Today’s blacklisted American: Forbes terminates journalist for documenting Fauci’s salary

Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good journalism
Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good
journalism

The new dark age of silencing: Adam Andrzejewski, a long time journalist for Forbes magazine, was fired when the magazine was pressured by NIH to stop him from documenting accurately the large income that Anthony Fauci and his wife derived from their government jobs.

As Andrzejewski concludes in outlining his blackballing by Forbes:

Two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers [from NIH] didn’t send an email to the Forbes’ chief on a Sunday morning because they wanted to correct the record about Fauci’s travel reimbursements. They sent that email to subliminally send a message: We don’t like Andrzejewski’s oversight work, and we want you to do something about it.

Unfortunately, Forbes folded quickly. Within 24 hours of the NIH email to Randall Lane, my regular Forbes editor called and announced new rules. Forbes barred me from writing about Fauci and mandated pre-approval for all future topics.

Then, Forbes went silent and terminated my column roughly 10 days later on January 28.

On the day Forbes cancelled me, the editors bent the knee. A new piece on Fauci published: “Fauci’s Portrait Will Soon Hang In The Smithsonian.”

The shameful part of this story was the way a news organization took the side of government agents, rather than their own journalist. The press is not supposed to be a state-run organization, but a free press intent on uncovering government malfeasance. The people who run Forbes apparently don’t understand this, and are quite willing to become panting toadies to the federal government.

Andrzejewski however understands his role as a journalist far better. In 2011 he founded Open The Books, a non-profit focused on documenting government spending precisely, at all levels from the smallest school district to the largest agency in the federal government. To do this the organization has filed almost 50,000 Freedom of Information requests. As he noted at the link above,
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