Earlier this week, a scandal comparable to the “payola” scandal of the 1950s shook the political-journalism complex. An analysis of publicly available federal documents revealed that numerous news organizations had received substantial funds from the federal government under the guise of “subscriptions.”
President Trump swiftly responded to the revelation that the federal government was allocating tens of millions of dollars annually to support media outlets. Such support is deemed inappropriate in a free society, especially when the supported outlets are openly critical of the administration.
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The immediate defense from the various outlets was, “Move along, nothing to see here.” This is how Politico hand-waved the allegations:
This response follows social media posts and public comments by Trump, billionaire Elon Musk, and others expressing strong disapproval that many government agencies and federal employees are subscribing to Politico’s costly “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 .
In fact, we’ve had statements from former reporters indicating that they were told to spike or suppress stories harmful to Joe Biden: see .
I have no doubt that the media outlets involved can produce invoices showing they provided “premium” subscriptions to the various agencies. But just like auditing a money laundering operation, you are not obligated to take what they say at face value. In fact, the government contracting documents indicate there is something else going on.
Politico Subscriptions. Source.
New York Times Subscriptions. Source.
Associated Press Subscriptions. Source.
No matter the intent, it is an unassailable fact that in these three instances involving Politico, the New York Times, and the AP, the massive increase in their subscription business with the US government coincides with Joe Biden’s election and is really obvious by February 2021, Biden’s first full month in office. There is no such volume of subscriptions in either the Obama or Trump administrations.
The government does not need to purchase this number of subscriptions to premium media services. While the government may have bought them because the “venture Marxists” at the upper reaches of government like to imagine themselves as “captains of industry” and brilliant executives, and the subscriptions served as an outward symbol of their importance, the media outlets could not but have pulled their punches when weighing negative stories about Joe Biden, his dementia, his criminal family, etc., against potentially millions of dollars in lost revenue.
The excuse that the government always buys these services is patent nonsense and insulting. Given their history, we know Politico, for instance, can tell much more skillful lies than the one they offered us.
Trump needs to order an investigation into this unseemly financial connection between the Biden administration and the media that covered it and give America a full accounting of what they find.
