Beat the press: death threats and bullying tactics follow AIDS journalists who contradict the conventional wisdom

Washington Monthly, March, 1993 by Leslie Kaufman

Soon after Newsday published a book review by Michael Fumento, the newspaper's book editor, Jack Schwartz, began receiving anonymous phone calls late at night. Nasty calls. "They made a lot of threats," Schwartz recalls, "not the least of which was death." The calls came seven or eight a night for a month. It was clear very few of the callers had actually read the review, says Schwartz. "What outraged these people was not the content of the review, which was very even-handed," he says, "but that we allowed this guy to write anything at all." The issue was Michael Fumento himself.

Schwartz wasn't exactly surprised by the abuse. An editor of the now-defunct New York gay publication Outweek had previously made clear to him that Fumento was persona non grata, and that giving him a forum would carry serious consequences. Not long after the review appeared, Schwartz was "zapped." That is, his name and phone number were published in large, bold type in Outweek. The angry commentary that accompanied the number and invited readers to share their rage with Schwartz ran: "Why the fuck would Newsday have such a hate-filled, untalented, lying loser review important books?"

Who is Michael Fumento? He is perhaps the most politically incorrect AIDS writer in America. The title of his 1990 book says it all: The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. In it, he theorizes that despite dire predictions in the media, AIDS will not devastate white middle-class heterosexuals as it has homosexuals and poor minorities. The core of his thesis runs as follows:

  The myth of heterosexual AIDS consists
  of a series of myths, one of which is not
  that heterosexuals don't get AIDS. They
  certainly do get it, from shared needles, from
  transfusions, from clotting factor which
  hemophiliacs use to control internal bleeding,
  from their mothers at or before birth, and some-
  times through sexual intercourse with persons in
  these categories and with bisexuals. The prima-
  ry myth, however, was that the disease was no
  longer anchored to these risk groups but was in
  fact going from heterosexual to heterosexual to
  heterosexual through intercourse, that it was
  epidemic among non-drug abusing heterosexuals.

Fumento's theories on the spread of AIDS aren't ones you commonly hear, but they are not off the medical charts. The Journal of the American Medical Association called Fumento's book "thoroughly researched, poignantly written, and a must read for anyone interested in learning the dynamics of the HIV epidemic or health care planning." Dr. James Enstrom, a respected epidemiologist at UCLA who asked at first to speak anonymously because he feared retribution, said Fumento hit the nail on the head when he described "how the disease has been warped out of all proportions to how it occurs in society." Even The Advocate, a newspaper aimed at homosexual readers, wrote, "Look, the guy is a pig... But that doesn't mean he is wrong about the spread of AIDS."

Fumento is certainly not the only AIDS writer who has been harassed for having an unpalatable point of view. Others, such as Gina Kolata of The New York Times and Daniel Lynch of The Albany Times Union, have also been singled out for harassment by AIDS activists. But Fumento's story is a particularly vivid illustration of just how effective the extremes have been in controlling the bounds of acceptable discourse on AIDS.

Fumento is no right-wing gay-bashing crusader, but his theories have policy implications that strike at the core of the AIDS activist agenda. Myth has a chapter entitled, "The AIDS Lobby: Are We Giving It Too Much Money?" In it, Fumento implies that the government should pare back what it spends on AIDS research--about $2 billion in fiscal 1992--and start an educational campaign that explicitly describes the special dangers of anal sex in spreading AIDS. He mocks government-funded "sex-equals-death" campaigns which depict low-risk, straight, white people in their ads. Fumento's work is so focused on the outrages perpetrated on the public by the AIDS-research publicity machine that he often seems indifferent to the plight of those who are actually dying of the disease. But his lack of sensitivity (or even compassion) is no reason to dismiss his views. Even if Fumento offends personally, he is someone who belongs in our national debate on AIDS.

Unfortunately, as Jack Schwartz learned the hard way, not everyone can agree to disagree. Even before Fumento published his book he had become the target of AIDS activists. They have repeatedly attempted to silence him, often by resorting to violent intimidation, and they have almost succeeded. While the personal harm inflicted on Fumento by his opponents is in itself an injustice, his tale offers an equally sobering lesson about the politics of ADS: that some sectors of the news media and publishing industry have given in to pressure from activists for fear of being branded the unenlightened accomplices of antigay conservatives.

Branding a heretic

In 1987, Fumento, then a legal affairs reporter for The Washington Times, wrote an article for Commentary magazine in which he dared to challenge the widespread notion that AIDS was the next bubonic plague. The numbers coming out of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, he said, were being widely misinterpreted and the spread of AIDS exaggerated. Not surprisingly, the story was ignored by the mainstream media. In 1987, reputable outlets from U.S. News & World Report to the normally stoic Atlantic were busy predicting an AIDS apocalypse. Needless to say, more popular tabloid journalists had also embraced the worst case scenario with a passion. In early 1987, Oprah Winfrey opened her show with these words: "Hello everybody. AIDS has both sexes running scared. Research studies now project that one in five--listen to me, hard to believe--one in five heterosexuals could be dead of AIDS in the next three years."