Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald recently published a lengthy exposé, detailing how The Washington Post was preparing a ‘hit piece’ on our organization, White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a nonprofit focused on ending taxpayer-funded animal experiments. Their attack is driven by the success of our #BeagleGate investigations, which have revealed six dog labs funded through NIAID, Dr. Fauci’s NIH division.
WCW has held government agencies accountable under Republican and Democratic administrations, and phased out animal testing across many federal agencies. WCW’s work has generated favorable coverage in the past — including from the Post. Referencing several different articles, Greenwald notes that WCW was widely considered “one of those rare Washington success stories that unites both left and right.”
Now the Post is apparently planning to pillory us. Why?
To put it simply: politics. Dr. Fauci is popular among Post readers, for whom criticism of Fauci is seen as criticism of science itself. The Post dug through WCW’s financials, hoping to find evidence of secret right-wing “dark money” funding sources. They found nothing, because our largest supporter is our small-dollar grassroots donors.
The Post also demanded to know if we planned to turn down future donations from “pro-Trump or conservative groups,” although we have neither solicited nor received funds from any such organizations. Consider the absurdity of creating a discriminatory political litmus test for our donors: does the Post really believe criticizing Dr. Fauci’s beagle experiments is only permissible if you’re a card-carrying Democrat?
The Post misses the fundamental purpose of our organization: building a big tent for animal lovers, fiscal conservatives, and everyone in between. Taxpayer-funded cruelty isn’t a ‘blue’ or a ‘red’ issue — a recent poll found that 70% of Democrats want to end Dr. Fauci’s beagle tests. One can agree with him on some issues, while opposing his animal tests. (Or does the Post believe that these Democrats are all secret MAGA double agents?)
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As a single-issue organization, WCW is not involved in the debate over vaccines, masks, or the Covid-19 response; we have stressed that fact consistently and repeatedly. We find, expose, and defund wasteful government animal experiments. That’s all. To accomplish this goal, we need bipartisan support.
Bipartisanship may be a dirty concept to the Post, but it’s central to our identity. It’s also a key reason for our success in past campaigns, like phasing out dog and cat testing at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Our #BeagleGate investigations are largely based on data obtained from NIAID itself via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. FOIA research is key to our success, because internal records provided by government agencies conclusively establish their veracity. Because they cannot disprove us, they seek to smear and silence us instead — and we’re not alone.
Another leader in FOIA research is US Right to Know — and like WCW, they have recently found themselves under siege by corporate media. On November 5, political tabloid The Daily Beast published a screed against USRTK, despite noting that “outlets ranging from Vanity Fair to the National Review to the Washington Examiner to The Intercept have cited the group’s inquiries into the origins of COVID-19.” Their criticism of USRTK had nothing to do with its work. Instead, the Beast used the oldest trick in the book: guilt by association, all for the purpose of silencing USRTK into submission.
Note again the outlets that have cited USRTK documents: Vanity Fair, National Review, the Washington Examiner, The Intercept. None of those outlets are prone to inaccuracy, nor are they ground-zero for conspiracy theories. Importantly, many of these outlets, most notably Vanity Fair, have reassessed their theories of Covid-19’s origins, from claiming the “lab-leak” hypothesis was a conspiracy theory from right-wing fever swamps, to a plausible hypothesis — even a likely one.
This is how journalism should work: re-evaluating the truth in light of new evidence. The attacks against WCW and USRTK, however, are examples of how journalism should not work. “You can only criticize the government when it’s under Republican control” is not only silly, it’s bad journalism — and it’s damaging to democracy. By silencing whistleblowers like WCW and USRTK, corporate media like the Post and the Beast are trying to prevent the American people from seeing what their government is doing. Their Kafkaesque censorship is why public trust in mainstream journalism continues to plummet.
Transparency must never be subverted in service of partisanship. Shooting the messenger will not work. Eventually, the truth will come out. And when it does, Americans will be outraged that the press kept it under wraps for so long.
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