Health News Site Searches For Doctors Who Are ‘Spreading COVID-19 Misinformation’

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation had almost $736 million in assets in 2019. For years, the nonprofit giant had a mission of publishing data and information on national health care issues.

Recently, the foundation has spend millions trying to be an arbiter of what is news and what is misinformation in health care. The organization started a news site called Kaiser Health News in 2009. Ten years later, Kaiser Health News teamed up with the left-leaning PolitiFact of the Poynter Institute to investigate what the two organizations considered questionable claims about health issues.

During the COVID pandemic those fact-checking efforts were generally consistent with the perspectives promoted by national public health officials and Democrats in lockdown states.

Last August, a reporter for Kaiser Health News asked a Michigan licensing agency if it was investigating a cardiologist who appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast to criticize the public health establishment’s protocols for treating COVID-19.

The Kaiser reporter, Victoria Knight, asked the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs if it was investigating Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist who once practiced in Michigan. McCullough has alleged that treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin have been purposely suppressed so that people would get the COVID-19 vaccination.

In an August 20, 2021 letter to the department, Knight wrote that she “wanted to ask if you could share any information on whether you have complaints or are conducting an investigation concerning Dr. Peter McCullough, who has spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic/vaccine.”

Knight added that she was contacting officials in all 50 states to see if they had received complaints about doctors or others “spreading COVID-19 misinformation.”

The agency said in reply it was not investigating McCullough.