Top Media Outlet Killed My Piece Praising "Make America Healthy Again" Coalition After Editorial Board Lambasted RFK Jr.

A view from the inside: how the corrupt media machine sinisterly operates. No dissent permitted, period.

Last week, I was on the path to publishing a piece in a major legacy media outlet—a name all of you would instantly recognize—about Trump’s bold appointment of RFK Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For weeks, I had been in discussions with an editor about publishing this article, which argued that Trump appears to be genuinely signalling toward transformative health policy reform. I also highlighted how RFK Jr.'s alliance with Trump has revived critical conversations about health in the political mainstream—a much-needed shift for an increasingly ailing American public.

The story that was never published.

After submitting the piece late Tuesday night to meet a Wednesday deadline, I received a surprising email from my editor the following morning: “Appears we don’t approve.” She linked to a new editorial board piece labeling RFK Jr. a “fringe conspiracy theorist” likely to harm public health. Her follow-up message read, “We have come out aggressively against Kennedy.”

(Note: On a colleague’s advice, I’ve adjusted details to keep the outlet and editor anonymous. I wish I could name them, but I won’t.)

And just like that, my piece was axed.

This is how the media machine operates in real time. A faux “consensus” forms—not through honest debate, but by suppressing dissent and promoting establishment dogma as unquestionable truth. If I needed any further proof that corporate media is, broadly speaking, a hopeless racket, this experience delivered it.

To be clear, a magazine has every right to reject pitches and article submissions. It’s just awfully hypocritical and self-deranging for an institution dedicated to challenging power and influence to squash dissenters. My article was not even making any grandiose scientific claims — it was merely highlighting existing corruption such as the FDA’s revolving door and expressing optimism for RFK Jr. to put an end to that.

For those wondering why I pitched this piece to a legacy outlet at all, the answer is simple: earning a reliable income and reaching a wide audience on platforms like Substack is tough without heavy self-promotion (unless you’re Matt Taibbi or Alex Berenson).

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Believe it or not, the story gets worse.

The version of the piece I submitted was already heavily self-censored. Some of my strongest arguments—ones I was most passionate about—were removed after pushback from my editor. For instance, I had a section discussing the promising potential of psychedelic therapy for veterans with PTSD and others suffering from chronic mental illnesses failed by band-aid pharmaceuticals and shallow forms of talk therapy. You can read more about this reinvigorated interest for the Trump administration in my new piece with the world’s most prolific psychedelic researcher alive today, Dr. Matt Johnson, here:

Open Letter To Incoming Trump Administration About Psychedelic Policy Reform

This segment connected directly to RFK Jr.’s vocal support for psychedelic-assisted therapies and his expressed interest to end the federal war against them—a stance that had generated healthy buzz in outlets like The Atlantic and Politico.

But when I sent my initial draft, my editor fired back with a note in all caps:

“________ IS HEAVILY OPPOSED TO PSYCHEDELICS—THIS HAS TO GO (THIS IS FROM THE TOP, NOT FROM ME).”

Another terse comment followed:

“NO PSYCHEDELICS.”

A sobering reminder in case you’ve lost grip of reality yet: this is a prominent American publication that has broken some of the biggest stories in the country over the past few years.

This is not a Soviet propaganda arm.

Why would a journalistic publication have a top-down directive to oppose a class of drugs shown to be astoundingly effective in treating chronic mental illnesses such as depression, smoking addiction, PTSD, and even end-of-life distress?

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Sadly, this wasn’t my first disappointment with legacy media. After graduating high school in 2019, I quickly climbed the ranks as a young writer, publishing in outlets like The New York Post, The Globe and Mail, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Grammys, and others. My early work mostly tackled controversial topics: critiques of identity politics, cancel culture at universities, and the fallout from the 2020 BLM riots in poor minority communities. One career highlight was extensively reporting on Minneapolis’ post-Floyd spike in homicidal violence—stories few others dared to touch.

My commitment to honest reporting and ideological independence opened many doors.

Until it didn’t.

I discovered that hot-button topics I tackled like identity politics and police brutality were actually fas less contentious than the third rail of Big Pharma and government health policies. In other words, wokism is a far less pernicious, gargantuan force in American politics and media than Pfizer, Merck, and Moderna.

By 2021, as the pandemic and vaccine mandates became politically charged, my pitches began to hit a wall. Outlets that once published polarizing takes now resisted anything questioning mainstream pandemic narratives.

Editors, even those I considered allies, turned down pieces critiquing scientifically dubious vaccine mandates. Their justifications were often blunt. One editor replied:

“This paper is pro-vaccine. We don’t want to publish anything that might promote vaccine hesitancy.”

Another editor, after rejecting a pitch on the lack of evidence for mandates in low-risk groups, wrote:

“We are a pro-vaccination newspaper. Personally, I just wish everyone would get vaccinated already. While I respect your choice not to, I’m not keen on op-eds that appear to argue against vaccination.”

Even when I pivoted to hot-button stories—like Novak Djokovic being barred from competition for refusing vaccination—an editor dismissed it with this:

“In no way do I want a piece supporting people who refuse to get vaccinated. People like Djokovic make their own beds and should lie in them. They are not heroes.”

These experiences revealed the deep corruption of mainstream media, which often touts itself as the bastion of free speech and journalistic integrity. Yet, when it comes to controversial topics—particularly those challenging powerful institutions like Big Pharma, entrenched public health bureaucracies, or the broader political establishment—dissenting voices are stifled. Systemic gatekeeping ensures only narratives aligned with the interests of the powerful see the light of day.

This isn’t just a failure of the media as a public institution—it’s a betrayal of its most fundamental purpose: to challenge power, investigate truth, and facilitate meaningful discourse. Instead, the media has become a megaphone for establishment dogma, where uncomfortable truths are buried, and “consensus” is manufactured to preserve the status quo.

For journalists like me, committed to exploring the nuances of contentious issues, the lesson is clear: legacy media is no longer a place for independent thought or genuine intellectual inquiry. It’s a machine designed to perpetuate a narrow worldview, and those who dare to think outside its boundaries are inevitably cast aside.

While this realization is disheartening, it’s also liberating.

It reaffirms the need to build and support alternative platforms where the full spectrum of ideas can flourish. It underscores the importance of finding spaces—whether on Substack, independent outlets, or grassroots media—where voices are not silenced by top-down agendas. The fight for truth and transparency doesn’t end with legacy media’s failures; it begins with our refusal to let those failures define the boundaries of our discourse.

Since some of you asked for a donation page to support directly, here is a GiveSendGo you can contribute to:

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Rav Arora is an independent journalist known for his investigations into Big Pharma, vaccine side effects, and mental health treatments. He famously debated Mark Cuban on public health corruption, landing multiple mentions on The Joe Rogan Experience and appearances on podcasts with Russell Brand, Kim Iversen, and Natali Morris.