New Docs Reveal Biden Surgeon General’s Obsession with Combating COVID ‘Misinformation’

Biden official harangued journalists, social media outlets and used own family deaths to rail against “misinformation.”

Documents obtained by government watchdog Protect The Public’s Trust (PPT) further illuminate just how far the Biden administration went attempting to combat what it termed “misinformation” about COVID-19 –– all the while spreading its own often faulty and inconsistent messaging about the pandemic and vaccination.

The documents, which contain talking points and agenda items for U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and his various interviews with major outlets, reveal how the Biden administration forced corporations and Americans to swallow certain narratives –– and reject others –– about the pandemic. They included points ensuring that medical experts employed certain information about COVID-19 and vaccination to the public, sorting through which Americans were “persuadable” by the government’s COVID information, making sure journalists were flagging what the government deemed “misinformation,” and pushing the Surgeon General himself to emotionally manipulate Americans into complying.

Murthy’s talking points for a July 2021 address had him request that journalists avoid amplifying misinformation, and that tech companies “operate with greater transparency and accountability so that misinformation doesn’t continue to poison our sharing platforms.” They also stressed, “If we want to fight health misinformation, we’ll need all parts of society to pull together.” Such requests merely hinted at how far Biden officials went in seeking to control the flow of “misinformation” on social media sites, since we know they directly petitioned companies to censor COVID-19 information they didn’t approve.

Talking points provided to Murthy ahead of an interview that same month with the Pod Save America podcast encouraged him to talk about the Biden administration’s analysis of which Americans were “persuadable” when pushed to vaccinate and which were less so. They suggested that outreach should go “community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, person by person” to convince unvaccinated citizens to get the shot.

Murthy’s handlers alluded to these petitions later in the documents. Talking points for the surgeon general’s interview with The Washington Post in July revealed that Murthy’s office was also “flagging problematic posts for social platforms.” The document stated that “Facebook is aware of our concerns and we have requested changes,” adding that platforms spreading disinformation are doing a “disservice to the country” and to U.S. medical professionals.

For Murthy’s interview with NBC Nightly News on July 19, 2021, the talking points also pushed the surgeon general to assert that COVID misinformation on social media is “costing us lives,” specifically, the lives of ten of his own family members. “Misinformation” played a major role in Murthy’s briefing materials, and he urged social media platforms “to step up and stop the spread of bad health information on their platforms.”

PPT has filed multiple complaints against the administration, including the surgeon general’s office, for spreading inconsistent and inaccurate information about the pandemic. In a 2024 complaint, PPT noted that Murthy’s claim that students maintaining “3-6 feet of social distancing” would be safe was not backed up by sufficient study.

A 2023 PPT complaint covered a series of inaccurate claims that Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its sub-agencies made about the pandemic response. For example, the CDC miscited research to falsely support claims that COVID-19 vaccines were superior to natural immunity from prior infection, and pushed that narrative even when presented with contrary evidence they admitted was “impressive.”

“The foundation of the COVID arm of the Censorship Industrial Complex during the Biden administration was their obsession with so-called ‘misinformation,’” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain said. “But the tragically ironic part was that much of the actual misinformation was coming from inside their house. Whether it was prolonged school closures from which a generation of kids may never recover, draconian lockdowns, or forcing vaccines upon people for whom the virus presented little risk, power, politics, and advancing the narrative took priority over science and public health.”

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