What am I hoping? That KOMU will base the series on evidence. There is no credible evidence for a vaccine/autism connection. Dr. David Ayoub is not a credible source. The guy who runs a chelation clinic is not a credible source. The grieving parents of an autistic child make for compelling video, but their science is not sound. The plural of anecdote is not data.
No news station would hire a reporter who doesn't understand sports to report a football game. Why then is it acceptable to assign a medical story to reporters with little to no science background? There are ways around your unfamiliarity with the science, and that is to talk to credible researchers. The National Academy of Pediatrics has press office. Have you called them? What about the respondents' attorneys in the ongoing vaccine omnibus hearing in Washington, D.C.? Or the attorney representing Abubakar's grieving parents? Your story would be truly groundbreaking if you exposed the quack cure industry and the practitioners who prey on parents. Instead we get David Ayoub.
Years from now, when the vaccine hysteria is dead and buried and long forgotten, you will look back on this experience and wonder how you could have gotten the story so wrong. There's still time to do the right thing. Swing for the fences, Ashley. Make a difference. That's why I became a journalist instead of a stenographer.
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What am I hoping? That KOMU will base the series on evidence. There is no credible evidence for a vaccine/autism connection. Dr. David Ayoub is not a credible source. The guy who runs a chelation clinic is not a credible source. The grieving parents of an autistic child make for compelling video, but their science is not sound. The plural of anecdote is not data.
No news station would hire a reporter who doesn't understand sports to report a football game. Why then is it acceptable to assign a medical story to reporters with little to no science background? There are ways around your unfamiliarity with the science, and that is to talk to credible researchers. The National Academy of Pediatrics has press office. Have you called them? What about the respondents' attorneys in the ongoing vaccine omnibus hearing in Washington, D.C.? Or the attorney representing Abubakar's grieving parents? Your story would be truly groundbreaking if you exposed the quack cure industry and the practitioners who prey on parents. Instead we get David Ayoub.
Years from now, when the vaccine hysteria is dead and buried and long forgotten, you will look back on this experience and wonder how you could have gotten the story so wrong. There's still time to do the right thing. Swing for the fences, Ashley. Make a difference. That's why I became a journalist instead of a stenographer.
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