label. But not genetically modified foods? Why not? What's to hide, if they're "so safe"?

This sounds like little more than an excuse from a paper that relies, in part, on ad dollars from companies that manufacture GMO seeds and foods. And so, the editorial board of the Post made our list.

The editorial board at The New York Times: This paper's editorial board made our list as well, for actually calling for all-out government gun confiscation.

We're quite certain that the same board would never back, say, government censorship of the press, which is one reason why those hypocrites made our list, too.