After an anonymous leaker mailed Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return to the New York Times, the paper’s editors congratulated themselves and their reporter on the scoop of the century. It’s been so long since they did real investigative reporting that they’ve forgotten what it is.
Pulitzer Material
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Campaign ad revenue is nothing to sneeze at.
Mass media campaign ad revenue in swing states is much more than in non-swing states.
Care must be taken by the mass media to make sure both big money parties remain in contention thereby maximizing the ad revenue both parties of the duopoly will spend with them. And the “Chinese Wall” between editorial and advertising is virtually non-existent in traditional media unable to adapt to the internet.
Leslie Moonves said that Trump may not be good for America but he’s been good for the CBS bottom line.
If the mass media was concerned with public interest instead of profit, there would be more coverage of climate change and the push toward war with Russia by Obama and the Clintons.
I assume I am not talking into a vacuum here, and people are aware of the Kiev coup organized by Victoria Nuland, and the five billion US dollars spent to bring it about.
Funny, I was just pontificating on the effect of advertising revenue on news.
The internet was supposed to fix that. A completely open and democratic forum where any and everyone can contribute. Instead of meaningful contribution, we get funny cat pics.
There’s also the problem that big stories take big investments. The independent reporter can’t afford to cover war stories up close and personal: the best he can do is read reports from the natives & rephrase them.
The corporate media isn’t at all interested in pissing off their owners, so instead of contributions we get televised documentaries about funny cat pics trending on the internet.
“… were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.” –Thomas Jefferson
“… and caring about them” – Crazy H
The best thing that could happen for U.S. citizens would be for both Trump and Clinton to resign from their campaigns and let Kaine and Pence (or anyone else nominated by the respective party procedures) to duke it out for the Oval Office. Sanders, anyone? My god, what a circus this is! 🙁
More TJ here:
“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
This was meant as a reply to you, CH.
As a fan of «investigative journalism», I applaud the New York Times for the immense amount of work they put into obtaining Mr Trumps tax returns for 1995. One can only hope that the «investigation» will proceed further, and uncover, for example, just why real estate was given special privileged under the so-called «passive loss» and «at-risk» rules included in the Tax Reform Act of 1986. which rendered it possible for Mr Trump to claim – nota bene : entirely legally – that 916 million dollar loss for 1995) ; i e, who received campaign contributions from whom and then voted to allow these loopholes, etc, etc. I also hope that Ms Clinton’s position with respect to the current tax code and the need for reform will be analysed, as well as the concrete measures to close these loopholes that Bernard Sanders has said he will introduce in the next session of the US Congress….
Henri
There’s a month left to go. No one could possibly think there aren’t a couple more shoes left to drop. HRC’s Goldman Sachs speeches are starting to leak, but there’s got to be more than that coming. As I said, there’s still a month of this left to endure.
> just why real estate was given special privileged …
cui bono
When a developer “improves” a property, tax revenues increase. Contrary to what conservatives believe, politicians don’t increase taxes to benefit the government – they do so to benefit themselves. They gain control of more public money which they can then redistribute to the wealthy – who gratefully return the favor.
See? The system works.
The Costco I shop at cut a deal with the local government to allow Costco to KEEP the share of local taxes it collects in the name of the local government to pay for the land for its gas station expansion.
So every time I buy groceries there a portion of taxes I pay to Costco is not paid to the local government but is used by Costco to pay down the loan Costco took to finance its expansion.
The local government was faced with the closure of Costco, leaving and empty shell that paid no taxes and hired no locals, if it did not buy the land for the Costco gas station expansion.
So, local government services take a hit to buy real estate for Costco.
Only one local council member voted against this finance measure because she thought it was wrong.
Krugman calls that socialized risk with privatized profit. One of the thorns in my side is publicly financed sports arenas – many of the players and owners are millionaires, yet weduhpipple pay for their venue. THEN they sell the naming rights to some huge corporation.
If a huge corporation wants a stadium with their name on it, why don’t THEY pay for the whole thing? If millionaire wants to play whateverball, why doesn’t HE pay for the venue? First we pay taxes to build the arena – even those of us who are uninterested in the sport. Then those who ARE interested pay exorbitant prices to sit in the arena they already paid for once.
Maybe we should try capitalism, instead.