Earlier this week, a scandal hit the political-journalism complex that was on par with the way the “payola” scandal rocked the popular music world in the 1950s; see NEW: Massive Press Scandal As USAID Funding for ‘Politico’ Revealed, and It Gets Worse From There. Analysis of open-source federal documents showed that many news organizations had received obscene amounts of money from the federal government in the guise of “subscriptions.”
President Trump reacted quickly to the news that the federal government was spending tens of millions of dollars each year to support media outlets. This kind of support is wrong in a free society, and it is even more wrong when the outlets are basically hostile to the administration.
The immediate defense from the various outlets was, “Move along, nothing to see here.” This is how Politico hand-waved the allegations:
“POLITICO has been the subject of debate on X this week. Some of it has been misinformed, and some of it has been flat-out false. Let’s set the record straight,” the outlet wrote as part of a memo published on its website. “POLITICO is a privately owned company. We have never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years.”
The note comes in response to social media posts and public statements from Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and others who have expressed outrage that a large number of government agencies and federal employees subscribe to Politico’s expensive “Pro” news content.
The expenditures were revealed this week as part of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency work to reform major federal departments including USAID.
It is common for federal agencies to allow employees to expense subscriptions to newspapers, wire services and other media outlets as a function of their jobs, while subscriptions to niche content in a specific policy area can cost thousands of dollars a year.
Most Politico Pro subscribers are in the private sector, the company said Thursday, and come from across the ideological spectrum, with a renewal rate of around 90 percent every year “because they rely on our reporting, data, and insights.”
“Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes— just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction — just as the government buys research, equipment, software, and industry reports. Some online voices are deliberately spreading falsehoods,” the outlet said. “Let’s be clear: POLITICO has no financial dependence on the government and no hidden agenda. We cover politics and policy — that’s our job.”
If our government depends upon the insights and analysis of the midwits at Politico, then we are more thoroughly rogered than any of us ever imagined. My colleague, Brad Slager, looked at this defense and found it wanting; see Let’s Untangle the Inappropriate Financial Deals Between the Federal Gov’t., Politico, and Other Outlets – RedState. […]
— Read More: redstate.com
