Showing posts with label ANITA DUNN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ANITA DUNN. Show all posts

Saturday, August 20, 2022

Signaling a shift

 

POGO Weekly Spotlight

August 20, 2022

The Justice Department investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents has highlighted inequities in the way the federal government has enforced the Espionage Act in the past.

Historically, the Justice Department has used this law to prosecute and recommend harsh sentences for whistleblowers and truthtellers who have made disclosures in an attempt to expose government wrongdoing. In contrast, many high-level officials were given short sentences or were never charged under the law after mishandling sensitive information.

The DOJ’s decision to issue a search warrant for documents at the former president’s home was the right move, and it hopefully signals a shift in the way the federal government applies the Espionage Act. But as POGO’s Freddy Martinez wrote in The Nation this week, this shift should also come with reforms to the way truthtellers are treated under the law, like allowing a public interest defense to defendants charged under the Espionage Act.

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RESOURCE

Now the Senate Is at Bat on Appropriations — Let’s Hope They Score Some Runs

Here are the eight provisions to watch in the fiscal year 2023 appropriations process for the Senate.

Read More

OP-ED

The Mar-a-Lago Raid Highlights the DOJ’s Hypocrisy on the Espionage Act

The Espionage Act has long been used to punish whistleblowers. But despite acting against Trump, the Justice Department usually gives a pass to high-ranking officials who disregard the national security system they’re sworn to uphold.

Read More on The Nation

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The only way to prevent corruption is through the transparency created by Congress a decade ago.”

Danielle Brian, Executive Director, in USA Today

OVERHEARD

@waltshaub: If you work in a small office for a federal agency making photocopies and ordering supplies, you could go to jail if you have stock in the supply companies. 

If you pass laws affecting the lives of every American, no conflict of interest law applies to you. 

#StopTheTrades

ONE LINERS

“This is extraordinary. ... Microsoft is so central to his duties, it’s impossible to escape questions about whether this financial interest influences his judgment.”

Walter Shaub, Senior Ethics Fellow, in HuffPost 

 

“Watchdogs need to be held to the highest standards if they are to be credible. There’s a pattern of Cuffari resisting the kind of oversight that other federal employees face.”

Nick Schwellenbach, Senior Investigator, in Washington Post

 

“These outside influences, through PAC funding, through stocks, can significantly influence the way members of Congress choose to vote.”

Nathan Siegel, Legal Policy Intern, in Gov Exec Daily

 

“Options are not exempt from the conflict of interest statute under any circumstance. That means that (Biden’s senior advisor Anita Dunn) came into government with a conflict of interest with every company whose stock she wrote an option for and with every company in the referenced indexes.”

Walter Shaub, Senior Ethics Fellow, in CNBC



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Friday, February 14, 2020

RSN: Jeff Cohen | When CNN Introduces Bernie-Bashers Only as "Former," CNN Is Lying to You







Reader Supported News
13 February 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News





RSN: Jeff Cohen | When CNN Introduces Bernie-Bashers Only as "Former," CNN Is Lying to You
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty)
Jeff Cohen, Reader Supported News
Cohen writes: "It's a 'gentleman's' agreement between elite media and their establishment guests - a courtesy major news outlets bestow upon former officials who get to pontificate and editorialize about today's events with no worry they'll be identified by their jobs TODAY."

NN and CBS do it. NPR and PBS do it. They all do it.
It’s a “gentleman’s” agreement between elite media and their establishment guests – a courtesy major news outlets bestow upon former officials who get to pontificate and editorialize about today’s events with no worry they’ll be identified by their jobs TODAY.
On Wednesday night, CNN’s Don Lemon hosted ubiquitous Bernie Sanders-basher Jim Messina – solo, without an opposing view – to slam Sanders and his Medicare for All proposal.
Messina was introduced and repeatedly identified by only his former positions: “Former Obama Campaign Manager” and “Former Deputy Chief of Staff, Obama Administration.”
As is typical, viewers weren’t told what Messina’s current job is – perhaps far more relevant information than his positions years ago.
Messina is now a corporate consultant. He is CEO of The Messina Group, whose website boasts corporate clients such as Amazon’s pharmaceutical subsidiary PillPack, Google, Uber, Delta – and the slogan: “Unlocking Industries So Businesses Can Win.”
If properly introduced, it would have been no surprise to CNN viewers that a corporate consultant would malign Sanders, the most popular anti-corporate politician in recent US history.
Host Lemon also neglected to inform viewers that since leaving Team Obama, Messina has been paid handsomely to elect conservative politicians across the globe, including Tory Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May in Britain, and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Spain. Messina’s company website features an image of Cameron next to the banner: “Campaigning for candidates we believe in.”
In U.S. corporate media, such misidentification is a hoary tradition, and a dishonest one. More relevant to news consumers in judging the quality of information from a former government official would be the current employment and entanglements of that ex-official.
In the months after the Chinese government massacred students in Tiananmen Square in 1989, no voice in U.S. media was more prominent or ubiquitous in apologizing for China than Henry Kissinger, usually identified only as “former Secretary of State.” Consumers of news were almost never told that Kissinger at the time was a consultant to corporations doing business in China – and the head of China Ventures, a company engaged in joint ventures with China’s state bank.
When healthcare reform was being hotly debated in 1993-1994, NPR presented point-counterpoint face-offs between a former GOP congressman and a former Democratic congressman, both of whom were quick to deride the proposal in Congress for a single-payer system of government-provided health insurance. NPR didn’t tell its listeners that both of its “formers” were current lobbyists or consultants for private healthcare corporations.
A lot of the corruption in Washington – the kind Sanders and Elizabeth Warren criticize – stems from former officials, whether Democrat or Republican, leaving government to work as consultants or lobbyists for greedy private interests. Mainstream news outlets work hard to look away from this corruption, and one way they do so is by dutifully identifying their “experts” only as formers.
Anita Dunn will always be the “former Obama White House Communications Director” – and in that job, she assisted first lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. After leaving the White House, Dunn became a consultant for food companies seeking to block restrictions on sugary food ads targeted toward children. She also consulted for TransCanada in its push for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Today, Dunn is a senior adviser on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
A warning to news consumers: When CNN or NPR or PBS introduces a guest only as a “former” official, you are being lied to more often than not.

Jeff Cohen was an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College and founder of the media watch group FAIR. In 2011, he co-founded the online activism group RootsAction.org. He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.














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