… I had a direct, revealing encounter with NPR’s embedded bias in May of 2021, when Geoff Brumfiel, one of their senior correspondents, reached out to feature me in a piece titled: “For Some Anti-Vaccine Advocates, Misinformation Is Part Of A Business.” The article was a thinly veiled attempt at character assassination—an example of media functioning not as a seeker of truth, but as a weapon of narrative warfare.
Rather than ignore or stonewall, I made an unusual decision: I invited Brumfiel into a cross-interview, recorded and published in full transparency above. This format allowed both of us to pose questions to each other, and for the public to witness the full, unedited context. The result was deeply revealing—not just of NPR’s approach, but of the larger media machinery it represents.
This candid exchange exposed not only the editorial bias and conflicts of interest at NPR, but also the broader ideological machinery backing the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” narrative, propagated by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)—an organization that, ironically, engages in exactly what its name suggests it opposes: digital censorship, hate, and targeted takedowns.
The False Framing of “Anti-Vax” and “Misinformation”
The terms “anti-vaccine” and “misinformation” are wielded like verbal bludgeons—designed to shut down debate and demonize dissent. But the reality is far more nuanced. At GreenMedInfo.com, we curate and publish peer-reviewed research, offering the public access to scientific literature often ignored by mainstream outlets. This is not “misinformation”—it is scientific transparency.
Yet NPR painted me as a profiteer, part of an “anti-vax industry.” They ignored the fact that GreenMedInfo is ad-free and freely accessible, and that Stand for Health Freedom, which I co-founded, is a nonprofit platform defending bodily sovereignty and informed consent.
I challenged NPR and Brumfiel to investigate their own funding relationships—particularly with PhRMA and the Gates Foundation, both of which have donated millions to support pro-vaccine messaging through NPR. When media entities are underwritten by the very industries they’re reporting on, how can the public trust what they hear?
Corporate Sponsorship & Narrative Control
In fact, NPR’s own sponsorships—such as their integration of PhRMA’s “Brand Soundscapes” into NPR’s app—demonstrate just how blurred the line between journalism and marketing has become. And while Brumfiel insisted editorial decisions are independent, the systemic nature of these relationships is hard to ignore. As I pointed out during our dialogue, when NPR receives tens of millions in funding from groups that directly benefit from mass vaccination campaigns, their reporting on those topics cannot be assumed neutral.
The larger story here isn’t about me. It’s about how public media institutions, originally designed to be accountable to the people, have become extensions of corporate and governmental power.
In the past, many Palestinians and Arabs followed Israeli elections closely. They did so not because they entertained illusions that a Zionist leader would deliver peace and justice, dismantle the occupation or remove illegal settlements. Rather, they feared that some Israeli leaders were worse than others. They hoped to avert the worst-case scenario.
Over time, however, that distinction gave way to the belief that all Israeli leaders were essentially the same. This is not pessimism. It is experience.
Consider, for example, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements during the Oslo peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Between 1992 and 1995, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from 111,673 to 140,235 – a rise of more than 25 per cent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), drawing on Israeli statistical records.
The same pattern continued under the Labour government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Within his first six months, Barak’s government issued tenders for 3,196 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual average under his right-wing predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Naftali Bennett formed a coalition government in June 2021 that included the Arab party Ra’am, settlement expansion continued unabated.
According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, the Bennett–Lapid government advanced plans for 7,292 settlement housing units during its first year, a 26 per cent increase over the annual average recorded under previous Netanyahu governments.
The settlements are themselves a driving force behind the occupation. They require land, and therefore land confiscation; protection, and therefore an expanded military presence; water, roads and infrastructure, and therefore the appropriation of Palestinian resources. Together, these elements deepen dispossession and generate further Israeli violence.
According to the PCBS, the West Bank contained 645 Israeli settlement sites, outposts and other occupation installations by the end of 2025, including 350 settlement outposts.
The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian Authority body, reported that Israeli authorities targeted approximately 29,335 dunums of Palestinian land through declarations of so-called “state land” between October 2023 and August 2026 – one of the largest waves of such land appropriation since Oslo.
By September 2026, the Commission had also documented the advancement or consideration of plans for more than 18,000 additional settlement housing units across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
By the end of 2023, the West Bank had experienced its deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2005.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission documented 23,827 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians and their property during 2025 alone. In the first seven months of 2026, settler attacks increased by 63 per cent compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
Typically, this violence, carried out by the Israeli occupation army and armed illegal settlers, is contextualised within the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But violence in the West Bank also serves another purpose beyond collective punishment: the confiscation of Palestinian orchards, the annexation of land, the expansion of settlements and the crushing of Palestinian resistance, including non-violent opposition to this colonial enterprise.
Any Israeli candidate in the 27 October elections who supports settlement expansion does so with full knowledge of its consequences: further dispossession, military occupation, annexation and violence.
The difference between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and politicians presented as less extreme, is often one of language, strategy and timing.
Former Israeli military chief and Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, for example, openly supports the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite his reputation as a more “moderate” alternative to Netanyahu.
What, then, about Gaza?
Who among Israel’s leading political figures is promising to end the genocide, lift the siege, ensure unrestricted humanitarian aid, restrain the army or investigate violations of international law? None.
Israeli media have spent the past three years reporting on major disagreements between the government, military establishment, intelligence agencies and political opposition over what should happen in Gaza.
Yet Eisenkot has pledged to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza within 18 months of taking office, whether through US President Donald Trump’s framework or through continued war.
For his part, Yesh Atid leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid has proposed placing Gaza under Egyptian administration for up to 15 years, effectively shifting responsibility for Israel’s actions onto Arab states.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, supports continued Israeli military control until Palestinian groups are disarmed.
The disagreement, therefore, is often over how Israel should achieve its objectives, rather than whether those objectives should change.
Other major disagreements primarily concern Israeli society: the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, judicial reform and accountability for the failures of 7 October.
But these disputes should not be confused with the questions that matter most to Palestinians.
If Netanyahu succeeds in forming another right-wing coalition, the policies of occupation, settlement expansion and military confrontation will continue, potentially with renewed momentum.
If Israel produces a broader coalition, its members may reach compromises over judicial reform, conscription and other domestic disputes. The occupation, however, is unlikely to become the central point of disagreement.
More troubling still, even a government leaning towards the centre-left might succeed in presenting Israel to the international community as a country ready to move beyond the image it acquired during three years of genocide, without fundamentally changing its conduct on the ground.
The international community must therefore remain vigilant. It cannot allow a future Israeli government to present itself as a peacemaker, or sell the illusion of a newly reformed Israel, while continuing to invest in settlements, occupation, war and genocide.
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