Pewgate: Leftwing Journalists on the Take

Last week, the New York Post revealed that a group of leftwing foundations, including the Pew Charitable Trusts and George Soros' Open Society Institute, had paid $140 million to various "experts" and non-profit organizations to deceive Congress into thinking that grassroots America was demanding "campaign finance reform" (see "Pewgate: McCain-Feingold Lobbyists Bankroll Fake Grassroots Movement.")

Much of the money went to buy favorable coverage from leftwing media outlets such as National Public Radio and the American Prospect magazine. In the New York Post of March 17, Ryan Sager reports:

"In September of 2000, less than two years before the passage of McCain-Feingold, the liberal magazine The American Prospect put out a special issue devoted to campaign-finance reform. With incredible hypocrisy, the magazine failed to tell its readers that the `Checkbook Democracy' issue was paid for with a $132,000 check from the Carnegie Corporation - which, again, has spent $14 million promoting the regulation of political speech in the last decade.

"Since 1994, National Public Radio has accepted more than $1.2 million from liberal foundations promoting campaign-finance reform for items such as (to quote the official disclosure statements) `news coverage of financial influence in political decision-making.' About $400,000 of that directly funded a program called, `Money, Power and Influence.' …at least $860,000 can be tied directly to coverage of money in politics."

In addition, Sager notes that, between 1995 and 2001, the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, which trains journalists, received $935,000 from Pewgate-linked foundations, some of which was used for a "training initiative to help television, radio and print journalists provide better news coverage of the influence of private money on electoral, legislative and regulatory processes."

Perhaps a more pressing need, at the moment, would be to train leftwing journalists to "provide better news coverage of the influence of private money" in shaping their own stories.

As Matt Drudge would say… developing…