Did CNN health help promote an alleged business venture into CBD gummies by their chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta? No, that's not true: The site that published this article is not the real CNN health website. Their domain name is gegrat.uk.com. The real CNN health website has no such article about Gupta and a new business venture. A spokesperson for Gupta told Lead Stories that this story is false.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) updated on January 24, 2022, under the title, "Big Pharma In Outrage Over Sanjay Gupta's Latest Business Venture - He Fires Back With This!" The article opened:
Gifted doctor, philanthropist and entrepreneurial genius, Sanjay Gupta made headlines after revealing his new CBD line on Live TV last week.
Here is what the article looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Gegrat.uk.com screenshot taken on Mon Jan 22 14:30:25 2022 UTC)
The article says Gupta started this business as a "passion project" in 2017. It also alludes to a TV appearance Gupta made, but with no link to watch it. Lead Stories did a Google search of this TV appearance where he offered viewers discounted samples of the CBD gummies, but could not find it. The purported story has the names of two real CNN journalists in the byline but those names link to ads for CBD gummies instead of professional profiles of CNN staff.
The website with this article is not the real CNN health website. The domain name for this site is gegrat.uk.com. It is most likely one large advertisement to sell the CBD gummies mentioned in the article. On the real CNN health website, cnn.com/health, there is no article about Gupta starting a CBD gummy business.
Lead Stories reached out to a Gupta spokesperson, who emailed us on January 24, 2022, to tell us this claim is false.
In December 2021, Lead Stories wrote an article titled, "Fact Check: Celebrity Photos and Names Used in Scam Ads on Facebook," where we debunked multiple claims that public figures were creating and endorsing products that they were not.
