Exclusive — James O’Keefe: Pharmaceutical Companies Drive COVID-19 Media Corruption

James O’Keefe, founder and CEO of Project Veritas and author of American Muckraker: Rethinking Journalism for the 21st Century, noted on Monday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with special guest host Jerome Hudson that cable news networks have financial conflicts of interest corrupting their conduct regarding COVID-19 information due to their sales of advertising to pharmaceutical companies.

O’Keefe observed how many news media outlets deceptively market themselves as disinterested observers, rather than shapers, of events. In the context of COVID-19, he said news media outlets’ financial conflicts of interest related to pharmaceutical companies determines what and how they frame information.

“These network news television stations don’t want to be in an exposed position where they’re seen as affecting events rather than just reacting to them,” he stated, “and that’s partially due to the economic issues where they have advertisers that direct their editorial content, and especially pharmaceutical company advertisements.”

He added, “In a time when the number one story in the world is this COVID pandemic, we need independent journalism [that is] not at the beck and call of pharmaceutical companies.”

Project Veritas’s growing acquisition of whistleblowers across varying institutions and sectors is forging a path for journalism in the modern era amid growing corruption across government and industry, O’Keefe held.

“Whistleblowing [is] really the future of journalism,” he remarked. He added, “[American Muckraker] was my attempt to talk about how to do journalism in clown world.” 

He continued, “It’s important for everyone to understand what it’s going to take to prevent the collapse of society, and the way to do that is through vis-a-vis information —  truthful information — that we have to expose. … There’s a sort of a new era, and there’s a mass movement of people that we’re trying to foster.”

O’Keefe said targets of Project Veritas’s investigations do not sue whistleblowers who reveal information through Project Veritas due to fears of disclosures compelled by the legal discovery process.

He stated, “[Targets of our investigations] stopped suing us, because they quickly realized that we could depose them. So we sued the New York Times for defamation. We’ve been successful, and they do not want to be deposed. They would hate us showing the answers to these questions, and that’s why they don’t sue our whistleblowers, because they don’t want to be exposed for who they are and what they are.”

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