Author Archives: HWI_Admin

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Legal Intimidation

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We always have a knife in our teeth.
–Richard Berman

Online promotion for Center for Consumer Freedom’s failed anti-lawyer campaign, LawsuitAddiction.com.

Richard Berman despises trial lawyers, and his front groups frequently rage against “frivolous lawsuits,” “fat-cat lawyers,” and a “cabal” of attorneys.

But apparently, that loathing only applies to lawyers working for the public good.

When news came out that Berman was attempting to smear animal welfare groups through a phony “shelter advocacy” group, shelters were outraged by the deception. Berman then attempted to silence them through a campaign of legal intimidation, sending cease and desist letters to a number of shelters and animal welfare bloggers, including Washington Animal Rescue League, Humane Society of Berks County, Richmond SPCA, San Francisco SPCA, Ecorazzi, and Ohmidog.

Many of these shelters took down their comments rather than be faced with defending a meritless, but costly lawsuit.

In order to cast doubt on the victim’s words, Berman and his front groups focus on trivial errors, or even create bold misstatements of fact. In response to Time Magazine’s coverage of Berman’s underhanded tactics in which they stated that HumaneWatch.org paid for advertisements attacking the Humane Society of the United States, Berman’s attorneys objected, claiming that it was the Center for Consumer Freedom that paid for them.

HumaneWatch is an alias of the Center for Consumer Freedom. (Source: 2011 Form 990 tax return)

In reality, HumaneWatch.org is the Center for Consumer Freedom, and is actively doing business as HumaneWatch. Berman’s attorneys protested that Berman is not a lobbyist: he’s a former lobbyist (at least, on paper). They protested the claim that CCF represented the tanning bed industry: it was another of Berman’s deceptive campaigns that failed to downplay the dangers of tanning beds.

Despite nitpicking from Berman’s attorneys, the essence of the article is correct, just as animal shelters’ outrage over Berman’s phony shelter group was correct. Although Berman protested that “HSSP isn’t my group,” HSSP is operated by Berman and Company staff, out of Berman and Company’s offices. As with Berman’s other front groups, a significant portion of its “nonprofit” donations were funneled into Berman’s PR firm and into Berman’s pockets.

The purpose of this legal intimidation is clearly not to set the record straight, but to use Berman’s ill-gotten wealth to bully whistleblowers into silence.

In the case of Richard Berman — an attorney himself — crying crocodile tears about legal intimidation while simultaneously using it to harass animal welfare advocates is doubly offensive.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your computer, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/intimidation

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Manipulating Numbers

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On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.
–Nate Silver

Richard Berman’s smear campaigns like the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Union Facts frequently rely on distorted numbers to give their corporate spin the illusion of credibility. In fact, the core of Berman’s HumaneWatch campaign is its easily-repeated claim that the Humane Society of the United States gives less than 1% of its funds to pet shelters.

However, when you look beneath the glib summary and examine the numbers yourself, you find that those numbers have been blatantly misrepresented.

In order to reach that figure, HumaneWatch ignores any form of aid other than a hand-out of cash. They exclude grants for animals other than cats or dogs, as if those were the only animals worthy of care. They disregard dozens of animal welfare programs, including shelter and adoption advocacy programs.

To artificially minimize the work of the HSUS, HumaneWatch reduces its program expenses — expenses in excess of one hundred million dollars — to an arbitrary subset of those expenses, the one million dollars in direct cash grants made to dog and cat shelters. And of that amount, they randomly ignore programs vital to saving shelter pets, such as spay/neuter programs, veterinary care assistance, feral cat trap/neuter/return, and pet retention programs.

Despite the availability of HSUS tax returns and program expenses, few people bother to check the numbers for themselves. As a result, the 1% myth is one of Berman’s most successful distortions.

Deception and distortions of this kind are one of the primary weapons of Berman’s smear campaigns, but they only work when the readers are unfamiliar with Berman’s legacy of deceit. That’s why we’re releasing a series of graphics exposing the unethicals weapon in Berman’s arsenal of character assassination. Each graphic in the series will highlight a different deceptive scheme, perfect for reposting under a Berman op-ed, letter to the editor, or in response to a HumaneWatch supporter who may not understand the false nature of that smear campaign.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/manipulation

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

The power of (mis)quotations

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Quotations allow the reader to hear a story in the teller’s own words, with their true voice and passion. They are a window to the speaker’s soul.

And therein lies their power. When people read a quotation, they assume it is a faithful reporting of the speaker’s words.

Whenever we quote, edit or otherwise interpret what people tell us, we aim to be faithful to their meaning, so our stories ring true to those we interview.
— NPR Ethics Handbook

But what if your goal is to portray a respected animal lover as a cold, animal-hating psychopath?

If you’re Richard Berman and his hired guns, you lie.

Time after time, Berman and his smear campaigns have twisted quotes from animal activists into something unrecognizable. Consider this interview on with Wayne Pacelle on Iowa Public Radio:

Whatever your motivation for having the animal, whatever the use, you’ve got a responsibility to provide lifetime care… But if you can’t provide care for the horses, then you euthanize the animal. You can euthanize them by bringing a veterinarian out, or you can even shoot an animal in the head. We’re not saying that animals have to live indefinitely, and you have to make heroic efforts to extend the life of every animal. We’re saying that creating a commercial incentive to slaughter horses, and then having people opportunistically or disreputably gather them up, funnel them into the horse slaughter pipeline, is really catching perfectly healthy horses into the slaughter pipeline.

USDA says 92% of the horses sent to slaughter are perfectly healthy animals. This is a commercial enterprise, and we wouldn’t do this to dogs and cats. Would we set up a plant outside of Des Moines or Cedar Rapids to kill the unwanted dogs and export the meat to some foreign country? No! We would be outraged, because we have values about these animals.

Now, if you’re a credible source, you provide enough of the quote to give the reader context. But if you are CCF’s HumaneWatch, you do this:

Wayne Pacelle’s vision for horses: “Shoot [a horse] in the head.”*
Iowa Public Radio, July 2013

When one Stop HumaneWatch reader posted Pacelle’s quote in its entirety to the HumaneWatch Facebook page, they were immediately blocked by the page moderator. Clearly, the intent was not to convey Pacelle’s words; it was to deliberately misrepresent what he said. And that’s a dishonest tactic they frequently rely on.

Deception and distortions of this kind are one of the primary weapons of Berman’s smear campaigns, but they only work when the readers are unfamiliar with Berman’s legacy of deceit. That’s why we’re unveiling a series of graphics exposing another unethical weapon in Berman’s arsenal of character assassination. Each graphic in the series will highlight a different deceptive scheme, perfect for reposting under a Berman op-ed, letter to the editor, or in response to a HumaneWatch supporter who may not understand the false nature of that smear campaign.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I do get annoyed when reporters take my comments out of context in order to suit their agenda.
— Richard Berman, The Food Channel, October 6, 2010

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/misquotes

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Berman’s Vermin

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The Center for Consumer Freedom (which runs HumaneWatch) recently purchased a full-page ad attacking the Humane Society of the United States. Of course the ad –- published in The Washington Examiner — was filled with the usual array of half-truths, innuendo, and misleading statements that Richard Berman specializes in.

We don’t have a multi-million dollar budget paid for by disreputable corporations, but when Rick Berman throws a hand grenade, we’re happy to pick it up, pull the pin, and throw it back.

We therefore present Berman’s Vermin, a factual, seven point examination of Richard Berman and his unsavory tactics. Many people wrongly assume that HumaneWatch is a watchdog group, or that it is concerned about animal welfare. Please share this graphic on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to help set the record straight!


Download in JPEG or PDF format.

References:

Rick Berman profits from nonprofits

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Nonprofit regulations are intended to ensure that nonprofit organizations exist for the public benefit, and not for the enrichment of its creators.

But when Richard Berman creates nonprofit organizations with a dubious purpose, and diverts tax exempt donations into his own coffers, he circumvents the accountability that’s meant to protect the public from fraud and abuse.

That’s why Marcus Owens, former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, says that Berman’s evasive scheme “clearly, in my view, is operating for his private benefit and for the private benefit of his clients… [That’s] a clear violation of the requirements for tax-exempt status.”

We tallied the payments to Berman and his for-profit PR firm from six of the nonprofit front groups he has created: the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), Center for Union Facts (CUF), Employment Policies Institute Foundation (EPI), American Beverage Institute (ABI), Employee Freedom Action Committee (EFAC), and the Humane Society for Shelter Pets (HSSP).

The results are shocking.

Payments to Richard Berman or Berman and Company, Inc.

Year CCF CUF EPI ABI EFAC HSSP Total
2011$1,307,534.00$886,769.00$1,178,459.00$1,353,364.00$74.00$765,483.00$5,491,683.00
2010$1,707,511.00$587,334.00$1,658,383.00$1,395,519.00$268,873.00$0.00$5,617,620.00
2009$1,479,597.00$596,351.00$1,843,254.00$1,296,185.00$440,765.00—$5,656,152.00
2008$1,061,604.00$784,602.00$523,910.00$1,292,850.00$897,496.00—$4,560,462.00
2007$1,580,280.00$844,535.00$912,437.00$1,304,960.00——$4,642,212.00
2006$1,208,512.00$283,016.00$1,020,547.00$1,220,079.00——$3,732,154.00
2005$1,641,186.00—————$1,641,186.00
2004$1,453,056.00—————$1,453,056.00
2003$1,261,344.00—————$1,261,344.00
2002$1,044,553.00—————$1,044,553.00
TOTAL$13,745,177.00$3,982,607.00$7,136,990.00$7,862,957.00$1,607,208.00$765,483.00$35,100,422.00

Since 2002, Rick Berman has diverted over $35 million in supposedly nonprofit donations into his personal and corporate bank accounts. In some years, as much as 93% of an organization’s revenue has been funneled into personal gain.

Berman has not yet been held accountable for his abuse of nonprofit tax code. It’s a sad indictment of the Internal Revenue Service, its inability enforce its own regulations fairly and consistently, and its unwillingness to protect consumers.

To the see the raw numbers we used, consult the Form 990 tax returns for Berman’s organizations. These forms are gathered for your convenience in our Document Library, or you may obtain them from independent charity evaluators like Guidestar.org.

The relevant figures used in this table are:

  • Gross Receipts: Line G
  • Berman’s token salary: Part VII, Section A
  • Funds diverted to Berman and Company, Inc.: Part VII, Section B (Independent Contractors)
  • Grants to Berman-run organizations: Schedule I

Further reading