Associated Press Refuses to Engage Honest Media over Fact Disputes

In January, Honest Media contacted Daisy Veerasingham, CEO of the Associated Press, about the AP’s reliance on funding from the Eli Lilly Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant. Because the AP reaches four billion people daily, the influence that Eli Lilly may exercise over the AP’s reporting on issues of health, medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry is no small matter.

In an email dated January 16, we shared our concerns with Ms. Veerasingham, outlining numerous and serious instances of Eli Lilly’s malfeasance. Since 2000, the company has been hit with fines and settlements topping $4B, including the single-largest criminal fine ever levied in the United States – $1.415B in all – for off-label promotion of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa for uses not approved by the FDA. We also provided Ms. Veerasingham with the Corporate Research Project’s rap sheet on Eli Lilly, and asked that the AP end its reliance on funding from the Lilly Foundation.

We asked:

“How can the AP be expected to fairly cover medical questions when receiving money from such an influential pharmaceutical company with a direct stake in pushing its products on to the public? It is particularly concerning when this company has a known history of serious negligence that has harmed consumers.” 

To her credit, which we acknowledged in a subsequent email, Ms. Veerasingham responded, but in a regrettably disingenuous and pedantic manner, claiming unconvincingly, “Our coverage is not influenced by funders in any way.”

In reply, Honest Media pointed out that the Lilly Endowment owns over 10% of Eli Lilly’s stock, a larger share than Wall Street behemoths Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, and asserted,

“Of course the Lilly Endowment will give money to causes that advance the goals of its parent company, and the goals of the entire Big Pharma industry. And given this suspicion, it also begs the question of why AP consistently produces reports that appear to be an arm of Big Pharma propaganda?” 

Our email went on to cite specific instances of the AP’s promotion of Big Pharma talking points by touting the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine, the benefits of vaccine passports, and ridiculing the efficacy of natural immunity. The AP has also smeared Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for publicly challenging the establishment narrative and policy around COVID’s origins, the mandates, and lockdowns. The email closed with a request for a meeting.

Never having heard back from Ms. Veerasingham, Honest Media placed several calls to her office, which were directed by the switchboard to a voicemail box that did not identify its owner. We left messages asking that she meet with us to discuss the factual inaccuracies we have challenged. After leaving three voicemails over two weeks’ time, we sent an email to her on March 20 (which we did not publish in the hope that the AP would be more amenable to non-public communications), placing that formal request in writing.

Her response? Stone-cold silence.

Despite its storied history, the AP has had to adapt to the decline of print journalism, once its mainstay of revenue. The Washington Post reported in March that Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with more than 200 newspapers, including USA Today, the Miami Herald, and the Kansas City Star, as well as The McClatchy Company, which owns more than two dozen newspapers, announced that they will no longer carry AP content. Following the practice of the broadcast networks NPR, and magazines like Mother Jones, AP has tapped corporate America and the nonprofit-industrial complex for sustaining revenue.

The public has reacted accordingly. Poll after poll reveals that a huge swath of the American public no longer trusts the mainstream media to inform its decision-making on everything from health care to politics. The mass search for reliable information is driving the proliferation of independent media sites, a sign that democracy is, thankfully, alive and well.

Will the legacy media reckon with this new reality? Or will it go the way of the rotary phone and telex machine? Honest Media will be watching.

Read our lengthy response to AP CEO Daisy Veerasingham back in January of this year here: