This article can be found on DxE’s blog here.  Ironically, whoever wrote this blog post has not realized that Medium has taken down, for reasons unknown, Wayne’s lengthy diatribe against journalist Saul Elbein.  I have offered some comments in bold. Here is the article: 

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This morning DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung published a blog on Medium detailing his experiences with a journalist named Saul Elbein whose investigative reporting turned into a smear campaign against animal rights activists. (Calling his investigative reporting, based on facts, a smear campaign, is a tactic to get readers to believe the story. Telling the truth may result in a “smear,” but that is the job of investigative reporters. DxE is “smearing” the ag industry all the time!) 

 This specific case offers insight into the broader fraying of journalistic integrity as corporate consolidation of the media puts profit at the forefront of the industry, something Wayne has witnessed firsthand from his time working for CNN, and something we should all be aware of as animal rights activists pitching our message to a profit-driven media. (If Saul Elbein is giving misinformation, I think he is risking his life to do so. Check out just one of his articles where he investigates journalists who are getting killed for telling the truth. Even a cursory look at his website shows that Saul is truly an investigative journalist.)

Hsiung writes, “My relationship with Elbein and Business Insider began with a legitimate story: the prosecution of a pig farmer for saving his pigs.

In early 2019, Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal rights network I co-founded, discovered that an employee at a Smithfield farm in North Carolina, Bradley Johnson, was being charged for giving piglets to a sanctuary. The piglets at issue were deemed unfit for slaughter, and would have ended up thrown away in a landfill. For allowing these piglets to go to sanctuary — with the apparent permission of his manager — Smithfield claimed that Johnson had “stolen” the pigs and pressured the District Attorney to charge him with felony larceny. In this regard, Johnson’s case was similar to my own; I have been prosecuted for removing dying piglets from a Smithfield factory farm in Utah.”

You can learn more about Wayne’s case against Smithfield here.

When Saul Elbein was pitched on this story, he was interested in Smithfield’s efforts to repress Wayne, an animal cruelty investigator, and Brad Johnson, one of their of their own farmers. The corrupted character in the story was clear: Smithfield Foods, the largest “pork” producer in the world. But as Wayne’s fight against Smithfield drew increasing attention, including from notable journalists, Elbein lost his unique story. 

(If you look at this story that is in the above link, it isn’t clear that Elbein lost his unique story. (The story isn’t specifically about Brad Johnson–so how did Elbein “lose” the story. I did a google search and there is no article published by a notable journalist that covered Brad Johnson and DxE. If there was, you can be sure that DxE would have posted it on their blog. Look here to search for it on DxE’s blog, which only goes back to 2018. DxE  was founded in 2013.)

His solution? Create a new one. 

(They can not prove that Saul’s motivation was to smear DxE because he lost the story–the story about Brad Johnson that was never published by any “notable journalist.” Search–you will not find.”

Hsiung writes, “Saul Elbein’s behavior has not only been deeply disturbing; it is indicative of a darker trend in American media. The pursuit of profit now overwhelms the pursuit of truth. (This is a generalization and one more unprovable fact that Saul is part of this “darker trend.” 

 And all the journalistic safeguards that used to be in place — don’t engage in personally problematic behavior with your sources; don’t pay your sources, or ask for payment from them; and don’t lie — are being thrown out the window.”

(There is absolutely no proof that Saul did any of these things.)

(Here is a story from Brad Johnson where he tells about how DxE treated him, along with all kinds of articles which prove that DxE treated Brad poorly. These articles show how much Wayne is out of integrity in general, thus showing evidence that there is a good chance he is out of integrity in writing the story about Saul.)

(Note that the full story that Wayne wrote was deleted from Medium. Could the post have been deleted because Wayne attacked Saul without any concrete evidence? You decide.) 

(I saw the story Wayne wrote and posted on Medium, and immediately responded to it with this comment. The blog post Wayne wrote about Saul was taken down the day after I posted. You can see for yourself by the link the DxE posted below, that Medium took the story off of their platform.)

Conclusion: The article that this post introduced, which was copied by a friendly source before it was taken off Medium, is clearly not accurately proven by facts. The longer article that Wayne wrote also does not offer proof of his many accusations. I encourage you to use your own critical thinking skills to examine the article objectively, and draw your own conclusions.