We are told that “there’s nothing to see” in the recent revelations about how USAID was subsidizing Politico.
At Reason, Robby Soave pooh-poohed the story: “some critics of USAID have seized on a misleading claim: Namely, that the organization was funneling millions of dollars to Politico. In reality, it appears that government agents were paying for subscriptions to Politico’s premium product. That may or may not be a worthwhile use of government funds (more on this in a moment), but at any rate, it does not represent some kind of direct subsidy to the news outlet.”
It could be, however, a subsidy with plausible deniability.
The keyword may be: Mockingbird.
Remember the Church Committee investigations into the intel community, post-Nixon? One of the revelations was of Operation Mockingbird, which was (“allegedly”) the CIA training and subsidizing of — and coordinating stories to — scores (perhaps hundreds) of individual journalists.
One of the many things we don’t know about Mockingbird is if it ever ended. But one thing we do know is that programs begun by one agency not irregularly get taken up by others.
And speaking of multiple agencies — with more than a dozen dedicated to intelligence, why is government paying the private sector for information?
For all their massive appropriations, the basic job of intel agencies to inform (not lie to) representatives, government executives, and functionaries appears to be one they’ve skimped on.
Meanwhile, USAID’s massive subsidies to New Zealand news outfits has somehow received little interest. “Last week, Wikileaks reported that 25 NZ mainstream media outlets were given funding from USAID,” explains The Daily Blog. “We need an immediate explanation from our Mainstream Media Owners if they changed any editorial stance that aligned us with America while taking this money.”
Inquiring minds should be skeptical of underplaying of these revelations. Don’t we need a wall of separation between press and state?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “The Chirping Mockingbird”
A media outlet survives or falls based upon whether those who fund it believe that it delivers what they want. Thus, to explain perverse reporting by some outlets, a frequent claim is that these outlets are simply giving their audiences what they want. The only difference between the first proposition and that latter claim is that the claim sees the audience as the source of funding, whereas the first allows for the possibility of other sources of funding (advertising fees, grants, payola, &c).
Robby Soave is basically arguing as if reporting at Politico was not perverted because the the government was funding it qua audience. That argument is offensively stupid. Even if functionaries sought perverted reporting in just the same way that readers of The New York Times seek perverse reporting, the fact would remain that the Federal government was paying for perverse reporting.
Indeed, a few functionaries ought to attend what is being reported by significant media outlets, and then to give a heads up to other parts of government in the face of surprising revelations or of burst of disinformation. What we instead see is a significant payoff laundered as subscription fees.
A Politico premium subscription costs $200 a year. Politico reportedly received $44k from USAID over two years, so $22k per year or 110 subscriptions. With about 10,000 USAID employees, that means subscriptions for 1% of them.
All of that doesn’t seem like 1) very much money or 2) a very efficient subsidy if subsidizing was the intent.
But, not knowing how many premium subscribers Politico has (they don’t disclose those numbers), especially across the entire federal government and not just USAID, it’s not easy to dismiss Mr. Mc Kiernan’s hypothesis that the government may have been buying “subscriber influence.” My insufficiently informed guess is that federal employees, using taxpayer money, are an out-sized component of that subscriber base and that would indeed be likely to influence tone and topic of coverage.
At a bare minimum, I’d like to see federal employees pay for their own subscriptions to job-related media instead of the government doing so. Then if they itemize deductions, they can just use those subscriptions as a deduction their taxable income. That would serve the secondary purpose of somewhat obscuring the “I’m a government employee” component of audience demographic analysis.
USAID is not even the sole nor the largest purveyor (thief) of tax dollars. (“Thief” because unconstitutional spending is illegal, ergo thievery).
That honor would probably go to the Pentagon, which has even less oversight.