From Big Pharma's Mouth to Your Children's Ears
From Big Pharma's Mouth to Your Children's Ears
Kids are being targeted by an unsavory alliance of corporations & government
This week, beloved children’s show Sesame Street utilized its platform to market mRNA injections, which recently received Emergency Use Authorization for children under 5, directly to toddlers. The clip can be seen below:
While this move was unsurprising, it is distasteful from an ethical standpoint. The likelihood that the show’s creators were moved artistically to peddle pharmaceutical products to little children is miniscule. So then what was this perfidy?
A cursory search reveals that Sesame Workshop, the Ad Council, COVID Collaborative, CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have teamed up to “provide answers to parents’ question on vaccines for children aged 6 months and up”. Yet this claim seems dubious, given that few parents turn to Elmo for medical advice. The situation merits further investigation.
Many who have followed the pandemic closely are well aware of the criticisms surrounding the CDC and AAP, so I will allow the reader to make their own inferences about the involvement of those organizations in this scheme. But what of the Ad Council and the COVID Collaborative?
The Ad Council was formed in 1942 by corporate interests to promote the war effort and has ever since enjoyed close ties with the executive branch. In “The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960”, Robert Griffith writes:
“the Advertising Council often espoused a “corporatist” ideology which emphasized cooperation between business and government; and like the Business Advisory Council, the National Petroleum Council, and other quasi-public corporatist bodies, it sought to establish close, reciprocal relationships with the executive branch. The Council enthusiastically supported the new foreign and national security policies of the Truman Administration, but strongly opposed its domestic programs. By contrast, the Council supported both the foreign and domestic policies of the Eisenhower Administration, and helped promote the administration's economic programs in a series of major advertising campaigns”
Griffith also writes that Ad Council campaigns can often be characterized as “a consensus manufactured by America’s corporate leaders, packaged by the advertising industry, and merchandised through the channels of mass communication.”
Thus, the Ad Council flies under the radar, injecting government and industry talking points into the public consciousness. And who are some of Ad Council’s the current corporate contributors? Facebook, Google, Verizon and Apple, to name a few. But in the context of the Ad Council’s strategy to use children’s shows to market drugs to kids, two major contributors stick out in particular: Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. So to be clear, the Biden (and previously Trump) administration collaborates with the Ad Council, who are funded largely by tech, communications and pharmaceutical corporations, to bring this sort of material to your children. (As a side note, Chinese corporation TikTok Inc. is another major Ad Council contributor. Make of that what you will.)
These entities make no attempt to hide such activities, because they know the vast majority of Americans won’t bother looking into the matter critically. Indeed, a March 2020 press release from the Ad Council announced that the “Ad Council, along with White House, CDC, HHS and Major Media Networks, to Launch National PSAs in response to Coronavirus Pandemic”. This work is ongoing and includes the “country’s largest media companies” who have “committed to use their channels to support consistent messaging across TV, radio, social media, outdoor and digital media”. In other words, only one narrative has been allowed, and the current one involves marketing the newly (emergency use) authorized COVID-19 shots for children between 6 months and 5 years of age.
And the COVID Collaborative? The number of problematic entities in the Collaborative is too extensive to cover in detail here, but includes organizations such as The Rockefeller Foundation and the National Association of Manufacturers. From an industry newsletter:
COVID Collaborative includes expertise from across Republican and Democratic administrations at the federal, state and local levels, including former FDA commissioners, CDC directors, and U.S. surgeon generals; former U.S. secretaries of Education, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services; leading public health experts and institutions that span the country; the Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers and U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the NAACP, UnidosUS and the National Congress of American Indians; the Skoll Foundation, The Allstate Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation; and associations representing those on the front lines, from the American Public Health Association and Association of State and Territorial Health Officials to the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools.
In addition, the personnel comprising the Collaborative’s Advisory Council include a retinue of questionable characters from the government and pharmaceutical industry. To name a few, Barbara Bush (daughter of George W. Bush), disgraced former CDC director Tom Frieden, Ezekiel Emmanuel, and noted COVID maximizer Andy Slavitt.
One can see that there are many interests that have a hand in curating what is seen in the media we ingest, and the health of our children might not be their top priority. So the next time you overhear Elmo and friends talking to your child, remember that it is the voices of the administration and corporations that are really speaking.
References:
“Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Receives FDA Emergency Use Authorization for Children 6 Months through 4 Years of Age”. June 17, 2021. https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-receives-fda-emergency-use
“The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960”. Griffith, R. 2012. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-history-review/article/abs/selling-of-america-the-advertising-council-and-american-politics-19421960/FD882140447065C31D46F1118A486C7A
“Ad Council, along with White House, CDC, HHS and Major Media Networks, to Launch National PSAs in response to Coronavirus Pandemic”. March 17, 2020. https://www.adcouncil.org/learn-with-us/press-releases/ad-council-along-with-white-house-cdc-hhs-and-major-media-networks-to-launch-national-psas-in-response-to-coronavirus-pandemic
Sesame Street's Elmo and His Dad Louie Star in New PSA Informing Parents of Young Children about COVID-19 Vaccines. June 28, 2022. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sesame-streets-elmo-and-his-dad-louie-star-in-new-psa-informing-parents-of-young-children-about-covid-19-vaccines-301576174.html
Contributors - Ad Council. 2021. https://www.adcouncil.org/contributors/
COVID Collaborative - National Advisory Council. 2022. https://www.covidcollaborative.us/about