| Press Room |
 |
| Immunization Action Coalition |
| Contact: Deborah L. Wexler, MD, Executive Director |
| (651) 647-9009 |
| Email: admin@immunize.org |
| Immunization Action Coalition |
| October 12, 2009 |
| |
| Letter to CBS Evening News regarding report How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders? originally broadcast on July 25, 2008 |
|
|
| In response to the report,
Immunization Action Coalition wrote the following letter to CBS
Managing Editor Katie Couric. In the letter, IAC's Executive
Director Deborah Wexler, MD, reminds Ms. Couric that the advocacy
journalism behind How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders? reduces CBS News' hard-earned reputation for journalistic
professionalism and has the potential to increase the risk that
children of viewers will contract serious illness. |
|
August 3,
2008
Katie Couric, Managing Editor
CBS Evening News
524 West 57th Street
6th Floor
New York, NY 10019-2902 |
|
| Dear Ms. Couric: |
|
| I am Executive Director of the Immunization Action Coalition
(IAC), a national nonprofit organization with eighteen years'
experience providing information about vaccines to healthcare
professionals and the public. Before founding the Coalition, I
practiced family medicine with a special focus on refugee and
immigrant health. |
|
| Your report of July 25, 2008, How Independent Are Vaccine
Defenders?, is an example of advocacy journalism that can harm the
health of the nation's children by unnecessarily undermining
confidence in the immunization community. |
|
| The report adopts a sensational tone of wrongdoing while saying
there has been none.
It refers to critics while naming none. It "discovers" facts that
it says are public record.
It arouses suspicions too ill-defined to be rebutted. It concludes
(unnamed) critics "worry that industry ties could impact the
advice given to the public about all those vaccines," and cites no
example of compromised advice ever occurring, either in the past
or present. |
|
| Leaving aside the reprehensible defamation this piece of pure
advocacy inflicts on exemplary pillars of the immunization
community, the report has the potential to increase the risk that
children of viewers will contract serious illness. |
|
Physicians who provide care for children will tell you they are
seeing increased hesitancy on the part of parents to have their
children immunized. Several state health departments have tracked
an increase in the number of parents claiming exemptions from
vaccination for their children. The safety of vaccines is not
changing. What is occurring is a drumbeat of media reporting that
incorrectly depicts the claims of vaccine opponents as
scientifically plausible.
|
|
| Advocacy journalism, or even the appearance of it, reduces CBS
News' hard-earned reputation for journalistic professionalism. By
giving credence to the views of fringe critics whose own
motivations are not reported on, CBS News elevates their
assertions to the level of those made by legitimate experts,
creating needless confusion among the lay public. |
|
| It has been said that a news organization has only its credibility
and reputation to rely on. CBS News' descent into advocacy has
damaged something far more important than its credibility and
reputation, and the children who endure serious illness will never
know of CBS News' supporting role in their suffering. |
|
| Sincerely, |
|
| Deborah L. Wexler, MD |
|
| cc: |
Katie
Boyle, Senior Producer |
| |
Jonathan LaPook, M.D., Medical Correspondent |
| |
Paul Friedman, Senior Vice President, CBS News |
|
|
| This page was updated
on August 4, 2008 |
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