THE EBERLE LAWSUIT

Help the Watchdog Bark!

From Animal People June 2003

We are still alive and barking after a 10-month fight for our lives. As explained in the article beginning on page one, the fundraiser Bruce Eberle and his company Fund Raising Strategies sued ANIMAL PEOPLE in July 2002 for "libel" and "interfering with a business relationship."

Eberle's "libel" claims were so unclear that for months we could not even figure out what he claimed we got wrong. We have always promptly corrected errors, when informed what they are, and the corrections we have now published could have been made at any time, for the asking, if the evidence of error had been presented to us.

Indeed, of the three items enumerated in the page one correction statement, ANIMAL PEOPLE had already corrected the first, to the extent of our ability to do so at the time, upon learning through our own research that an error might have been made. We had also published Eberle's response to the second item, involving an error made in a statement by one of his own clients. The third item pertains to the possibility that three ambiguous sentences might have been read out of context, only one of which appeared in an ANIMAL PEOPLE regular edition.

But the case was not actually about correcting errors. It was an attempt to muzzle the ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog so that Eberle and FRS could go on filling animal charity donors' mailboxes with an endless stream of fundraising solicitations while using the lion's share of the receipts to pay for printing and mailing even more solicitations.

When animal charities get involved with direct mail mills, it is like taking the bite of the vampire: fundraising expense sucks the lifeblood of the charity, and turns it into a kind of zombie who from then on mainly exists to do more fundraising.

We have survived a legal battle we couldn't afford--but it was a battle we could not afford to lose: not for the suffering animals who go unaided because too much of the money sent to help them goes to fuel the fundraising machine, not for the generous people who think their donations are helping animals, and not for the struggling but responsible animal charities who use most of the money sent to them for their stated charitable purpose.

The fight took all we had, against a well-connected foe with the advantage of wealth. In the end, however, despite 10 months of legal fees and major stress, ANIMAL PEOPLE did not retreat in any way from exposing the truth.

We believe ANIMAL PEOPLE readers have a right to know about the findings of the 1992 U.S. Senate Select Committee on MIA/POW about Eberle's role in mailing approximately 40 direct mail appeals on behalf of a "charity" that raised money around bogus sightings of U.S. prisoners of war.

We believe ANIMAL PEOPLE readers have a right to know that Eberle raised funds for former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms in at least three election campaigns--the Senator whose amendment to the Animal Welfare Act excluded from protection more than 90% of the animals used in U.S. laboratories.

We believe ANIMAL PEOPLE readers have a right to know of the financial patterns among the animal charities Eberle represents, whose fundraising and administrative expenses often run twice as high as the ceiling of 35% set by the Wise Giving Alliance.

What that means, in effect, is that if you send money to the charities represented by Eberle and FRS, your donations are likely to get less than half as much benefit for the animals and more than twice as many more fundraising appeals per penny spent on animals as when you donate to the overwhelming majority of other animal charities who do not use hired-gun professional fundraisers.

What the Eberle charge of "interfering with a business relationship" meant, we gather, is that since we began putting the background about Eberle and the animal charities he represents into print in September 2000, readers have become more cautious about where they send their money, and the more than 9,500 animal charities that get free subscriptions to ANIMAL PEOPLE have become more careful about who they allow to rent their mailing lists.

To animal protection donors--and ANIMAL PEOPLE--charity on behalf of animals is not just about having a "business relationship." We believe that if someone asks for money on behalf of a lion at the Kabul Zoo, for example, the lion should get the lion's share: most of the money, not just most of the money after fundraising expense. We believe that ethical animal charities do not ask for money on behalf of a lion who is in the care of other charities, with whom they have no partnership, and most certainly do not ask for money on behalf of a lion who is already dead.

ANIMAL PEOPLE published our enumerated and detailed standards for ethical animal charities and fundraisers as the editorial in our May 2003 edition. It amounts, as well, to a "Bill of Rights" for donors.

Among the most important rights of donors that are implied in the ANIMAL PEOPLE standards:

You have a right to be truthfully, accurately, and currently informed about the charities you support.

You have a right to expect that the money you send will be used to help the animals you donate to assist.

You have a right to demand accountability.

You have a right to demand high-quality animal care--not just whatever meets the often minimal legal requirements.

You have a right to know the policies that the groups you support are advocating and representing.

You have a right to know if a charity is directed by people of questionable integrity or with conflicts of interest.

You have a right to expect that animal charities and any outside fundraisers they hire should operate with the same concern for animals that you have--that they should exemplify themselves the qualities of compassion and decency to which they appeal when they ask for your money.

Bills of rights are often won at a fearsome price--which is why so many humans and nonhuman animals have suffered without rights for so long--and why it was morally incumbent upon us to stand up and insist upon our rights and the rights of animals in a case that combined the issues.

To extend the necessary right of freedom from abuse and exploitation to animals, we had to defend our own constitutional right to freedom of speech and press, against an opponent whose chief legal strategy appeared to be attempting to raise the cost of exposing him as high as possible, seemingly regardless of the cost to himself.

We will probably never know how much Eberle spent, but at a guess it might have been three to five times the $100,000 or more it will have cost us--in defense of our right to publish; your right to know; the many honest, hardworking, mostly volunteer and low-overhead animal charities that you prefer to support; and most important, in defense of neglected and abused animals everywhere, who depend upon your generosity.

The fortune that Eberle invested in attempting to silence ANIMAL PEOPLE is a hint at how lucrative fundraising on behalf of animals may be, if no one barks an alarm when the lions and other animals do not get the lion's share of each donated dollar.

Who is suffering because of this?

Let us explain very briefly what this case cost the animals. Who is really suffering because Bruce Eberle wanted to shut us up? To pay our attorneys, we had to suspend translating ANIMAL PEOPLE articles into French and Spanish for posting at our web site to assist Third World animal charities.

In April we were unable to mail some of the complimentary overseas subscriptions that we normally send to every animal charity, and we are facing greater cuts now.

How much does this hurt?

Fenua Animalia president Eric Loève stressed the value of our translations recently in this e-mail from Motu Uta, Tahiti, in French Polynesia:

"The French version of Animal People on the Internet is a wonderful idea and I want to thank you. As a webmaster myself, I know the huge work of maintaining a multi-lingual site. Your French version is timely because French is widely spoken in many countries where the conditions for animals are awful. ANIMAL PEOPLE cannot be rewarded enough."

Eric Loève is using how-to information obtained from the French translations of ANIMAL PEOPLE to organize an island-by-island campaign to sterilize the estimated 100,000 homeless cats and dogs in French Polynesia.

How necessary was our battle?

Kalahari Raptor Centre director Chris Mercer has had much experience fighting comparably costly court cases against the pro-hunting wildlife management establishment in South Africa--one of the nations whose animal charities did not receive our April edition.

"I believe it would be a mistake to total up the costs and regard any of the money spent as 'wasted,'" Mercer recently volunteered. "Your mission as I understand it is to advance the cause of animal welfare, and if that means taking on exploitative fundraisers like Bruce Eberle, discrediting them and increasing the difficulty of carrying on their activities, then you are being true to your mission."

Angels stepped forward to help us. We were wondering how we would pay the legal bills for March, for example, when we received an unexpected bequest from Florida activist Andrea Konci, who felt very strongly about animal charity accountability and, unknown to us, amended her will in the last days of her life to help us fight the good fight.

But if angels alone could win and defend a Bill of Rights, there would have been no need for an American Revolution -- and as Independence Day approaches, we are depending on you to help us rebuild and recover. Though still holding our banner high and banging the drums, we are limping. If we could have just one more angel, we would choose Paul Revere's dog, who drove back the redcoats when they tried to seize Revere, then raced ahead to awaken Lexington and Concord to hear the alarm.

Eleven years ago, in 1992, we founded ANIMAL PEOPLE for the same reasons we fought Bruce Eberle: far too often, the lions do not get the lions' share of your generosity. When donated dollars go mostly into fundraising and administration, instead of into actual work on behalf of animals, animals go hungry, unvaccinated, unsterilized, exposed to poisoning, shooting, cooking, vivisection, and all the many other abuses that have continued while millions of dollars have been raised--and paid to fundraisers and overpaid executives--in the name of saving those animals.

We exposed that truth originally as employees at another publication, now defunct. Merritt was fired, Kim resigned. We maxed out our personal credit to start ANIMAL PEOPLE and worked for years with little or no pay to make it succeed, against the concerted opposition of big-group leaders (some of them no longer in the cause) who sought to suppress our disclosures about their salaries and perks.

ANIMAL PEOPLE survived because hundreds of cat-ladies, dog-rescuers, and protesters against every sort of cruelty realized the importance of effectively directing donations, and pitched in when the chips were down, to help us to continue our accountability reporting and extend our outreach to the animal rescuers and activists in the poorest and most miserable parts of the world.

We need you to contribute again--whatever you can--to keep the ANIMAL PEOPLE "Watchdog" barking.

Thank you in advance for helping generously.

--Merritt Clifton