CBC's Marketplace Is a Disgrace

Supporters of Vaccine Choice Canada, a group launching a legal challenge to Ontario's child-vaccination system, hold a rally at Queen's Park in Toronto last October. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)


​CBC's Marketplace Is a Disgrace

It is the very definition of confabulation.

Confabulate: replace fact with fantasy

The CBC ought to be ashamed of itself and its disingenuous Marketplace.

Disingenuous: giving a false appearance of frankness

CBC: Hidden cameras capture misinformation, fundraising tactics used by anti-vaxx movement

• They came from across North America, paying $200 each to attend the ritzy event in Washington, D.C., hoping to snag selfies with some of the biggest names in the anti-vaccination movement.

Marketplace isn't embarrassed to sound like a malicious gossiper with its own agenda. It has no idea what the attendees hoped for besides being heard about vaccines.

• For the anti-vaccination activists gathered in the U.S. capital last November, it was also a chance to strategize on ways to further their cause.
• And they were more than willing to share those strategies with the undercover Marketplace journalists who attended the event, posing as activists trying to grow the movement in Canada.

Marketplace disingenuously disguised itself in order to disingenuously misrepresent the motives of unnamed, unseen (by us) people that Marketplace assures us are disingenuous "anti-vaxxers".

We have no clue who that was in the film footage, but if they indeed were bona fide anti-vaxxers, what they said can be viewed in at least two ways. Having come up against extremely heavy opposition from powerful entities beholden to powerful corporations, it stands to reason that they would be careful in their language when dealing with unknown persons/entities. Unfortunately, they thought were speaking to kindred spirits, not someone from Marketplace who misrepresented himself as a supporter -- which only proves why these people feel a need to be circumspect.

They are under attack, for pete's sake!  And Marketplace was most certainly in attack mode.

The CBC is supported by tax payers (despite its reputation being reportedly already "in the toilet"), a large and growing number of whom, obviously, are against mandated vaccines.  Marketplace owes it to all of us to be objective, and without ulterior motives.

Going undercover to denigrate a movement is about as ulterior as it gets.

And they're still hauling out Andrew Wakefield as proof of the illegitimacy of their cause!  I find it frightening that the CBC article reports that Marketplace "spoke to Andrew Wakefield on hidden camera", without producing the actual conversation but instead proceeding to denigrate him personally -- as if opposition to Wakefield himself is proof that the anti-vaxxers are wrong.

Doing this merely proves that Marketplace is itself devious and exploitative.

From YYC 18/11/19 (Please read the post in full if you're at all interested in this topic)

• Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues had simply reported bowel and cognitive problems in some kids who had recently been inoculated with the MMR vaccine ...

Marketplace knows, or ought to know, that Wakefield WAS NOT and IS NOT against vaccines; he merely questioned the 3-in-one vaccine method -- the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) -- and recommended further study due to the increasing incidence of autism occurring not long after being vaccinated.

Merely questioning is not sufficient reason to excommunicate.  Ask the Pope!

Expressing concern does not make him stupid, criminal, nor a poor researcher. Look at the actual paper itself. It's patently obvious that the Lancet was pressured by some very powerful entities into withdrawing Wakefield's research paper. A question that needs to be answered is "where does the Lancet get its funding"?

If using Wakefield as the big bugaboo and going undercover to try to smear parents for their legitimate concerns is considered worthy reporting by the CBC, then it has little more credibility in this regard than the most dubious of scandal sheets.

So what if some people get paid to speak to "anti-vaxx" groups? How is this different from any politician who's invited to speak at any event?  And considering that Wakefield's career was destroyed by the Lancet and the corporate media, it's a good thing that he has some means to make a living. The truth is that he can't get published!

Yet the CBC suggests he's given up research in favour of taking financial advantage of duped parents. Its article is not credible in any sense of the word; it's merely nasty insinuation and inaccurate gossip for purposes the rest of us can only surmise.

Just look at the prejudiced language in the CBC's header:

• CBC’s Marketplace dives into one of the world’s most harmful misinformation campaigns: the anti-vaccination movement.  We go undercover to expose the movement's inner workings and discover the business behind the message.

In other words, "we are like snakes in the grass".

• We also reveal how the spread of anti-vaxx misinformation impacts us on a subconscious level ...

As if the CBC isn't itself attempting to impact minds?  Its own headline's criticism can be applied to itself:

• 'Their goal is to create noise, to create uncertainty'.

They are no more reputable than the likes of Stephen Colbert [YouTube] who blames the anti-vaxx movement on "Russian trolls". One might think he couldn't get much sillier than that, but then he
proudly claims to be the son of an immunologist, as if that confers on him some special sort of knowledge.

So his father is a believer -- quite unlike some other immunologists:

From CircleofDocs: Top Immunologist Reveals Vaccines turn Immune System Against Us

Colbert literally screams that 700 (kids?), in a country of 330 million, contracted measles (could you find a smaller drop in the bucket????), but he doesn't say (because he doesn't know) how many of them had actually been vaccinated (it takes a while to activate), nor how many of the 700 were seriously ill or died, and that may well be because none were or did, and now, having had measles, they're immune for life!

Colbert doesn't seem interested in whether or not children have been injured by vaccines, but I can tell you that the US government isn't paying out zillions in vaccine compensation for no reason.

People who get their health information from clowns like Colbert and TV self-styled sleuths like Marketplace -- entities that couldn't exist without some of sort of scandal, manufactured or otherwise -- are examples of how dumbed-down massive numbers of people have become due to the unquestioning obedience to "experts" that's drilled into them from their first day in school.

Vaccine Choice Canada shows proof that vaccines are not mandatory in Canada, so people have every right to refuse them and protect their children from them. And tax-payer funded entities have no right to denigrate them!

Unfortunately, Vaccine Canada had to go all the way to the Wayback Machine to access that information (click on the "English" or "French" buttons and you'll see), which strongly suggests that your government no longer wants you to have this information: 

• Unlike some countries, immunization is not mandatory in Canada; it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution.

Canada has not interfered, however, in provincial moves to deprive unvaccinated children of an education in their public schools. On the other hand, Canada does have a mandatory reporting rule for adverse vaccine reactions.

Which means there is official concern that vaccines aren't necessarily safe, and if Canada ever has the gall to make them mandatory then we will be living in a dictatorship.

People who have compromised immune systems and believe that the unvaccinated are putting them at risk, need to investigate ongoing research into the possibility that vaccines can cause immune problems.

And the CBC needs to stop acting like a gossip rag. Here's my headline: The CBC uses Market Place to destroy anti-vaxxers in order to divert attention from its own failure to attract sufficient viewers/readers.

Time to watch the movie "Scandal Sheet" 1952 with Broderick Crawford.
IMDB: The editor of an exploitation newspaper commits a murder and assigns his protégé to investigate hoping to divert attention away from himself.

(Don't worry, it's in English; the Spanish is a subtitle choice).

Or how about "Scandal Sheet" 1985 with Burt Lancaster?
IMDB: The publisher of a celebrity gossip tabloid sets out to destroy an aging actor

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