“Corporations facing federal lawsuits and investigations aren’t giving millions to Trump’s inauguration out of the kindness of their hearts. They are trying to buy goodwill.”
An analysis released Monday in the wake of new Federal Election Commission filings shows that the Trump administration has dropped or paused federal enforcement cases against at least 17 corporations that donated to Trump’s inaugural fund, an indication that companies’ attempts to buy favor with the White House are already paying off.
In the new analysis, the watchdog group Public Citizen cross-references FEC data released Sunday with its own Corporate Enforcement Tracker, which documents companies facing federal cases for alleged wrongdoing.
Public Citizen found that corporations facing federal investigations or enforcement lawsuits donated a combined $50 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. Trump raised a record sum of $239 million for his second inauguration, the new FEC filings show.
Whist I would very much like a news source that just presents the unbiased facts, no such thing can exist as all of what we consume is mediated by humans, from story selection, to information gathering, to how that information is filtered, presented and finally how the reader processes it.
Even choosing to use the word ‘bribe’, the phrase ‘buying goodwill’ or just calling them ‘donations’ would be an editorial decision that would influence the reader. Depending on the reader each of those phrases would inspire different opinions. A reader who is more disposed to being positive about this administration may find ‘buying goodwill’ to be just about tolerable journalism, ‘bribe’ to be outragious slander and ‘donation’ perfectly reasonable and accurate. A more left reader would probably consider ‘donation’ to be unacceptable whitewashing, ‘buying goodwill’ to be euphamistic, and ‘bribe’ to fit their world view best. Therevis no phrasing that would avoid an emotional response, so either this can’t be reported, or the publication chooses to do so in line with their own biases.
There is also a constant tension between presenting just the bare facts of the current matter, and contextualising them for the reader, who may not be fully versed on the matter. How that contextualisation is done is also going to affect the reader’s perception.
There is, however, a very large difference between the presenting the information with some bias, and “a biased news source that tells you what you want to hear whether all the facts are there or not.” I would agree with you that the latter is a “rag”, though I would classify it that way for the willingness to draw a conclusion unsupported by fact, rather than necesarily for having bias. All sources, even your own senses, will give you a biased view of events. The critical thing is to acknowledge that and understand the bias you’re being presented with. Trying to make sure you consume sources with a variety of different biases is a good way to try to balance that, though I personally find it hard to stomach anything further than moderately right of my personal views anymore.