Members of a “hate group” actively seek out reporters willing to republish false and defamatory statements without undertaking a direct investigation of facts or exercising a fair measure of due diligence or professional journalistic caution. These detractors have successfully fed misinformation to newspapers and sent multiple letters to editors using fictitious names.
 
In 2002, Australian journalist John Macgregor filed complaints against Elan Vital with many tax authorities around the world and then encouraged other reporters to write about “tax fraud investigations” without disclosing to readers and editors that he had instigated the story. Macgregor was later held in contempt by the Australian court for making false statements to the court. Since that time, Macgregor has realized that his actions were improper, and his lack of judgment was due to emotional and personal difficulties. Macgregor publicly apologized to Prem Rawat, to Elan Vital and to the students, and admitted in legal documents that the hate group’s goals are not intelligent or rational debate, but instead to harass and interfere with the public’s legal rights to explore Knowledge and self-discovery. [Download PDF of the affidavit by John Macgregor filed with the Supreme Court of Queensland, Australia.]
 
In 2003, A San Francisco-based detractor contacted the campus newspaper at a California university where Maharaji was going to speak, bombarding a young journalism student with emails containing false and sensationalized allegations. Another member of the hate group then posed as a fictitious “spokesperson” of Elan Vital and gave the newspaper silly quotes supporting the hate group's allegations. The student newspaper was duped and published a false and misleading story. When Elan Vital contacted the newspaper's faculty advisor, the newspaper published an article correcting the misinformation. The hate group re-published the false article on its website, but never acknowledged its role in fooling the press nor the corrected article.

This hate group has come to rely on the laziness or irresponsibility of a minority of reporters more interested in inflammatory language than in the accuracy of their reporting. As a result, these reporters do the hate group’s “dirty work” by republishing false and defamatory statements.

In pursuit of journalistic ethics, it is not sufficient for publishers to simply precede false allegations with cautionary phrases such as "some critics say…" or to follow them with a token response from Maharaji or Elan Vital. Given the fact that the hate group is composed of people with woefully inadequate credibility and malicious motives, reporters and editors who are manipulated by these individuals may put themselves at legal risk. Elan Vital will gladly provide accurate information on any matters that remain ambiguous.