As stated in the note from the Sunlight Foundation′s Board Chair, as of September 2020 the Sunlight Foundation is no longer active. This site is maintained as a static archive only.

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Tag Archive: Journalism

NewsTrust Focuses on Congress

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NewsTrust.net - an online social news rating site - is focusing in on Congress this week and is looking for users, new and current, to contribute stories that exemplify quality reporting on Congress. Over at the NewsTrust blog they've singled out some of the stories submitted so far, including a number of articles and blog posts on the Senate fight over telecom immunity in the FISA reauthorization bill. They are hosting this Congress feature through Sunday, so get over there and review some articles. Feel free to submit blog posts or articles, I just submitted this great Alaska Daily News article about Sen. Ted Stevens' use of the earmarking process to help enrich a former staffer and fisheries industry lobbyist.

(NewsTrust is a Sunlight grantee.)

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Reporting a Possibility of Impropriety as Actual

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Last Friday, I emailed Peter Byrne to inform him of the critique I'd posted of his article which states that Sen. Dianne Feinstein committed serious ethical improprieties. Byrne wrote that Feinstein, in her capacity as chair or ranking member of the Senate Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee, benefited two businesses in which her husband, Richard C. Blum, had a financial interest. In the critique, I argued that the evidence Byrne cites, when closely examined, either doesn't support or in fact contradicts the allegations he makes. He disagreed with my analysis (I am simultaneously posting an updated version of the analysis to incorporate additional information he provided), and I emailed back to say I still thought the information he provided was not sufficient to support the charges leveled in his article. He responded:

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Fact checking allegations of corruption

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(Note: After posting this piece, I had an email exchange with Peter Byrne. I am adding some of the information he provided, in his words, and responding as well. New material can be found by searching for the words "new material". I also moved the disclosure statement to the top of the post. In many ways this post is now moot, as Byrne clarified what he meant in his article--see here.) One of the few downsides of the Internet age is that inaccurate information and completely unsubstantiated allegations can be dressed up as an "investigative" expose and then be recycled over and over, regardless of how wildly unfounded they are. Such is the case with this piece that ran in some small California weeklies that, on the basis of what appears to be no evidence at all, alleges serious ethical improprieties by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The story has been recycled by David Keene, who writes a column for the Hill, and subsequently picked up by various blogs. I should note right away (this disclosure was originally at the bottom of this lengthy piece) that I got interested in this story because it prominently mentions the Sunlight Foundation's co-founder, Michael Klein. Mike can speak for himself (as he already did in response to the article). I limited my review to the central allegation of the article, and asked whether I as an editor would publish it on the basis of the evidence presented. I wouldn't.

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Something Missing From CNN’s Campaign Finance Report

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Campaign finance stories are often difficult to tell in print, let alone on television. You often need charts and graphs to illustrate where the money is coming from, you need to explain the rules of the system and then the ways to get around those rules, and generally you end up with far more correlation than causation: special interests give money to politicians who favor their agendas, but absent quid pro quos, you end up with politicians avowing that contributions had nothing to do with their votes. That's one reason, I think, why election coverage often focuses more on the horse race and the superficial issues than on more substantial issues, like why are particular interests or industries donating thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to a particular candidate? Who are the folks packing rooms with 30 or 50 or 100 people all writing $500, $1,000 or $2,000 checks to the candidate? And what will these people want come January?

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Blogs on Blogs v. Newspapers

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Bill posted earlier about the exciting new journalism project that Jay Rosen, associate prof at the journalism school of my alma mater NYU, is undertaking. There are many perspectives out there in the blogs and in the traditional media about Rosen’s efforts to bridge the gap between citizen journalism and professional journalism and about the role of blogs versus the traditional newspaper. Daniel Schorr recently told a USA Today reporter that he finds bloggers “scary” because “there is no publisher, no editor, no anything. It's just you and a little machine and you can make history.” To some that may be scary, for others it’s the future.

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CFC (Combined Federal Campaign) Today 59063

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