Join reader action to educate the Associated Press about natural remedies, alternative medicine

Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Associated Press, alternative medicine, health news

(NaturalNews) The Associated Press continues its assault on alternative medicine, led by writer Marilynn Marchione who writes attack pieces on everything under the sun (including the sun itself) related to alternative medicine and natural therapies. The Associated Press continues to publish stories carrying this highly-opinionated (and provably false) header:

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional Associated Press series on their use and potential risks.

As NaturalNews previously reported, it's all part of the AP's assault on natural medicine, nutrition, medicinal herbs and naturopathic therapies (https://www.naturalnews.com/027424_medicine_a...). The AP, it seems, has decided to ally itself with pharmaceutical medicine and spend its time and money hiring writers who promote drugs and discredit anything natural. A recent story by Marchione, for example, claims that statin drugs help prevent swine flu!

It's quite clear that AP is following a specific agenda to destroy the reputation of natural medicine while boosting public perception of pharmaceuticals. And yet, in reality, it is Big Pharma that has delivered no cures. But the sick-care industry has delivered America into financial bankruptcy and helped our nation become the most diseased population in the history of human civilization. AP feels no need to report on that inconvenient truth. Rather, it sees its job as encouraging yet more pharmaceutical use in America while destroying the credibility of far safer and more effective natural therapies that could help turn around America's health.

The Associated Press is sadly misinformed about natural medicine, and yet their stories are syndicated across thousands of newspapers and millions of web pages each day.

We need your help in educating AP editors about natural medicine.

Take action now to educate the Associated Press

NaturalNews is asking readers to contact AP and express both your displeasure with their outright bias against natural medicine and their lack of information about the safety and effectiveness of natural, "alternative" therapies.

AP's contact information is here:

http://www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact.html

Their general email address is [email protected]

Their main phone number is (212) 621-1500.

You can also find phone numbers for their various local bureaus at the web page link provided above.

Call or email the AP today and tell them their stories by Marilynn Marchione are a disgrace to the AP's own reputation as an "objective" news source. Share with them why you'd like to see more balanced coverage of alternative medicine.

Rules of engagement: Be polite. Do not scream or use profanity when contacting the AP. Be professional but firm. The way in which you interact with AP will shape the way they see perceive people from the alternative health community.

You may wish to share a success story of how alternative medicine has helped you overcome a disease, or you might express how much you dislike the obvious pro-pharma bias found in Marchione's articles.

If you'd like to take this even further, call your local paper that's using AP stories and complain about the quality of the biased stories being published. Tell your local newspaper editor that AP has become a biased news organization operating with an agenda to attack and discredit alternative medicine, and that if your paper continues to run such biased AP stories, you will cancel your subscription or stop buying the paper.

You have no idea how much power you have as a news consumer willing to pick up the phone and make your voice heard. Your comments will make huge waves across the newspaper industry, and your effort can help correct the AP's misguided assault on alternative medicine, hopefully returning it to a more objective and balanced news provider.

So please join NaturalNews readers from all across the world in calling and emailing the Associated Press today to object to their biased, highly-opinionated attacks on alternative medicine.

Here's the contact page, once again:
http://www.ap.org/pages/contact/contact.html

Share this story everywhere

Share this story on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networks. Use the power of the internet to get this story out to as many people as possible, and encourage them to join in this effort to help educate the Associated Press about the many benefits of alternative medicine.

This is important. The AP is syndicated across thousands of news publishers. Because of their position, they have a special responsibility to be objective in their coverage of alternative medicine. Each day that they publish distorted stories attacking alternative medicine is another day that potentially millions of readers around the world are deceived into thinking natural medicine is worthless. (This is, of course, the whole purpose of the AP's agenda.)

My own letter to the Associated Press

Dear Associated Press,

As the editor of NaturalNews.com, I am appalled at the highly-opinionated, agenda-driven news stories your organization continues to publish. Written by Marilynn Marchione, these stories carry a header "editor's note" that essentially declares alternative medicine to be utterly worthless. Each of these stories then proceeds to attack alternative medicine in a blatantly biased, opinionated manner that has absolutely no journalistic credibility.

With each one of these stories you publish, your organization is losing more of its journalistic integrity. While "AP" once stood for objective, honest journalism, these attacks on alternative medicine are now earning you a reputation for agenda-driven reporting, fueled by the financial interests of the pharmaceutical companies that provide tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue each year to the newspapers that carry your stories.

Word is already spreading across the 'net: The Associated Press has lost its street cred. The news you publish is "shaped" to appease corporate interests. Rather than seeking to report the facts, the Associated Press is now engaged in a campaign to intentionally misinform readers and destroy alternative medicine.

If this highly opinionated, biased reporting continues to be published by AP, NaturalNews and other independent media sites across the 'net will announce an "AP boycott" that seeks to encourage newspapers and websites to drop AP services altogether. We will bring together millions of readers who find tremendous value in alternative medicine and natural therapies, and we will make our voices heard with local and national newspapers that subscribe to AP services.

Due to declining revenues, many newspapers are right now reevaluating their contracts with AP. Some have already announced plans to drop your services. Should you continue to publish such biased and defamatory articles attacking alternative medicine, we will seek to rally millions of alternative medicine supporters to contact their local papers and complain about the lack of journalistic integrity in AP stories.

There's nothing wrong with publishing objective stories pointing out both the strengths and weaknesses of various alternative medicine therapies, but to publish an AP story with the pretext that alternative medicine is worthless is simply inexcusable. It's also inaccurate. In fact, it turns out that conventional (pharmaceutical) medicine is the branch of medicine that has offered no cures for degenerative disease. Alternative medicine provides many cures, including affordable, readily-available cures for diabetes, heart disease and cancer. If you are not aware of these cures, perhaps your writers need to familiarize themselves with more of what's really happening across America: The raw foods movement, juicing, healing and rejuvenation centers, chelation therapy, herbal medicine, superfoods and energy medicine (to name just a few).

Years ago, when I followed conventional medicine, I was nearly obese, diabetes, depressed and diseased. Today, after adhering to "alternative" (natural) therapies, I remain in perfect health. I haven't been sick in years and no longer carry any health insurance because I take responsibility for my own health. My risk of cancer is near-zero, and even if I developed cancer, I know precisely how to reverse it using natural therapies.

This is the kind of information your readers deserve to know. But instead of educating your readers, you are isolating them from the very information that could save their lives. In this way, the AP is not merely violating journalist integrity, it is also violating the laws of morality and common human decency. You have a responsibility to use your influence to help bring real health solutions to consumers, but sadly, you have chosen to use your organization to keep the People ignorant of natural health solutions while promoting the corporate agenda of the pharmaceutical companies.

The People have the right to know the truth about the healing potential of safe, natural healing therapies, and you have a journalistic responsibility to cover these stories objectively and honestly. By continuing to publish your opinionated and distorted stories attacking alternative medicine, you only destroy your own reputation as a once-trusted news organization that has now sold out its reputation to Big Pharma.

End your assault on alternative medicine and you will restore credibility to the AP.

Regards,
- Mike Adams
Editor, NaturalNews.com