| This originally was published in rantburg.com on September 5th, 2023 |
| By Chris Covert Wow. What a difference 11 years make. That is how long it has been since the conservative media sphere had a rock solid scandal with regard to payments from foreign sources. Back then it was five writers (that we know of), including Ben Domentech of Red State and other media outlets who wrote for a foreign government in 2010. The reports surfaced in 2013 revealing that the Malaysian government gave out big paychecks to a series of writers -- erstwhile conservatives all -- to provide positive coverage in several media outlets, among them Huffington Post, San Francisco Examiner and others. This is all the short version. Its long, detailed form can be found here.. The link in the title is to a Daily Mail article about US government sanctions against RT, AKA Russia Today, and hereinafter referred to as Rossiya Sevodnya, where the Russian media outlet and some of its fronts were indicted for violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a federal statute so old it is rarely, if selectively, enforced. Names which came up in the course of Daily Mail work included some youtube.com media figures, including Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Chen through the Tennessee media company Tenet Media, owned by Chen's spouse, Liam Donovan. They were all identified as conservative, a label through the Biden years which has lost practically all meaning. Those four were employed by Tenet Media, a fact of which I was unaware. I thought that Pool was an independent. Guess not: Just another working stiff pulling down millions courtesy of Russian media. Some important distinctions should be made: One is that Pool did some media work in Ukraine post coup, so it is hard to see why he would do media work through his youtube.com account for Rossiya Sevodnya, or would at least ensure his work would not appear in what I label Russia's CNN. Two is that Scott Ritter, not included in this scandal, actually does write for Rossiya Sevodnya, and had made it no secret, and has run afoul of the FARA. If you read the article I wrote back in 2013, you will see that affected PR writers later were registered in the FARA database years after they did their work. I suspect in order to stay on the federal government's good side, those five named in the Daily Mail article will wind up in that database as well. But now, I bet that label will be splayed all over paid media: "har har, see the conservative money grubbers writing for Rossiya Sevodnya." In fairness to the five media influencers it is easy to see how they were deceived as to the provenance of those payments, them with their hands out, their editorial integrity untouched. It's hard to Google Russian names; the Russian language has all those weird characters, and, besides, the Russians never spell things right. So, weirdly, we have a media scandal, to call it what it is, this time during a national election in which a foreign government issues fat pay checks to one political side, and asks for so little in return. It is clear the Russians still are trying to figure out how the US government gets the US national media to side with the US government without resorting to threats or to cash payments. As for myself in relation to this story/scandal: I never made much money as a machinist. But whatever money was paid I was 100 percent certain it was for services rendered. No one was harmed from my efforts and product went out the door either for resale or for end use. Were I to receive from anyone as little as $5 for my current activities online, I would want to know who it is from, and most importantly why. The reasons are to express my thanks to the generous individual and to let my public know about the payment. Were I not to receive a satisfactory answer to who and why, I would be compelled to return the cash payment, with grace and gratitude for their generosity. Such an easy thing to do to retain your integrity. |
