Yes, always ask not just what's being reported by WHY it's being reported.

On the other hand... I don't think this theory works. Getting rid of Fauci might be in their interests, but DISCREDITING him is not. He could be handed a gold watch and shuffled off with the thanks of a grateful nation, some cushy sinecures, and endless media gigs. The last thing they want is to paint him as a monster and validate his critics retroactively. Besides, none of the usual suspects seem to be pushing this story into the mainstream.

There's a more mundane explanation: attention bias. Stories like this pop up every few years. This just happens to be the first one that popped up after people started paying attention to Fauci and NIAID specifically. Heck, I'm involved in animal welfare locally here in Faucistan, home to NIH, so I was probably more aware of the beagle-butchering stories than average. And even I didn't spot the connection to until just now. It was always just a faceless "NIH" doing this stuff. No normal person was paying attention to Fauci or even NIAID at the time.

He can weasel out of responsibility for this anyway -- mistakes were made, closer review of our practices, etc. The whole Sir Humphrey Appleby routine. You don't get to where he is in the bureaucracy, and stay there four decades, without knowing how to do that.

Still, it's right to hammer him for it -- this stuff is monstrous in itself, quite apart from what it says about him more generally.