A worrying precedent in Belgium: concealing conflicts of interest complies with journalistic ethics

In brief: an RTL news report on vaccines in July 2020 pitted the arguments of anti-vaccine and pro-vaccine people against each other, but the pro-vaccine person’s links with a vaccine manufacturer were never disclosed during the report. The CDJ’s verdict: it was not essential, because it was clear that he was in favour of the vaccine! BAM! looks back at this incredible case, which risks setting a precedent.Let us first recall the facts. On 14 July 2020, RTL Info broadcast on its 7 p.m. news a report by Dominique Demoulin devoted to the anti-vaccine movement and its arguments. The journalist opens the report by noting, with images to back it up, that anti-vaccine discourse is gaining ground on social networks, where it is notably relayed by celebrities. She then interviews two clearly identified fierce opponents of vaccines: the journalist Yves Rasir, founder of the magazine Néosanté^[2] and Dr Eric Beeth, member of the collective “Initiative citoyenne”. They are followed by another speaker identified as “Michel Moutschen, head of the infectious diseases department, ULiège”. There follows a clash of pro- and anti-vaccine arguments about COVID vaccines.

Conflicts of interest concealed

The problem is that at no point are Michel Moutschen’s links with the pharmaceutical industry disclosed to viewers, even though he has been a clinical investigator for GSK and GSK is precisely working on the development of a COVID vaccine. On 11 September 2020, six people lodged a complaint with the CDJ against this sequence of the RTL Info news, denouncing the “biased nature of the interview with Dr M. Moutschen, considering that it is contrary to journalistic ethics not to have informed viewers of the conflicts of interest” of this speaker.

In its first response, RTL Info stated that the journalist set out to contrast the point of view of the anti-vaccine movement with that of an infectious diseases specialist. Regarding the omission of information, the media outlet explains that the journalist considered that it would have been out of context to mention that Prof. Moutschen had taken part in research with the company GSK, since it concerned an entirely different disease from the one that was the subject of the report.

In their reply, the complainants specified that, for them, it is not a matter of saying whether the choice of Prof. Moutschen was good or bad, but of asserting that keeping silent about the conflicts of interest concerning him constitutes an unethical way of doing journalism and a refusal by the media outlet to take responsibility. According to them, the influence of these conflicts of interest cannot be denied in the statements he made in the report (there is no effective treatment against the coronavirus, and consequently, vaccines are the most effective treatments with the fewest side effects against infectious diseases). They also point to his ties of interest with Pfizer.

Move along, nothing to see here

The complainants requested a correction acknowledging that the conflicts of interest of the doctor in question had not been raised during the report, as well as the adoption of preventive measures so that such ethical breaches would not happen again. The media outlet and the journalist did not act on this.

The CDJ, for its part, considered that “the complaint is not well-founded”. It argues that “mentioning the potential conflict of interest of the doctor who spoke in favour of the vaccine did not constitute, in context, the omission of essential information”. Such information was, indeed, “not essential” since it concerned a person who was obviously speaking under the label (“implicit but nevertheless easily perceptible”) of a supporter of the vaccine. Even assuming that this conflict of interest had not only been proven, but was also current and relevant to the subject discussed, “the journalist could therefore legitimately consider that it was not necessary (…) to put the statements of the person concerned into perspective with this information”, since “this putting into perspective would have added nothing to the fact that his intervention in itself already appeared not to be neutral”.

Conflicts of interest: what does the law say?

The French Public Health Code has made it mandatory to mention the conflicts of interest of scientists who speak in the media. The disciplinary chamber of the Medical Council in France has even already sanctioned a doctor who had not declared his ties of interest^[3], which shows the importance of this information. However, nothing of the kind exists in Belgium! Neither in the law, nor in the code of journalistic ethics, which shows the importance of the opinion of the Belgian Council for Journalistic Ethics (CDJ) on this question.

The conflicts of interest of scientific experts are nevertheless taken very seriously by the Belgian Superior Health Council (SHC)^[4]. The SHC is the first scientific advisory institution in Belgium to have developed its own philosophy and to have put in place a comprehensive approach to managing declarations of interests and possible conflicts through an Ethics Committee. For the SHC, “transparency is necessary with regard to interests and potential conflicts when issuing and communicating an opinion”. The SHC even invites other institutions to collaborate in applying a system for managing potential conflicts of interest.

Obviously, a scientist’s opinion does not carry the same weight in a media outlet as in an SHC opinion likely to influence health policy. The CDJ’s opinion, considering that mentioning a conflict of interest is not essential when the opinion is visibly not “neutral”, will therefore set a precedent in this field. And this, at a time when a great many health “experts” have spoken out in the media to put into perspective and analyse the management of the COVID crisis, and thus influence public opinion.

A wry laugh

Let us end this story with a small surrealist note, of the kind we love in our beautiful country. It is with great interest that one will read the recent opinion piece^[5]  by a string of scientists calling for more rigour from experts, politicians and journalists in matters of communication. It is in fact a pretext, once again, to discredit Geert Vanden Bossche and Patrick Meyer, who “deviate from the scientific consensus”, but that is not the subject here.

Among the few avenues proposed in this op-ed, one worth noting is the one on the declaration of conflicts of interest, which recommends that “this good practice be rigorously demanded by politicians as well as by journalists. A conflict of interest does not cancel out the competence of the expert who speaks, but makes it possible to assess the elements that may consciously or unconsciously alter the objectivity of his or her positions”.

So far, one can only welcome this stance, which seems to echo what the authors of the complaint against the RTL Info report were asking for. However, one notices that one of the signatories of this scathing opinion piece against two scientists who express serious doubts about the safety of COVID vaccines is none other than Michel Moutschen, identified simply as “Infectiologist, Liège Université”…