Greenwald | What is going on here is almost too self-evident to require elaboration. For years, The Post favorably covered the animal welfare work of this group without even remotely suggesting it had some nefarious ideological agenda, let alone investigating its finances. Only one thing has changed: their work in highlighting gruesome dog experimentations now has the possibility of undermining Dr. Fauci or harming his reputation, and thus The Post — acting like the pro-DNC liberal advocacy group that it is — set out to smear White Coat as right-wing MAGA activists in order to delegitimize and discredit their investigative work and, more importantly, give liberals a quick-and-easy way to dismiss their work as nothing more than an anti-science MAGA operation even though they are nothing of the sort.
Even more disturbing was the telephone call which Goodman had on Monday with Reinhard and another Post reporter, Yasmeen Abutaleb, assigned to the health and COVID beat. During that call, Abutaleb in particular repeatedly demanded to know whether White Coat was concerned that the activism they were doing on these dog experimentation programs could end up harming Dr. Fauci's reputation and thus make him less able to manage the COVID crisis. They even suggested that by encouraging people to call the NIH telephone lines to protest this experimentation, they might be making it difficult for people with questions about COVID to get through. The obvious premise of the entire conversation was one completely antithetical to the journalistic ethos: it is immoral to do anything that reflects negatively on Dr. Fauci now, no matter how true or warranted it might be, because his importance is too great to risk undermining him. (Request for comment from Reinhard was not responded to as of publication of this article, but will be added if supplied).
In general, as this controversy has unfolded, media outlets have expressed almost no interest in the immorality and atrocities of these taxpayer-funded dog experimentations, and instead have acted as political activists with only one goal: protect Dr. Fauci. PolitiFact, for instance, purported to fact-check White Coat's campaign (laughably calling them “a conservative watchdog group”) by implying they were lying. Aside from citing (but not verifying) NIAID’s denial that they funded one of the experiments, they acknowledged that they did indeed fund others, but then pointed out that nobody could prove that Fauci personally approved the funding for these experiments. Yet that is a claim White Coat has never made and which, in any event, is as unlikely as it is irrelevant given that, for thirty years, Fauci has been the head of the agencies conducting these experiments which have long been the target of activist protest. It is simply impossible that he was unaware of these controversies.
After speaking with the two Post reporters, Goodman told me that “it’s clear based on my conversations with them that rather than investigating the horrific puppy experimentation being funded with our tax dollars by Anthony Fauci — about which they have asked virtually nothing — they are instead interested in attempting to discredit our organization and #BeagleGate campaign in order to run defense for Fauci.” He also described the sudden change in The Post's behavior in reporting on them: “in just five 5 years, the paper went from featuring our group as a model of bipartisanship in the animal protection movement and highlighting our winning campaigns to end taxpayer-funded animal testing to now trying to smear us a conservative front group that doesn’t really care about animals, all because we dared to criticize St. Fauci.”
Bellotti described The Post's sudden turnaround this way:
Having personally witnessed the horrors of animal testing, I founded [White Coat] to unite liberty-lovers and animal-lovers, Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and vegetarians to fight against wasteful taxpayer-funded animal experiments. Widening the tent is how you win campaigns, and we’ve done this more effectively than any other organization, resulting in historic wins for animals, from shutting down the government’s largest cat experimentation lab to freeing monkeys from federal nicotine addiction experiments to bringing dog testing at the VA to record lows. This has all been done on a shoestring budget with overwhelming support from grassroots advocates and donors. Apparently for some though, disparaging Anthony Fauci for funding the abuse of puppies is a bridge too far. But, to suggest that we’re out to accomplish anything other the save animals from wasteful government spending and abuse is simply not true nor supported by any actual evidence.
Newspapers like The Post vehemently deny that they have any political agenda, insisting that they are devoted to non-partisan and apolitical reporting. Very few people believe this fraud any longer, which is why trust in journalism has collapsed so precipitously, but rarely do we see a test case that so vividly illustrates how they really function.
For years, The Washington Post reported fairly and truthfully on this group, because none of its activities threatened any government officials whom the paper wishes to protect. Suddenly, when the work they have been doing for years began to reflect poorly on a government official vital to American liberalism, The Post launched a campaign that is not even thinly disguised but nakedly clear in its goal: to smear this group by impugning its motives and distorting its agenda so that its work is immediately and uncritically disregarded by the paper's overwhelmingly liberal audience.
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