We’ve brought together forensic journalists and expert talent from across the BBC, including our analysis editor Ros Atkins and disinformation correspondent Marianna Spring and their teams. In all, BBC Verify comprises about 60 journalists who will form a highly specialised operation with a range of forensic investigative skills and open source intelligence (Osint) capabilities at their fingertips.
BBC – Explaining the ‘how’ – the launch of BBC Verify
They’ll be fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and – crucially – explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.
Ever since the BBC decided that the world needed a team of “fact checkers” to keep us all safe from disinformation and lies we at CJs were made to sit up and pay attention. The reason for this is that we had regularly caught and regularly catch the BBC itself spreading lies and disinformation and indeed we highlight such occurrences when we find them. So was the BBC setting up a team, not to curtail the flow of disinformation, but to control the flow of disinformation, we pondered?
It seems to be that way when you become aware of just how many times we at CJs have caught the Corporation lying and allowing itself to be used as a vehicle to spread lies and information.
Such as…
BBC Radio 5 Live with Adrian Chiles – Adrian invited a Matron of Kings College Hospital in London, Laura Duffell to his show when she lied saying “We have a whole ward of children [with Covid] here” – CJs took our complaint to the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit who upheld it.
Or the times we caught the BBC’s very own disinformation reporter, Marianna Spring, spreading disinformation here and here. We emailed both her and her boss Mike Wendling asking them to comment on and correct the lies. They both responded by blocking us on Twitter even though it was email communications we sent to them. Then the Facebook-funded FactCheck.org was rolled out to support the disinformation that we called Mike Wendling out for spreading so we challenged FullFact who accepted that they had got this wrong too.
Or the time when we caught the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster and Stephen Nolan Shows spreading lies live on air. Lies that were originally propagated by another lying doctor, Emma Keelan then of the Belfast Mater Hospital, only for both shows to ignore us for almost a year when we were again forced to take our complaints to the BBC ECU who again upheld them.
Or more recently when we reported a BBC journalist for breaching Editorial Standards as she all but begged Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for a hug whilst the cameras were rolling. The BBC again sided with us in our complaint.
Or when we caught the BBC’s William Crawley spreading lies on his show that was, oddly enough, about ‘tackling misinformation’.
These are just some of the exposés we have run on the BBC, all of which full details can be found on this website with all the receipts, as is standard practice for CJs.
You can post any old nonsense on this [Twitter] platform
Shayan Sardarizadeh
So it is with little shock that we are forced to highlight yet another deception, this time by the self-identified “BBC Fact Checker” Shayan Sardarizadeh. I say “forced to highlight” because we have addressed Shayan’s disinformation on Twitter directly with him and urged him to correct it. He neither acknowledged our attempts at getting his attention nor the fact he was wrong in his tweets. Given that Shayan follows us on Twitter it is not possible he didn’t see our communications.
The Backdrop
On the 17th of June this year, @ChuckCallesto tweeted the following:
This tweet soon found the attention of the BBC “disinformation” reporter who took issue with it claiming that what Robert Kennedy was saying was “absolute and utter rubbish“. Shayan goes on to explain why it is ‘utter rubbish ‘ –
“Since nearly 70% of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, this ridiculous claim means the vast majority of the world population must have died by now.”
What Shayan is doing is reacting emotively and commenting on the tweet without having read the underpinning reports and thus is drawing wrong conclusions.
Next, we will lay out what RFK actually said and show how Shayan got this so terribly wrong.
What Did RFK Say?
Firstly, the interview is from the 23rd of September 2022 with Brian Rose from London Real. Brian posted the segment in question on his YouTube channel on the 15th of June 2023, it was then picked up by Chuck Callesto on the 17th of June and then by Shayan via Chuck on the 18th of June.
We have transcribed Robert Kennedy’s comments below;
In order to prevent 1 Covid death, they had to give 22,000 vaccinations. And what that means is, if you’re going to give 22,000 vaccinations to prevent 1 Covid death, you better make sure that that vaccine is not killing anybody from other causes. And there’s a graph that summarises all-cause mortality, so how many people died in the vaccine group during that 6-month period and how many people died in the placebo group and in the vaccine group 21 people died over 6 months, of the 22,000, of all causes, and in the placebo group only 17 died.
That means, if you wanna do, if you wanna to follow their protocols and their estimates, if you take the vaccine you’re 21% more likely to die over 6 months than people who don’t, of all causes.
You’re half as likely to die from Covid but you’re 21% more likely to die from some other cause. And if you wanna look closer and say, what was killing these other people, it was cardiac arrest. There were 5 cardiac arrest deaths in the vaccine group and only one in the placebo group. What that means, that if you take that vaccine you’re 500% more likely to die from a fatal cardiac arrest over the next 6 months than if you don’t. What it also means, is that for every life they save by preventing a death from Covid they are killing 4 people from cardiac arrest.
RFK to Brian Rose, 23 September, 2022
Breaking Down RFK’s Claims
Claim Number One: “In order to prevent 1 Covid death, they had to give 22,000 vaccinations.”
The data to support this claim comes from a November 2021 paper published in The News England Journal of Medicine entitled, “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine through 6 Months” and can be found in Table S4 in the Supplementary Appendix (supplied below for convenience).
The study involved 43,847 participants 16 years of age or older who were followed over a 6-month period. They were split into two groups, one group had received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine (21,926) and the other group had a saline solution, the Placebo group (21,921). During the course of the trial, 15 people from the vaccine group died from any cause whilst 14 people from the unvaccinated group died from any cause, as noted in Table S4 above.
RFK rounded the numbers of both groups to 22,000 and highlighted the difference of 1 death between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups and noted that to save 1 life it took 22,000 vaccinations.
Claim Number Two: “And there’s a graph that summarises all-cause mortality, so how many people died in the vaccine group during that 6-month period and how many people died in the placebo group and in the vaccine group 21 people died over 6 months, of the 22,000, of all causes, and in the placebo group only 17 died.”
To many people, this claim would seem to contradict the first claim, which spoke of ‘saving one life‘ as here the difference between 21 and 17 is 4, however, I will clear this confusion up below.
The data supplied to the authors of the 6-month study [above] was supplied by Pfizer, as per the Supplementary Appendix:
It is unclear as to when the authors received this data from Pfizer but in Pfizer’s own data submitted to the US FDA dated 11th of August 2021, on page 23 (supplied below for convenience), they write:
“From Dose 1 through the March 13, 2021 data cutoff date, there were a total of 38 deaths, 21 in the COMIRNATY group and 17 in the placebo group.” (COMIRNATY = vaccinated)
That addresses RFK’s second claim.
Claim Number Three: “That means, if you wanna do, if you want to follow their protocols and their estimates if you take the vaccine you’re 21% more likely to die over 6 months than people who don’t, of all causes.”
Here he is referring to the Pfizer data submitted to the FDA claiming 21 deaths over 6 months from all causes in the vaccinated group versus the 17 deaths over the same period in the unvaccinated group. However, our calculations make that percentage 19 and not 21.
- 21-17=4
- 4=19% of 21
Therefore, using Pfizer’s own data that they submitted to the FDA, you have a 19% increased chance of dying from any cause after being vaccinated than you would if you remained unvaccinated.
Claim Number Four: “There were 5 cardiac arrest deaths in the vaccine group and only one in the placebo group. What that means, that if you take that vaccine you’re 500% more likely to die from a fatal cardiac arrest over the next 6 months than if you don’t.”
Using the Pfizer data supplied to the authors of the 6-month study it lists 4 deaths from Cardiac Arrest (RFK claims 5) in the vaccinated group vs 1 in the unvaccinated group. This would therefore make your chances of dying from Cardiac Arrest after being vaccinated 400% greater than if you were unvaccinated, not 500%. It has been suggested to CJs that RFK may have included the single death from Cardiac Failure in the vaccinated group in his calculations, but we can’t confirm this.
Claim Number Five: “What it also means, is that for every life they save by preventing a death from Covid they are killing 4 people from cardiac arrest.”
As with “Claim Number Four” RFK is using Pfizer’s own data and drawing obvious conclusions from it. If the data showed a 4 or 5-fold increase in heart attacks in the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated there should be no doubt that inferences would be made by all corporate media and every Covidian protagonist that this is evidence that vaccines prevent Cardiac Arrests. RFK is pointing out that more people died from Cardiac Arrests who were vaccinated than those who were unvaccinated.
Shayan’s Confusion
Chuck Callesto tweeted 2 claims made by RFK.
- BOMBSHELL, for every life saved from vaccine, IT KILLED 4 PEOPLE.
- You are 21% MORE LIKELY TO DIE in 6 months for taking vaccine…
Shayan, therefore, disagreed with one or all of them, both of which we have shown above to have been fundamentally correct – if even the numbers are a little off it doesn’t change the points being made by RFK.
What’s very clear is that Shayan hadn’t made any attempt to understand the claims made by RFK but instead, in his ignorance, rushed to rubbish them for at face value they likely didn’t make sense to him and therefore needed to be discredited without further ado. And this leads us to one of the most concerning things about these self-styled “fact-checkers” and that’s, who fact-checks them?
Even when Shayan was called out many times by other contributors on Twitter for getting this wrong, he ignored these advances…
…and instead, he doubled down on his ignorance, claiming that what he was actually doing was “debunking the nonsense”, when in effect it was he that was the disseminator of the nonsense.
Even when we took time out from our busy schedules to explain to Shayan what it was that he got wrong, even then he still ignored the evidence of his ignorance and went on to stand in defiance of those trying to help him get things right.
According to Shayan, he is ‘a guy who checks and verifies online content for a living‘.
The example we have highlighted in this article would, however, bring into question his competency in fulfilling that role.
A rush for attention, for “Likes”, and to attack claims that don’t sit well with preconceived biases – regardless of underlying data supporting those claims – is what led to Shayan becoming the very thing he claims to be fighting against – a spreader of disinformation. Instead, it became evident that he is someone who will readily spread mischaracterisations of claims made that are at odds with his inherent biased and when informed that he is wrong, instead of apologising, rectifying and correcting, he instead doubles down and ignores those trying to keep him right – this points to a narcissistic trait; it points to a person that is more interested in being perceived to be right than actually being right.
Once again though, CJs have stepped in and set the public record straight and once again we have recorded, again for the public record, an example of the BBC “fact-checking” team spreading falsehoods and disinformation.
*Special thanks to Adam Gershaw and Doug Carson of @hiddensyria