NYT Hid Big Pharma PR Titan Jack Leslie in Plain Sight

 by Paul D. Thacker

Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s latest hit piece on the NIH and Secretary Kennedy relied on a leak from a top pharma lobbyist. The Times forgot to mention his daytime job.

New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote one of the most hilarious, misleading pieces I’ve seen in recent months, castigating the NIH for a new vaccine injury clinic based on a leaked statement by Jack Leslie, a senior advisor to the PR firm Weber Shandwick which represents most major vaccine manufacturers.

I’m not joking. This is the journalism I get for my paid subscription to the New York Times.

Like most senior executives at the global PR firm Weber Shandwick, Jack Leslie makes buckets of money helping corporations sell themselves and their products to the American public. In the last handful of years, Weber Shandwick’s clients have included the bulk of the global vaccine giants including Pfizer, Moderna, GSK, Sanofi, Novartis, and Eli Lilly.

But when he’s not raking in oodles of cash repping corporate America, Leslie also takes on some unpaid healthcare positions as further leverage to market his lucrative pharma clients, such as heading the board of the NIH Clinical Center Research Hospital Board. The board met on Friday morning and Leslie’s first order of business, I am told, was voting to castigate HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for establishing a new NIH clinic to study vaccine injuries.

Leslie then leaked his statement and the vote to Sheryl Gay Stolberg at the New York Times, whose story appeared within hours.

Stolberg’s reporting—or whatever it was—failed to disclose that Leslie works for Weber Shandwick which advises pretty much every vaccine company on the planet. Here’s how Stolberg describes him to New York Times readers:

Mr. Leslie, a former chairman of the global public relations firm Weber Shandwick, has advised the World Health Organization and numerous health-oriented philanthropies, and government bodies under presidents of both parties. He also chairs the board of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and advises global health institutes at two universities, Duke and Georgetown.

And here’s what a tiny amount of suspicion and about 45 seconds on Google got me when I searched Leslie’s background: his current biography at Weber Shandwick. Note the plaudits for Leslie’s work advising vaccine manufacturers Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Sanofi.

Back in 2022, I reported that Weber Shandwick had won a $50 million contract to embed their personnel at the CDC’s vaccine center and advise physicians on COVID vaccines, while Weber Shandwick simultaneously had contracts with Pfizer and Moderna to promote their COVID vaccines. I caught one Weber Shandwick employee writing on LinkedIn that his duties at the CDC “focuses on boosting vaccination rates for flu, HPV, whooping cough, and COVID-19.”

Days after my report, Senator Rand Paul sent the CDC a letter demanding that the agency turn over copies of their contract with Weber Shandwick, as well as the names of all of Weber Shandwick employees who were working at the CDC. A source inside HHS told me last year that, shortly after Kennedy was sworn in as HHS Secretary, Weber Shandwick’s lucrative contract with the CDC was cancelled.

NIH established the Clinical Center Research Hospital Board in 2016 to advise NIH leadership on safety and regulatory compliance, and the NIH Director chooses the board members. Francis Collins appointed Jack Leslie to the board in 2022, and he was made chair in 2024.

The board’s federal charter states that members must meet the following criteria: Nationally recognized leaders in sectors related to the NIH Clinical Center’s duties, research hospital administration, clinical care, safety and quality, clinical and research compliance, or clinical research.

However, two individuals are chosen if they have been patients in clinical research studies.

I sent Francis Collins an email through his public relations rep asking why he chose Jack Leslie as a board member and how Leslie’s background in pharmaceutical PR qualified him to be on the NIH Clinical Center’s board. “Can you explain your thinking on that?” I asked Dr. Collins.

Collins did not respond to repeated requests for an explanation.

I also sent questions to Jack Leslie through his Weber Shandwick email asking who his current pharmaceutical clients are. However, Leslie also did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/how-the-nyt-hid-big-pharma-pr-titan