Exclusive: BBC Misinformation Reporter Fails to Disclose Experts Financial Conflicts in Piece About... Financial Conflicts
Another state-sponsored "fact-checker" falls afoul of fact-checking...
The state-funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has become known for its journalistic malpractice in recent years and last week was no exception.
On December 13th, BBC ‘Global Disinformation’ journalist Jacqui Wakefield published a libellous report on entrepreneur Steven Bartlett’s viral podcast, The Diary of a CEO, alleging that it promoted “harmful health misinformation.”
Wakefield and her team analysed 23 health-related episodes, identifying dozens of claims they say “go against extensive scientific evidence.”
The episodes in question included interviews with figures such as Dr Aseem Malhotra, an outspoken critic of the Covid vaccines, and Dr Thomas Seyfried, a well-known advocate of the low-carb ketogenic diet.
To challenge these claims, Wakefield referenced four experts: Dr David Grimes, Professor Heidi Larson, Dr Partha Kar, and Dr Liz O'Riordan, who disputed the views shared by Bartlett’s guests.
Wakefield then highlighted Bartlett’s failure to disclose his investments in certain health companies he promoted.
She noted that two Facebook adverts featuring Bartlett had recently been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). Both adverts promoted products by Huel and Zoe, companies in which Bartlett is an investor.
Curious if Wakefield’s investigation had been conducted objectively, I dug into the backgrounds of the experts cited and found some interesting conflicts.
Ones that you’d expect a “disinformation” reporter to pick up on…
Dr David Grimes
Taking particular umbrage to Seyfried’s support of the ketogenic diet to help battle cancer on Bartlett’s podcast, Wakefield recalled Dr David Grimes saying, “podcasters may claim they are sharing information, but they are actually sharing harmful misinformation”.
"That's a very different and not empowering thing. It actually imperils all our health," he added.
In other words, Grimes has a huge issue with people even discussing treatments outside the scientific orthodoxy. It’s an issue he argues can be fatal if done by an influencer.
What Wakefield omitted in her introduction on Grimes—unlike that of Bartlett—is that he writes (likely paid writing) for several publications that have persistently toed the line for Big Pharma, including, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and The Byline Times.
Anyone privy to the output of these outlets knows the extent of their bias.
Grimes has also previously argued that vaccine passports should be seen as a mark of solidarity rather than a threat to liberty, framed beliefs about vaccine’s causing deaths as akin to believing Batman is real, and aired his support for lockdowns.
On his X account, he can frequently be seen mocking those that purvey in “conspiracies”—once calling a fellow X user an ”anti-vax ghoul” for simply questioning the cause of death of Friends star Matthew Perry.
More to the point, Wakefield omitted critical conflicts concerning Grimes’s employer Trinity College Dublin.
Over the last three years, according to the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association’s disclosure database, Trinity College has received multiple payments from pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, cancer treatment giant Roche, Pfizer, Sanofi Aventi—collaborator of BioNTech that helped manufacture Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, and Gilead, manufacturer of the controversial Covid antiviral drug Remdesivir.
Some of these payments totalled over £20,000 in a single instalment—not what you would consider modest.
In June 2023, Trinity college also awarded honorary degrees to Professors Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, co-founders of BioNTech and the married couple behind the Pfizer vaccine.
(If you want to delver deeper into Grimes, I found this piece in The Journal of Scientific Practice and Integrity, suggesting that he may be Ireland’s modern reincarnation of Narcissus as he repeatedly cites… himself in his own analysis).
Professor Heidi Larson
Wakefield then quoted Professor Heidi Larson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who criticised the impact of “health misinformation” on podcasts like Bartlett’s.
“They [the guests] are overstretching,” Larson said. “It pushes people away from evidence-based medicine. They avoid treatments that might have side effects, even if those treatments could save their lives.”
In 2021, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) disclosure database, Larson received in excess of £600 from Merck & Dohme, the co-producer of antiviral Covid drug Molnupiravir.
Molnupiravir came under heavy scrutiny in 2023 when a major study in Nature found that it drives the creation of new virus variants.
Additionally, a randomised control trial (RCT—the highest standard of clinical evidence) showed the antiviral did not reduce Covid-associated hospitalisations or death among high-risk vaccinated adults.
Dr Partha Kar
Next up was Dr Partha Kar, a National Specialty Advisor on Diabetes for NHS England, who Wakefield merely referenced.
According to the ABPI, in 2021, Kar received payments from Pfizer for £900 and Sanofi Aventis—collaborator of Pfizer and BioNTech—for £683. In 2022, Pfizer paid him an addition £1,800, with Teva—a company that “assisted the UK’s COVID-19 testing program”—paying him a further £630.
Dr Liz O'Riordan
Similar to Kar, Wakefield only referenced retired breast surgeon, Dr Liz O'Riordan, naturally lending perceived authority to her broader highlighting of the dangers of “health misinformation”.
According to the ABPI database, O’Riordan accepted payments from Pfizer in 2021 for £3,300, £3,800 in 2022, and £2,381.00 in 2023. She also received £800 from co-producer of Molnupiravir, Merck & Dohme, in 2021.
Cécile Simmons
In addition to the four experts cited, Wakefield quoted Cécile Simmons from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank focused on disinformation research.
Simmons suggested that content like Bartlett’s can help grow audiences. “Health-related clickbait content with scary titles does really well online, with the algorithm amplifying it,” she said.
The implication was clear: if health misinformation is physically harmful, it must then be regulated (censored) online.
A search of the ISD’s donors reveals funding from the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as contributions from the European Union and the United Nations.
The organisation has partnered with the UK Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and UK Home Office Commission for Countering Extremism.
The list also includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created by Bill Gates—the very man, who, in September 2019, invested $55 million in BioNTech, a company that would go to develop one of the most widely bought and used Covid vaccines.
During the third quarter of 2021, the Foundation sold 86% of its BioNTech holdings, reducing its shares from 1,038,674 to 148,674. The sale occurred during BioNTech's peak performance quarter, with shares averaging around $300 each, resulting in a profit of approximately $260 million—over 15 times Gates’s initial investment.
Thoughts
Wakefield failed to disclose all of these conflicts involving Grimes, Larson, Kar, O'Riordan, and Simmons, effectively misleading readers by omission.
If BBC disinformation reporters are going to question the financial ties of the individuals they investigate, they should, at the very least, apply the same standard to the experts they cite.
It doesn’t mean these experts are necessarily biased but it suggests that they could be and gives readers objective terrain to judge accordingly.
Wakefield herself acknowledged in her conclusion that the BBC team had “reviewed only a limited proportion of guests"—just as, it seems, they had reviewed only a limited range of experts.
I’ll shortly be making a complaint to the BBC and will report their response.
*UPDATE: The BBC responded to me by saying that since a number of weeks had passed since my complaint, they have decided not to respond. What a cosy, convenient policy...
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The BBC is so scared of being irrelevant and ignored that it is running around screaming that every new form of media is dangerous and bad and shouldn't be allowed. So stupid because they are simply making themselves irrelevant and ignored. Even people who don't bother with the alternative news forums no longer bother with most of the BBC's output because they don't trust it and don't like the message. So sad.
“Grimes has also previously argued that vaccine passports should be seen as a mark of solidarity” he’s right but it is the absence of a passport that is now a mark of solidarity.
Stop watching “live” broadcast TV and then stop paying for the license.