CBC Responds to Dr. Lyons-Weiler, Dr. Lyons-Weiler Responds Back

CBC launched an all-out attack on the vaccine risk aware in February with an aired program that attacked by character and my integrity under the auspices of a “journalism”. I present the latest in three parts – my reply to their reply, and then a response from CBC forwarded by a concerned citizen with no ties are affiliation with me or IPAK. CBC has now double-down on their defamatory attack on me, and I would encourage everyone to write to CBC specifically bringing the matter to the attention of their President. Catherine Tait (email catherine.tait [at] cbc.ca).

Part I. Dr. Jack Brings CBC To School on Objective Journalistic Integrity – Again

Paul,
I am utterly confused by your response. First, I think you should know there is no need for you to “regret” my positions on my behalf, which is done twice in this non-apology.  I will speak for myself, thank you.  If you meant to say that you regret that your organizations’ behavior led me to those positions, then I could understand, and I would then reply “I’m sure you do”.

You should certainly regret that CBC was so callous toward parents of vaccine injured children that they have failed to perform due diligence on the reality of risks associated with vaccines. The actual risk/benefit ratio of anyvaccine schedule is unknown until a randomized, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial is conducted comparingthe long-term health outcomes of that schedule to a completely unvaccinated group- and only then if the placeboused is truly inert – such as saline.  When confronted with this fact, the proponents of current vaccines and thecurrent vaccine schedule claim that it would be unethical to conduct a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated randomizedtrial – presuming the net benefit ratio – and that is not Science.

Second, you statement on the risks of vaccines relative to the risk of the infections they are supposed to prevent is mystifying, given all of the material that I sent, and that I know others have sent to you.

I want to thank you for admitting in part the wrong doing in the misrepresentation of events around who said what.  It is important that I clarify, however:

0. I’m not an “anti-vaxxer”.  I’m for safer vaccines, Your inclusion of me whatsoever in your piece or your report is defamatory.

1. To whit, you say that your reporter never meant to malign my character.  How then, in the report, does she introduce the segment with “Others have more creative ways of fundraising?” She assaults my integrity.  She claims that I (he) “says he’s not an activist”.  Really?  That’s odd.  I actually do consider myself an activist – for objectivity in Science.  If she had bothered to ask me, I would have been happy to tell her just that. She goes on to insinuate that because I report my Scientific position that I think that vaccines do cause autism in some people, that I’m an activist, which is non-sequitur. Then she goes to say “how does he raise his money?” – as if donations to IPAK are “my” money.  “He wants to be seen as a Scientist” – well, we’ve dealt with that, but he insinuation is still there. The entire segment intro is sleazy.  I’m sorry, there is no other word for it. In no way is IPAK ever running a science day for which public donations are requested as a “quid pro quo” for anything else.  Therefore, as I stated, I would never say “That’s right” re: a statement like “So now we have quid pro quo”.  Your clarification now posits that your reported said “that way there is no quid pro quo” and the full video, without the cutaway, shows that by my reaction the idea is abhorrent to me.  The implications of that statement are of course the exact opposite of the implications of the first representation. You owe the public an apology of the form “We regret our error, and apologize if our representation led anyone to believe that IPAK or Dr. Lyons-Weiler implied a deal or work-around.  We now understand that Dr. Lyons-Weiler was offering to educate the public on the balance of science conducted on vaccine safety”.

Even with the correction you made, the video still implies I’m doing something wrong or unethical.  Does your definition of “journalistic integrity” include the narrating reporter stating that it is  “creative” of me to request donations w/registration to a Science Day?  Why? I see research organizations charging fees for conferences all of the time. What exactly was I “working around”?  Why would the undercover reporter even mention “quid pro quo” – there was no discussion of me talking to legislators; he mentioned no bill; he mentioned no meeting with legislators; what was the exact potential but non-extant quid pro quo?  Insinuations of this form are covert accusations. During the entire interaction, your reporter presumed that he was speaking with me in manner in which what I do – research on vaccine safety and the link between genetics, environment and neurodevelopmental and immunological disorders – is wrong.  Your reporter came up with a purely fictitious 400 people – lying to my assistant, and to me, about a purely fictitious event – and his math is also therefore a fiction.  Why 400?  Why not 4,000? This is not a proud day for CBC.

Even if there was real event, sometimes when I travel I also educate legislators, and sometimes I do not.  Big deal – a research institute running a conference is hardly material for an undercover reporter. When I do testify, there is never any understanding in any way that my testimonies to committees or to legislative bodies are in return for any donations related to another event as compensation to me; the funds go to IPAK via online registration, and are used to conduct scientific research.  No one influences my words, or my terms in any manner.  I choose my own position and topic, which points I make, which scientific studies I reference and which events I attend.  I recently testified in CT and there was no financial or material transfer, none expected, and no IPAK Science Day.  The public understands that I stand for objectivity in Science; your reporter and the resulting report, and your reply still leads to insinuations that in some way my participating in society’s attempts to formulate public health policy as a Scientist is wrong.  The “report” and the video your team published is a pack of lies and harmful to society deriving evidence-based public health practices based on the full balance of the available science.

2. There remains the issue of the purpose of the timing of the cut-away to the production studio, the existence of two edits of the words on the screen with the same video, all pointing to this particular segment being highly edited.  The “public” cannot “decide for themselves” because, as your reporter boasted to me, you broadcast from coast to coast.  Posting a video online is insufficient and will not reach the public you misinformed. Media professionals with years of studio production experience have informed me that it’s clear and obvious what’s happened to the video; what your team did was highly unethical. Your review of the matter is still misleading.  You should retract the story and the video and issue an apology to the public.

3. Your review of the matter not only also leaves open the impression that in some way I needed a work-around – it also implies that I need to distinguish myself from activists at the event.  That concept is, similarly, a construct in the mind of your reporter and it appears to be the product of speculation on your part.  I would expect an organization like yours to offer substantive reactions, not idle speculation of my motive as defense of your organizations’ bad behavior. I am free to travel and to conduct IPAK Science Days, seminars, participate in  workshops, etc. without any restrictions either as an IPAK event – or as an invited speaker.  Sometimes at conferences, etc. I AM personally compensated as a speaker via an honorarium, a standard practice in academic research, regardless of whether my lecture topic involves vaccines or not.  Your reporters and the report slandered me – and still defames me – by insinuating that in some way I am trying to “get around” something.  That construct is theirs; the reality is quite different.  Your reply commits the same offense.

4. If your reporters had wanted an honest piece, they would have identified themselves as reporters and asked those of us in attendance, including parents, of why they were there in first place.  They would have collected vaccine injury stories, but mainstream press has left that job to Polly Tommey and the entire VAXXED and VAXXED II team.  Your reporters participated in the current unethical practice of bullying, demeaning, and mischaracterizing people who put their children in harm’s way and paid the price for our fight against infectious disease. CHILDREN, Paul.  Parents of dead children should be treated with respect and, frankly awe, for fighting back in such a civilized manner against oppressive government agencies run by for-profit corporations.  These parents would have welcomed you with open arms.  Your pieces characterize the parents of vaccine injured children as weak-minded, and they find that treatment inhumane, as do I.

Let me ask you – did CBC or Marketplace receive funds from vaccine manufacturers to run this hit piece?  See, Paul, that’s how it’s done.  I am coming to your organization directly and asking you point blank, in the open.  Your company can deny it in your own terms.  You of course have no obligation to respond, but please let me know if my question is ambiguous or hard to understanding. True objective reporting would allow those being interviewed to speak for themselves. Instead, your team set up straw man after straw man and the only thing they exposed was their own ability to conduct yellow journalism.

I am grateful that you at least edited the online versions of the “report” and the video, but, Paul et al. at CBC Marketplace, and at CBC – the damage you have done is not to me.  It’s to the hundreds of thousands or millions who will now have to overcome their limited view of me as a scientist.  I have recently submitted a research study for peer review that shows that Chinese Scientists and American Scientists had viruses – from the wild – from SARS-CoV-2 in 2005 and 2008.   I will let you know when and if that study is accepted by peer reviewers for publication.  Do you think your hit piece will help this information come forward?  Or will the reviewers be more likely to reject my work because you and others slander me as “anti-vaccine” – when in reality, I have held, from the start, that I am pro-vaccine, and I am for safer vaccines. I am vaccine risk aware. As you should be. And as the President of your company should be.  Quite possibly, your piece will ultimately have served only to contribute to the retardation of progress in science in manners that adversely effect a safer and more civil future. I imagine you might regret that I feel that way, but in reality, your organization should regret its own behavior.

I willl give you a simple exercise in logic to consider. Since the piece also “outs me” for stating I think the Scientific evidence supports that vaccines may cause autism in some people, and since you represent Dr. Wakefield and Del Bigtree, and others (including me) as misleading the public with misinformation it is fair question to ask: Do your reporters, and you, stand by the statement that vaccines do NOT cause autism in some people?  If so, please produce the studies that show that a genetic risk to ASD from vaccines has been tested and has been ruled out – for each and every vaccine on the US or Canadian pediatric schedule.  The only studies capable of potentially ruling out your position are studies that measure both genetic information and environmental exposures, including vaccines.  I assure you, having read >2,000 studies on autism, including all of the studies on autism genetics, that no such study exists in humans.  As far as the overwhelming evidence you reference, your reporters failed to discover or disclose that not all vaccines on the US CDC’s recommended schedule have been tested for a causal relationship with autism. The MMR has been studied extensively, but not using study designs capable of discerning causality. All of this has been spelled out to you previously, by not retracting the video and the report, you leave the implication that vaccines are safe and effective for everyone.  They are not.  Your reporters, and you, misrepresent the Science by implying that the evidence is overwhelming that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism, vaccines and seizures, etc.  Your entire piece is, ironically, an exercise in confirmation bias. So let me ask you this: since you know that not all vaccines have been tested for a causal relationship with autism, how then does your team represent the so-called “anti-vaccine” movement leaders as a misleading the public when there is no scientific basic for the claim, made by CDC on their website, that VaccineS Do Not Cause Autism?

I am attaching my own assessment of the studies sent to POTUS by AAP that allegedly indicate that thimerosal is safe and that vaccines do not cause autism for your perusal.  There are at least 157 studiesthat support the idea that vaccines may cause autism in some people.  I would advise you to please stop repeating misinformation so we can get to the business of ending vaccine injury by reformulating vaccines.

Your reporters missed the story of their career. Please let me know if I can be of service to CBC News in any way in helping you clarify your organization’s obvious position that vaccines do not cause autism, and that vaccines are perfectly safe and effective for everyone. I would suggest that your CBC news team interview me, Del, Dr. Wakefield, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and parents of vaccine injured and killed children like Doug and Rishanne Golden (cc’d) whose daughter, Haleigh, died of seizures brought on by a meningococcal vaccine.  

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200218/haleighs-heart-anti-vaccine-billboard-catches-eyes-on-worthington-road

And Emily Tarsell (cc’d), whose daughter  Christine died following receipt of the Gardasil vaccine, covered by CBS news, according to the US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program:

https://www.capitalgazette.com/opinion/columns/ac-ce-column-tarsell-20180907-story.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xc4yBNV-U0http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions/MORAN.TARSELL033012.pdf

Or perhaps the Barrett family, who son, Colton, took his own life so as to not burden his family after becoming severelydisabled following receipt of the Gardasil vaccine.

https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2018/01/08/what-and-who-killed-colton-berret/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHYmb9Hwj4A

Or, since he is Canadian, perhaps Mr. Ted Kuntz, whose son Joshua suffered a severe injury from the DPT vaccine, leading to a lifelong seizure disorder that ultimately took his life in 2017

http://www.lifenews.ca/announcement/7150281-kuntz-joshua-anthony

I’d also suggest that your team interview Mary Holland, Esq. re: Dr.

Wakefield, whom your reply so callously referenced as
“disgraced”.  Again, no due diligence from your organization; you are merely parroting tropes that have been repeated so oftenthat people think they are fair game. They are not.  Your reply now contributes to the defamation of Dr. Wakefield. Dr. Wakefield’s findings of autoimmunological gasteroenteritis associated with autism – and postulated by parents in his study to be related to the MMR vaccination – are now being validated by many new studies.

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@joyce-bowen/the-real-story-of-dr-andrew-wakefield-and-mmr-by-mary-holland-jd

https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=gasteroenteritis+autism&addon=opensearch

You could interview Dr. Neil Miller on his study that shows that by far most morbidity and mortality associated with vaccines occursfollowing receipt of >1 vaccine in one day.

https://www.jpands.org/vol21no2/miller.pdf

That would be a public service and a good use of an objective news media organization.

I know parents whose children are able, for the first time, at the age of 17, able to get through a day without wearing a diaper.  This after detoxifying their children – against the “consensus” of allopathic medicine – that vaccine metals are perfectly safe and unrelatedto autism or chronic illness in any way.  I can put you in contact with these parents if your team would care to report objectively.

Mainstream medical will of course dispute all of these as “anecdotes”.  I cannot.  I’m a scientist.  They are “initial observations”.

Your team now has, from me and others, more than enough information to begin reporting objectively on current vaccines and vaccine schedules.

I feel that I must assure you in my offer to assist CBC News, there is absolutely no quid pro quo.  I have an obligation to return now to conducting research on our vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study, and also on the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which threatens millions, and for which there is no vaccine, but for which we know from animal studies on SARS vaccines might pose a special threat to anyone vaccinated against the SARS spike protein. From that I have surmised the hypothesis that perhaps there is special risk or that may be been exposed to the SARS spike protein during the last outbreak.  That ideanow has been picked up by other scientists reacting to the observational data available so far that individuals re-infected with SARS-CoV-2 fare far worse.

Please have someone at CBC look into the risk to people w/past exposure to SARS.  I am concerned especially for people who were in Toronto during the 2003 SARS outbreak. 

Below are the recommended readings for your Canadian scientist colleagues.  I’m cc’ing Dr. Christopher Shaw who can step you through them.

Sincerely,

James Lyons-Weiler, PhDCEO/Director

The Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge

Immunization with inactivated Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus vaccine leads to lung immunopathology on challenge with live virus. “Lung mononuclear infiltrates occurred in all groups after virus challenge but with increased infiltrates that contained eosinophils and increases in the eosinophil promoting IL-5 and IL-13 cytokines only in the vaccine groups. Inactivated MERS-CoV vaccine appears to carry a hypersensitive-type lung pathology risk from MERS-CoV infection that is similar to that found with inactivated SARS-CoV vaccines from SARS-CoV infection.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27269431

Vaccine efficacy in senescent mice challenged with recombinant SARS-CoV bearing epidemic and zoonotic spike variants.“VRP-N vaccines not only failed to protect from homologous or heterologous challenge, but resulted in enhanced immunopathology with eosinophilic infiltrates within the lungs of SARS-CoV-challenged mice. VRP-N-induced pathology presented at day 4, peaked around day 7, and persisted through day 14, and was likely mediated by cellular immune responses.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17194199

Immunization with Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara-Based Recombinant Vaccine against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Is Associated with Enhanced Hepatitis in Ferrets “Immunized ferrets developed a more rapid and vigorous neutralizing antibody response than control animals after challenge with SARS-CoV; however, they also exhibited strong inflammatory responses in liver tissue.”

https://jvi.asm.org/content/78/22/12672.abstract

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/303/5660/944.full

Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate  “…a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice…”

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502

Part II. Paul Hambleton’s Defamatory and Reckless Response

James Lyons-Weiler, PhD 
On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 7:53 AM PAUL HAMBLETON <xxxxxxxxx@cbc.ca> wrote:

Dear James Lyons-Weiler:

I am writing in reply to your email of January 27 addressed to CBC News Marketplace and journalists Asha Tomlinson and Katie Pedersen concerning the “misrepresentation” you find in a video story about the anti-vaccination movement broadcast on the January 17 edition of Marketplace and in a companion CBCNews.ca story posted online the same day under the headline, “Hidden cameras capture misinformation, fundraising tactics used by anti-vaxx movement.”

As the Director of Journalistic Standards, Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief of CBC News, asked me to reply to you directly.

Let me say immediately that I sincerely regret you feel your words were misrepresented in both stories. They were not, but upon review we discovered that we did make an error transcribing the words our own journalist used in one section. I’ll explain what I mean. But before I do, I want to be clear about the Marketplace story.

It focusses on how the anti-vaccination movement has convinced consumers – often the parents of young children – that vaccines are dangerous. Vaccination is widely accepted by medical science and government health authorities as a safe and beneficial way to protect children from the potentially serious consequences of a range of sometimes deadly childhood diseases. Yet, in the face of what is commonly described as overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, the anti-vaccination movement argues the risk is not in the disease, but in the vaccine given to prevent it. It would appear to be an unsustainable position, yet the influence of those worried about vaccination is growing along with their numbers. 

Both stories looked at how the anti-vaccination messaging is effective at encouraging doubt because of the way it manipulates emotions and biases. The online story also sets out some of the common concerns Canadians have expressed about the dangers of vaccines and explains why experts say they have no reason to be worried. 

One segment, the focus of your concern, looks briefly at how the movement raises money. Del Bigtree, a former television producer, controversial filmmaker and a prominent activist, and disgraced researcher Andrew Wakefield charge thousands to speak at events and have raised millions to fund their cause.

Other figures associated with the movement, the online story said, find “workarounds,” such as you have. You said you are “just educating” and said you didn’t charge because it would make you an “international lobbyist.” The online story continued this way:

“So, what I would rather do is, I do a science day the day before,” he said. “I’d run an event where you … charge admission as per my website.”

“Sounds like a promo thing for you, a marketing thing for you,” said our journalist. “Now we’ve got a quid pro quo.” 

“That’s right,” he said, later detailing through an assistant that for a group of 400 people, he would want about $20 US per person, netting around $10,000 Cdn.

You wrote that this online story “misattributed a phrase about ‘quid pro quo’ to your reporter, and then put words in my mouth: ’” The story is “incorrect,” you wrote, “I am always careful” to say “’it’s NOT a quid pro quo.’” “And I categorically deny saying ‘Right.’”

After reviewing the original tape, I can tell you that we did not accurately reflect what our journalist said in that exchange. This is what our journalist said:

“Sounds like a promo thing for you, a marketing thing for you,” said our journalist. “That way it’s not a quid pro quo.” 

To which you responded, “That’s right, exactly”

For the record, in the conversation at the time, our journalist then said: “That’s a dirty word, nowadays.” 

You responded: “I don’t….Listen, if the worst thing I’m doing is talking with people about aluminum accumulation trends in children from vaccines…”

With respect to the video story, to be clear, you did not use the phrase, “No quid pro quo.” Again the subtitles for what our journalist said were not correct in that section. They should have read: “That way it’s not a…  quid pro quo, I guess” 

We have corrected the subtitles on the broadcast piece, and we have also corrected the wording in the online story.  As well, we added the video of the full exchange to our Youtube story for transparency so you can watch it yourself.

Here is the link to the program episode on Youtube

You can see the updated online story here 

Let me emphasize that we accurately reported what you said. The business arrangements you outlined speak for themselves. I appreciate that they are of importance to you, but whether they do or do not amount to a quid pro quo is not germane to the story. Readers and viewers can reach their own conclusions about that. Nevertheless, we did mis-transcribe the words of our own journalist and we should not have.

NOW HERE I MUST OBJECT – THE SO-CALLED ‘BUSINESS ARRANGEMENTS WERE A FANCIFUL MADE-UP SCENARIO OF 400 PEOPLE – A NUMBER THE MALE REPORTER, ERIC, PULLED OUT OF HIS OWN MIND. HE WAS INFORMED IF WE HAD MANY ATTENDING WE COULD SUGGEST SMALLER DONATIONS – JLW

Finally, you also drew our attention to the reporter “hurtfully and irresponsibly” saying in the video story that you “want to be seen as a scientist.” You attached your curriculum vitae, saying “I am now, and will die, a Scientist, regardless of your reporter’s insensitive and uninformed implication that I am not.”

I regret you took offence, but I can assure you no offence was intended, nor do I believe offense exists in the reporter’s words. It is simply a description intended to distinguish you, a scientist, from the other prominent speakers at the event who are described as activists. 

The segment explains that two of the prominent figures at the event raise money from speaking fees, but that you take a different approach. It says that you have “set up a science-based non-profit” and explain that you “are not an activist.” You “want to be seen as a scientist”, the reporter says, so you propose a “workaround,” presumably as a way of re-enforcing that distinction. That’s when you say you would rather do a “science day.”

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention, and for giving me an opportunity to respond.

Sincerely,

Paul 

Paul Hambleton

Director of Journalistic Standards

CBC News

Cc. Jack Nagler, CBC Ombudsman

      Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief, CBC News

Part III – The Cut-And-Paste Repsonse they are Sending to CBC Viewers who have Written to the Ombudsman to Complain.

Dear Bob Martin:

I am writing in reply to your email of January 27 addressed to CBC Ombudsman, Jack Nagler, expressing your concern over a video story about the anti-vaccination movement broadcast on the January 17 edition of CBC Marketplace. “I’m deeply concerned,” you wrote, above a link to Dr. James Lyons-Weiler’s January 19 blog post that chiefly alleged the story had misrepresented what he said. 

As the Director of Journalistic Standards, Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief of CBC News, asked me to reply to you directly.

While I regret you are disappointed in CBC, your assertion that our journalists acted unethically is without foundation. Dr. Lyons-Weiler has written to CBC and, as you know, posted at length on his web page his allegation that he was misrepresented in the story. He was not. But I do agree with you that there is a point in the video story could have been edited in a fashion that made that clearer. I’ll explain what I mean. But before I do, I want to be clear about the Marketplace story.

It focusses on how the anti-vaccination movement has convinced consumers – often the parents of young children – that vaccines are dangerous. Vaccination is widely accepted by medical science and government health authorities as a safe and beneficial way to protect children from the potentially serious consequences of a range of sometimes deadly childhood diseases. Yet, in the face of what is commonly described as overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, the anti-vaccination movement argues the risk is not in the disease, but in the vaccine given to prevent it. It would appear to be an unsustainable position, yet the influence of those worried about vaccination is growing along with their numbers. 

Both the video story and an accompanying CBCNews.ca online story posted on January 17 under the headline, “Hidden cameras capture misinformation, fundraising tactics used by anti-vaxx movement” looked at how the anti-vaccination messaging is effective at encouraging doubt because of the way it manipulates emotions and biases. The online story also sets out some of the common concerns Canadians have expressed about the dangers of vaccines and explains why experts say they have no reason to be worried. 

One segment, the focus of your concern, looks briefly at how the movement raises money. Del Bigtree, a former television producer, controversial filmmaker and a prominent activist, and discredited researcher Andrew Wakefield charge thousands to speak at events and have raised millions to fund their cause.

Other figures associated with the movement, the online story said, find “workarounds,” such as Dr. Lyons-Weiler has. He said he is “just educating” and that he didn’t charge because it would make him an “international lobbyist.” The online story continued this way:

The original online story continued this way:

“So, what I would rather do is, I do a science day the day before,” he said. “I’d run an event where you … charge admission as per my website.”

“Sounds like a promo thing for you, a marketing thing for you,” said our journalist. “Now we’ve got a quid pro quo.” 

“That’s right,” he said, later detailing through an assistant that for a group of 400 people, he would want about $20 US per person, netting around $10,000 Cdn.

After reviewing the original tape, I can tell you that we made a transcription error in what our journalist said in that exchange. This is what our journalist said:

“Sounds like a promo thing for you, a marketing thing for you. That way it’s not a…. quid pro quo, I guess.” 

To which he responded, “That’s right…. exactly”

For the record, in the conversation at the time, our journalist then said: “That’s a dirty word, nowadays.” 

Mr. Lyons-Weiler responded: “I don’t….Listen, if the worst thing I’m doing is talking with people about aluminum accumulation trends in children from vaccines…”

With respect to the video story, to be clear, Mr. Lyons-Weiler did not use the phrase, “No quid pro quo.” Again the subtitles for what our journalist said were not correct in that section. They should have read: “That way it’s not a…  quid pro quo, I guess” 

We have corrected the subtitles on the broadcast piece, and we have also corrected the wording in the online story.  As well, we added the video of the full exchange to our Youtube story for transparency so you can watch it yourself.

Here is the link to the program episode on Youtube

You can see the updated online story here 

Let me emphasize that we accurately reported what he said. The business arrangements he outlined speak for themselves. Whether they do or do not amount to a quid pro quo is not germane to the story. Readers and viewers can reach their own conclusions about that. Nevertheless, we did mis-transcribe the words of our own journalist and we should not have. We regret that error.  

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention, and for giving me an opportunity to respond. I hope my reply has assured you of the continuing integrity of Marketplace and CBC News.

If you do not find this answer satisfactory, you may wish to ask CBC Ombudsman, Jack Nagler, to review the matter. The Office of the Ombudsman, an independent and impartial body reporting directly to the President, is responsible for evaluating program compliance with the CBC’s journalistic policies. The Ombudsman may be reached by telephone at 416-205-2978, or by mail at Box 500, Terminal A, Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6, or by fax at  (416) 205-2825, or by e-mail at ombud@cbc.ca

Sincerely, 

Paul

Paul Hambleton

Director of Journalistic Standards

CBC News

Cc. Jack Nagler, CBC Ombudsman

      Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief, CBC News