Paul Thacker: Did KFF Health News Help Cover Up Fauci Emails?
A KFF Health News reporter reportedly communicated with Dr. Anthony Fauci through a “secret back channel” that Fauci and his colleagues used to evade public scrutiny, then reported on public health officials’ use of personal emails without mentioning his own participation in the activity, investigative journalist Paul Thacker reported.
A KFF Health News reporter reportedly communicated with Dr. Anthony Fauci through a “secret back channel” that Fauci and his colleagues used to evade public scrutiny, then reported on public health officials’ use of personal emails without mentioning his own participation in the activity, investigative journalist Paul Thacker reported.
A KFF Health News reporter reportedly communicated with Dr. Anthony Fauci through a “secret back channel” that Fauci and his colleagues used to evade public scrutiny, then reported on public health officials’ use of personal emails without mentioning his own participation in the activity, investigative journalist Paul Thacker reported.
Appearing on the Smerconish podcast last month, Arthur Allen expressed shock over revelations in private emails released through a Congressional investigation in June. The emails showed that Dr. David Morens, former senior advisor to Fauci, deleted official emails and used a private email address to evade public records laws.
However, in emails obtained through the investigation, Morens explicitly names Allen as a reporter he had been speaking to “on background” for months. Morens also said he connected Allen to Fauci through “our ‘secret’ backchannel” and that Allen “emailed Tony a few hours ago.”
House Republicans accused officials at the National Institutes of Health of orchestrating “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of the agency to hide public records related to the COVID-19 origins.
The records released in the hearing were part of the broader investigation by the U.S. HouseSelect Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic into the alleged conspiracy.
The subcommittee suggested the evidence also showed that Fauci was aware of Morens’ actions and “may have even engaged in federal records violations himself,” Newsweek reported.
“When Fauci gets backed into a corner, he lies, and he’s been getting away with it because there are journalists complicit in helping to cover things up,” Thacker told The Defender. “And it’s quite frankly why there’s so little trust today in the media. This is just another example.”
During Allen’s podcast appearance, he said, “I was just shocked and blown away by how stupid and how offensive his emails were, and he really shot himself in the foot. If you knew him, it’s kind of sad. But for everybody else it’s terrible. And yeah, he didn’t help himself.”
Allen didn’t mention that communications with him were discussed in the emails or that he personally had communicated with the officials through those backchannels — a fact apparent to anyone who read the emails Congress released.
Allen also helped to write KFF’ News’ coverageof Morens’ appearance before Congress, Thacker wrote, but the report didn’t mention the “secret back channel.”
To investigate if Allen was hiding evidence that Fauci perjured himself, Thacker contacted Allen and KFF Health News and asked “why Allen was allowed to report on a national controversy for which he was an active participant.”
“I realize standards are not what they were in journalism, but doesn’t KFF require disclosure when a journalist is an active participant in a topic KFF is reporting on?” Thacker asked the outlet.
Neither Allen nor KFF Health News replied to Thacker. And White House investigators told Thacker that Fauci didn’t use a private email.
Thacker told The Defender that as a journalist he sees nothing wrong with Allen doing whatever he could to get in touch with a public official — that’s what reporters do. But to report on the issue as if he were an objective observer rather than a participant is “crazy.”
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“They gave him access, obviously, because they thought he was someone who was going to tell their story,” Thacker said. “That tells you something already. But then he covers this investigation into what are essentially illegal activities involving Fauci and writes about it while he is participating in the process. He sat back while Fauci lied.”
The fact that neither KFF nor Allan respond to questions about it indicates that “they think this is normal.”
Thacker said that such biased reporting is a pattern at KFF Health News.
According to Thacker, in April, KFF News hired Amy Maxman, whom he reported was previously outed for writing misleading and error-laden “decoy” articles for Nature, designed to downplay the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic could have resulted from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
KFF News is showing its political bias, he said. “They are showing they are more interested in political outcomes” than in adequately informing their readership, acting more like “mouthpieces for a political party,” than like journalists.
“It’s why I always tell people, whenever we talk about this, read widely and read wisely, read widely, read from as many sources as possible,” Thacker said.
Thacker has submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request for communications between Allen and Fauci.
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