By Issues & Insights Editorial Board | December 19, 2024
We find it hard to believe, but according to Mike Benz, a former State Department official, the Biden White House lavished a multinational media syndicate with hundreds of millions of dollars. For its “investment,” the administration apparently received hit pieces against a political enemy.
If that’s the price for supporting a corrupt regime, what could we get for trying to hold government accountable for its abuses and malpractice and misfeasance?
Benz, deputy assistant secretary of State under President Donald Trump, tweeted earlier this week that “The Biden Admin paid Reuters over $300 million in government contracts. 11 different Biden government agencies targeted Elon’s businesses. All 11 agencies paid millions to Reuters. Reuters then won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘their work on Elon Musk and misconduct at his businesses.’”
He included the receipts, as the kids like to say, showing which departments and agencies funded which lines of attack on Musk’s businesses, and the amounts they sent.
In another tweet, Benz says that Reuters, “between its newswire services, its network intelligence services & its data services” has raked in more than “$1.56 billion dollars in U.S .government contracts.”
“Does Reuters’ customer relationship with government agencies taint its news coverage of government actions?” he asks.
Well of course it does.
So far, the legacy media with all its resources, has yet to dig into the story. Probably because they see it as another Hunter Biden laptop problem. But it sure looks as if a legacy media company was bought to spread government propaganda.
We have no such good fortune at I&I. In fact, we’re are frequently demonetized (and censored) by Google for publishing facts that don’t fit the narrative spun and maintained by the Democrat-media cartel.
Just last month, Google told us our Nov. 21 editorial “Unburdened By What Has Been, Trump Is Poised To Deliver Bigly” contained “unreliable and harmful claims” and disabled ads that bring us a modest amount of revenue that would have appeared with that editorial.
It wasn’t the first time. A search of our site shows Google’s history of demonetizing I&I because we dare challenge the account that the political powers and their media lackeys are feeding the public.
Google, Facebook, and other tech giants – who now serve as arbiters of what people can read – were more than happy to let the Biden administration outsource its censorship campaign to them.
There’s a chance this industrial-censorship-complex will come to an end under the next administration. President-elect Trump has tapped Andrew Ferguson – who promised to “hold big tech accountable and stop censorship,” and “protect freedom of speech and fight wokeness” – to head the Federal Trade Commission.
We’re not looking for a $300 million payout. Heck, we’d be happy if Ferguson got Google to pay us back for the ad revenue its censorship campaign has cost us.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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