Every January, the nice folks at NewsGuard ask whether I will be responding to any of their questions about content published on GraniteGrok.com that they have issues with. They cite a post, comment on it, present rebutting information, and ask why we didn’t include any of that in the original.
My pat response for years has been simple. We do not police contributors; our readers and commenters do that.
As volunteers, they are not paid to operate within any set of editorial guardrails, so we encourage commenters and anyone who wants to submit an op-ed in rebuttal to do that. We’ll give them access to the same audience who, again, is encouraged to support or challenge everything.
NewsGuard shrugs off its own hypocrisy and gives us a score in the mid-30s (100 is the best).
Remember, this organization says it exists to keep the media honest when in fact its purpose is to protect approved narratives.
Over the next few days, I will share their questions and my response to each. They asked about five specific posts out of the roughly 3500 new pieces of content we published in 2025 – all of which must certainly have bristled their algorithm. What they decided to ask about tells us a lot more about them than us.
NewsGuard’s first query.
- A January 2026 article, headlined “KLAR: Are Vaccines Harming Our Children?”, stated: “Studies have for decades suggested that vaccines may cause SIDS [Sudden Infant Death Syndrome] or other harms. Japan and other nations that do not mandate the United States’ rigorous childhood vaccine schedule (over 72 recommended vaccines!) experience much lower SIDS rates. It doesn’t appear the Japanese are simply laying their infants down on their backs more than Americans. Something else is afoot.”
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is “the unexpected, sudden death of a child under age 1” for which the cause is unknown, according to MedlinePlus.gov, a website run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Contrary to GraniteGrok.com’s claim that “vaccines may cause SIDS,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website that, “Multiple research studies and safety reviews have looked at possible links between vaccines and SIDS. The evidence accumulated over many years does not show any links between childhood immunization and SIDS.”
It is true that the rate of deaths due to SIDS in Japan fell by half between 1984 and 2004, decreasing from 0.42 deaths per 1,000 live births to 0.24 per 1000, according to a June 2004 study in the peer-reviewed journal Pathophysiology. However, the study also said that the decline was likely due to public health campaigns that began in 1996, which discouraged known SIDS risks such as putting infants to sleep face-down and maternal smoking.
Moreover, the U.S. did not have “72 recommended vaccines,” as the GraniteGrok.com article claimed. A NewsGuard review of the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule prior to January 2026 calculated that children were recommended to receive vaccinations against 17 diseases. Japan’s vaccine schedule recommends vaccinations for 14 diseases, according to a December 2025 FactCheck.org article. Children following the CDC schedule would have received between 33 and 37 doses of vaccines by the time they were 18 years old, depending on factors such as existing health conditions, and not counting any vaccines that are updated and administered annually, such as flu shots.
The inaccurate calculation of 72 vaccines required counting combination shots, such as the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, multiple times for each disease those vaccines protects against, inflating the count by 17 doses. The count also assumed that children would receive an annual flu shot each year starting at six months of age as recommended, accounting for another 18 vaccine doses by the age of 18.
The American Academy of Pediatrics states on its website: “Misleading claims that the cumulative number of vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule can overwhelm a child’s immune system or cause other issues are inaccurate and dangerous. Individuals making this claim often say children receive 80 or more vaccines throughout childhood, which is not true and sows fear among parents. The pacing and combination of vaccines is based on the times when vaccines will work best with children’s immune systems and when they are most vulnerable to the diseases that the vaccines protect them from.”
Does Granite Grok have any comment on this apparently countervailing information and why it was not included in the article?
My response (I do not attempt to address all their points, since there is no point in responding in these circumstances, but I couldn’t resist for reasons I hope become obvious).
SIDS
If we ignore Children’s Health Defense reporting and any research attached to it, which is where I believe the author was inspired, and which is no more or less lacking in credibility than a lot of what comes out of the CDC, there is research linking potential SIDS risk to vaccines. It wasn’t difficult to find.
I would also note that the CDC lied quite a bit about the effectiveness of COVID vaccines, but let’s ignore that. I look forward to your organization referencing the new CDC Vaccine Schedule guidelines when measuring truth in media.
I am also willing to concede that, if there is research, I was not able to find any from decades ago. I can ask the author to provide references or to update the text.
With regard to the number of “Vaccines,” I’ve heard that number go as high as the eighties, and I’d posit (in this context) that any such reference is more accurately described as “recommended vaccine doses.”
If a doctor injects you with something from the vaccine schedule, it is a vaccination regardless of what it is for.
Defaulting to the lower number of diseases vaccinated for would be equally incorrect. Children will receive at least 14 flu shots (recommended) from birth through age 18.
Looking at the 2025 CDC schedule 0-18, recommends at least 50 injections (see also, vaccinations), and that number may be higher. If you count a recommended flu vaccine every year from 1 to 18 and the recommended COVID-19 vaccine every year from 0 to 18, the total reaches 79 separate injections for all diseases listed.
More than the 72 in John Klar’s piece and less than the 80.
I am willing to edit the post to reflect “vaccine doses” and add an asterisk to a disclaimer about the total, using the links above, even if News Guard doesn’t correct its findings or phrasing when evaluating media for truth and honesty in reporting.
[end]
As an afterthought, John was writing based on observations in the Book Forbidden Facts. I have not read it and do not have access to its citations, which very likely answer many of NewsGuard’s questions, but that’s not their business.
I did add the word “doses” for clarification. I wait without much concern for NewsGuard to grade us so I can use their partisan “fact-checking” to fundraise.
Watch for part II in the coming days.
