Maryanne Demasi: Popular ABC TV science show presenter claims she was discredited and fired after pharmaceutical companies complained and Dr Norman Swan joined the pile-on

A former ABC presenter has told national broadcaster and TV physician Dr. Norman Swan criticized after claiming she was suspended, censored and silenced by her bosses.

Maryanne Demasi was one of the presenters of the popular ABC science program Catalyst when it was taken off air in 2016 after her reporting sparked a furious backlash.

Her 2013 two-part expose on alleged overuse of cholesterol-lowering statins was a success, but was later banned from ever being shown again.

It was claimed that some people were taking the heart medication without need, but the ABC’s Dr Swan warned that people were risking a heart attack if they stopped taking the prescribed drugs.

Three years later, a new report on the alleged health risks of Wi-Fi and 5G sparked such outrage that the show was completely canceled in its then-form in 2016.

Now Dr Demasi has compared the outcry over her stories to the mainstream backlash against anti-vaxxers during the Covid pandemic.

In a speech at an Australians for Science and Freedom conference at the University of New South Wales in Sydney earlier this month, she criticized her former TV bosses.

Dr. Demasi said health sector critics had hit back after the statins show aired, saying the ideas in the program were ‘dangerous’. [and] expressed by ‘fringe experts’.

‘[They] assured the public that statins were ‘safe and effective.’

“Do those sentences sound familiar?” she asked the conference audience. ‘The sentences became a permanent part of the pandemic.

“One commentator at the ABC went on national radio and claimed people would die watching the programme,” she told the audience.

Australians will recognize this character: Dr. Norman Swan. He rose to prominence during the pandemic.”

She said the outrage over that show was led by the pharmaceutical industry.

“Within days, all three major statin manufacturers filed complaints with the network,” she said.

‘This includes the Heart Foundation, which was criticized in the program for its outdated nutritional advice on heart disease, and of course Medicines Australia, the body that represents the Australian pharmaceutical industry. ‘

She said the media jumped on the bandwagon by attacking her after Dr Swan spoke out against the show.

“His comments on my programs led to a whole series of national stories,” she said.

‘[They] accused the programs of killing people, claimed ABC had blood on their hands, and asked people to sue the ABC if they had a heart attack after stopping their statins because of the programs.

‘To reinforce this story, the University of Sydney’s School of Pharmacy released a study claiming the programs were responsible for as many as 2,900 deaths as around 60,000 people stopped taking statins.

“In fact, they accused us of mass murder.”

A six-month internal investigation found that the show was factually accurate, but that the second part of the report unfairly targeted the statin industry.

“I have given more weight to the opinions of experts (such as Prof. John Abramson of Harvard and Prof. Rita Redberg of UCSF) that statins are overprescribed,” she said.

‘That was quite ridiculous because the aim of the program was to highlight the problem of overprescribing statins.’

She claimed TV bosses told her they had been ordered to fix the problem and took the episodes offline, apologizing and promising never to air them again.

“This gave the false impression that we were admitting the programs were misleading,” she said.

‘As a result, I was attacked in the media, characterized as ‘pseudoscientific’ and any attempt to defend myself was censored.

“I became the target of an orchestrated campaign to discredit me.”

She said TV bosses deliberately silenced her to defend themselves in an attempt to defuse the controversy.

“I couldn’t dispute the criticism leveled at me,” she said. “I was effectively silenced by my network and they canceled filming.

“They sent me emails telling me not to comment publicly or privately about these issues or they would consider it a violation of my terms of employment.

‘I was told to stop emailing my concerns because my emails could be made public and become part of the public record, so if I had anything to say I had to say it over the phone or do it in person.”

She said the pressure was enormous and she regularly faced internal investigations into her work before it went to market.

“Often it takes longer to defend a program than it does to create it,” she revealed. ‘Because we had tight budgets, this was simply unsustainable.’

The final straw came after she filed a report on the effects of Wi-Fi and 5G, which included widely ridiculed images purporting to show the cancer risk of radio waves on the brain.

The story was ridiculed on ABC’s MediaWatch programme, with presenter Paul Barry telling viewers: ‘Dr. Maryanne Demasi has done it again.

‘She has caused another storm of protest with her report on the alleged dangers of Wi-Fi and mobile phones.

‘Dr. Demasi’s so-called research was on an important and legitimate topic.

‘But the expert opinion the next day was damning.’

One professor called the report ‘scientifically bankrupt’ and Barry labeled its reporting as ‘sensational and unbalanced’.

He said some of the “so-called experts had questionable qualifications.”

In the aftermath of the row, the ABC axed the hosts and changed the show’s format from a science magazine show to a more focused documentary format.

“The ABC made an excuse to try to restructure the programme,” Dr Demasi said.

“I was put on garden leave (taken off the air) for a few months until they decided they were going to lay off pretty much everyone in the department.”

She said she learned “that facts didn’t matter… because they were making the big side of town in turmoil.”

“False balance was another problem,” she added. “They became obsessed with trying to balance a program.

“If I had one expert say that antidepressants cause harm, I would have to interview another expert to say that antidepressants have benefits just to give the appearance of ‘balance.’

‘It undermined the experts and it was sloppy journalism because we were no longer confident in making good editorial judgments about the content of our programmes.

‘And finally I discovered that the ABC was prepared to silence its own journalists to appease the industry. This had a chilling effect on other mainstream journalists.

‘The message was that it would be career suicide to try something similar.

“And it seems like a very effective strategy because I don’t think I’ve ever seen another anti-statin story in the Australian media.”

She added: “I think standards at the ABC continue to decline.

‘A shame, because the ABC was once seen as a great institution.’

Ny Breaking Australia contacted Dr. Swan and the ABC for comment.