Fazze asked the bloggers to advance false claims that the death rate among people receiving the Pfizer vaccine is three times higher than those receiving the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine.
French counterintelligence is investigating whether Russia masterminded an attempt to pay high-profile health and science bloggers to sow public doubts about the safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, a French security official said.
Several French bloggers said they received emails in recent days from a person claiming to be part of a Fazze marketing firm. The emails, some of which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, offered to pay the bloggers to produce videos and post them on various social platforms, criticizing the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, which has been the most widely used vaccine in France. One blogger told French TV he was offered EUR 2,050 (about $2,500) for a video.
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Fazze asked the bloggers to advance false claims that the death rate among people receiving the Pfizer vaccine is three times higher than those receiving the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine.
Léo Grasset, a French science blogger, said he received emails from a Fazze employee named Anton, who sent him a list of talking points written in broken English.
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Mr. Grasset replied to the message, asking who was sponsoring the campaign.
"The client prefers to remain incognito," Anton said.
The talking points forwarded by Fazze are similar to those disseminated by Russia on the official Twitter account for Sputnik V, the coronavirus vaccine developed by the Russian government. On April 23, the account said it had conducted a study showing Pfizer-BioNTech recipients died more frequently than those who received AstraZeneca.