Hillary Clinton is “so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.” And NPR‘s factchecker is so sick of having to decide whether or not Sanders’ campaign is actually lying about Clinton. (image: Greenpeace via Salon)
When media outlets check the facts, it’s supposed to be in the first sense Google‘s dictionary offers for the word “check” :
1. examine (something) in order to determine its accuracy….
But sometimes media seem more intent on carrying out the second meaning of the word:
2. stop or slow down the progress of (something undesirable).
That’s the approach that NPR‘s Peter Overby (4/1/16) seemed to take when he wrote a “factcheck” about a controversy involving Hillary Clinton and fossil fuel money. Online, NPR displayed a video clip of an encounter between Hillary Clinton and a Greenpeace activist:
The activist, Eva Resnick-Day, says: “Thank you for tackling climate change. Will you act on your words and reject future fossil fuel money in your campaign?” To which Clinton responds:
I do not have—I have money from people who work for fossil fuel companies. I’m so sick. I’m so sick of the Sanders’ campaign lying about me. I’m sick of it.
Resnick-Day, who says she was “genuinely shocked” by Clinton’s response, states she is “in no way affiliated with the Sanders campaign.” NPR‘s Overby does quote Sanders spokesperson Michael Briggs, though—with Overby characterizing the quote as the Sanders campaign taking the opportunity “to pounce on Clinton”:
The truth is that Secretary Clinton has relied heavily on funds from lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry.
So the factchecker’s job is to determine whether Clinton is right to say that she just gets money from people who work for fossil fuel companies, and that the Sanders campaign is lying about this, or whether the Sanders campaign is actually correct in saying that she relies heavily on funds from fossil-fuel lobbyists—right?
See, that’s why you don’t have a job at NPR.
Overby’s job, as he interprets it, is just to confirm that Clinton was indeed accurate in saying she accepts money from people who work for fossil-fuel companies:
The Center for Responsive Politics, parsing Federal Election Commission reports, finds that workers in the oil and gas industries have given Clinton $307,561 so far — compared to, say, $21 million from the securities and investment industry, or $14.4 million from lawyers and law firms.
Put another way, the oil and gas money is two-tenths of 1 percent of Clinton’s $159.9 million overall fundraising.
If there’s an “implication that dirty energy has got her on a string,” Overby observes, “campaign finance data suggest it wouldn’t be much of a string.”
But what about “lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry”—isn’t that what Sanders is supposed to be lying about, to the point of making Hillary Clinton sick? To give him credit, Overby is good enough to tell us what he isn’t telling us:
The industry total here doesn’t include lobbyists with fossil-fuel clients, and it doesn’t do what the Republican opposition research group America Rising did: include corporate money to the Clinton Foundation. The presidential campaign cannot raise corporate money.
Well—why not include lobbyists with fossil-fuel clients, since that is what the Sanders campaign, like other critics, was explicitly talking about? According to Greenpeace, Clinton has gotten “$1,465,610 in bundled and direct donations from lobbyists currently registered as lobbying for the fossil fuel industry.” That’s quite a bit more string.
And corporations can’t give directly to campaigns, but they can give to Super PACs that support campaigns. Greenpeace cites “$3,250,000 in donations from large donors connected to the fossil fuel industry to Priorities Action USA, a Super PAC supporting Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”
That works out to $5 million altogether. It’s hard to say what the going rate for buying a presidential candidate is, but unlike Overby, I wouldn’t refer to Clinton’s fossil-fuel-industry contributions as “paltry.”
And even though Overby warns you away from looking at the Clinton Foundation—because it’s the sort of thing a “Republican opposition research group” would do—you don’t need to go to a middleman; the Clinton Foundation lists its donors on its website. There you can learn that the Foundation has received at least $10 million from Saudi Arabia; at least $5 million from Kuwait, as well as from oil-refining billionaire Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi; at least $1 million from ExxonMobil, natural gas-producer Cheniere Energy, Qatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Foundation, “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” etc.
Those are the facts. NPR did its best to stop or slow them down.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
You can contact NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR‘s contact form or via Twitter: @ejensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
I stopped listening to NPR moons ago. It all started with Teri Gross; slowly but surely I realized one day that I am done with NPR. Now when I am driving, and in Vermont we have to do a lot of that, I listen to “Books on Tape” and I find I am less angry!
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Apparently Peter doesn’t have the Internet. A search of OpenSecrets.org reveals that Exxon Mobil donated $23,348 to Hillary Clinton in 2008. That’s just one instance with one fossil fuel corporation.
Great job! I’ll be checking FAIR.or more often.
I wish the Sanderistas would be clear about what they’re trying to say: can you be “bought and paid for” by fossil fuel, Wall St., and Monsanto all at the same time? What happens when you’re “bought and paid for”, is it some kind of Manchurian Candidate thing? Clearly the BS here is more than just Bernie’s initials.
Missing the point. They give Hillary money because she does what they want – with or WITHOUT their bidding. Sympatico. That’s even worse, in many ways. I have never considered Hillary a true Democrat. Social liberal as the polls tell her to be, but at heart she’s still that Goldwater Girl and it comes out all the time.
“Clinton has gotten “$1,465,610 in bundled and direct donations from lobbyists currently registered as lobbying for the fossil fuel industry.” That’s quite a bit more string.”
Not really. It’s still less than 1% of her overall fundraising.
Someone even as pure as I, receiving $1,465,610 from an identifiable interest, would ponder for a moment how best to hang on to that money. As for it representing less than 1 % of overall fundraising, the assertion implies that the 1% is canceled by the 99% that opposes the fossil fuel interest. But the interests that support HRC or any candidate typically are not opposed to each other in a Hobbesian way. They tend to be supportive.
Bernie gets tons of money from Silicon Valley. Guess he’s in their pocket. Goodbye to net neutrality and copyright, and no more privacy, big data owns everything about you now.
Open Secrets finds that the electronics industry – the closest thing to Silicon Valley in its list of interest groups – was the source of $1,043,381 to date. Is that “tons of money” in a campaign that Open Secrets adds is financed 99% by individual contributions?
“What happens when you’re “bought and paid for”, is it some kind of Manchurian Candidate thing?”
I think this must be the most facetious question I’ve read in a long time. If one doesn’t realize that a President makes decisions that can incorporate sensitivity to donors to their campaign(s), and likely will, if they want to continue to receive funds from these donors, they haven’t followed politics for very long.
NPR died years ago. unlistenable.
The day that Bernie received his gift from heaven and the “Bernie Bird” video went wild on both the Internet and IP wire service, NPR broadcast not one word about it. Part of their very noticeable bias against Bernie.
The fact checker was indeed fact *checking.* Clever. Nice work, Jim.
I’m am tired of the attracts on the Clinton Foundation. They do some of the best work in the world. Show me another organization that does as much good work. Probably the only comparable one is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But Bill could always paint pictures of puppies instead.http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/
@Marsha- The Gates and Clinton foundations are not as altruistic as some think:
http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
http://www.alternet.org/food/how-bill-gates-causing-collapse-traditional-farming-and-local-food-economies?
The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.
The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.
http://nypost.com/2015/04/26/charity-watchdog-clinton-foundation-a-slush-fund/
On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on “conferences, conventions and meetings”; $8 million on fundraising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons is on the payroll, but they do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the foundation.
In all, the group reported $84.6 million in “functional expenses” on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over — money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand.
Some of the tens of millions in administrative costs finance more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world.
But that’s still far below the 75 percent rate of spending that nonprofit experts say a good charity should spend on its mission.
Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits, recently refused to rate the Clinton Foundation because its “atypical business model . . . doesn’t meet our criteria.”
Charity Navigator put the foundation on its “watch list,” which warns potential donors about investing in problematic charities. The 23 charities on the list include the Rev. Al Sharpton’s troubled National Action Network, which is cited for failing to pay payroll taxes for several years.
Other nonprofit experts are asking hard questions about the Clinton Foundation’s tax filings in the wake of recent reports that the Clintons traded influence for donations.
“It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group where progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout was once an organizing director.
In July 2013, Eric Braverman, a friend of Chelsea Clinton from when they both worked at McKinsey & Co., took over as CEO of the Clinton Foundation. He took home nearly $275,000 in salary, benefits and a housing allowance from the nonprofit for just five months’ work in 2013, tax filings show. Less than a year later, his salary increased to $395,000, according to a report in Politico.
Braverman abruptly left the foundation earlier this year, after a falling-out with the old Clinton guard over reforms he wanted to impose at the charity, Politico reported. Last month, Donna Shalala, a former secretary of health and human services under President Clinton, was hired to replace Braverman.
Nine other executives received salaries over $100,000 in 2013, tax filings show.
The nonprofit came under fire last week following reports that Hillary Clinton, while she was secretary of state, signed off on a deal that allowed a Russian government enterprise to control one-fifth of all uranium producing capacity in the United States. Rosatom, the Russian company, acquired a Canadian firm controlled by Frank Giustra, a friend of Bill Clinton’s and member of the foundation board, who has pledged over $130 million to the Clinton family charity.
The group also failed to disclose millions of dollars it received in foreign donations from 2010 to 2012 and is hurriedly refiling five years’ worth of tax returns after reporters raised questions about the discrepancies in its filings last week.
An accountant for the Clinton Foundation did not return The Post’s calls seeking clarification on its expenses Friday, and a spokesperson for the group refused comment.
Holy crap!!! I knew not.
I used to be an avid supporter and listener of NPR. Not anymore! They are so proHillarry, it is nauseating. Will not support this kind of corrupt and biased media.
NPR is radio for the smug, the comfortable, the oblivious, and the entitled.
A few days ago, AFTER the chair-throwing incident at the Nevada Democratic caucus had been discredited, NPR’s Michelle Martin reiterated that a chair had been thrown by a Sanders supporter.
To even a slightly-tuned ear, NPR is biased and corporate to the hilt.
NPR = the WARCAST media.
Lke HIllary themselves, never saw a war they didn’t like.
Switch the dial.
As for the great “good” Gates and the Clintons do – phooey. They are paternalist neoliberals. Just the hard fist of croney capitalism in a velvet glove.
Well that is because npr. Takes the same cash. Look at the npr corprate sponsor list. Npr has never seen a dollar they didn’t like and the bias has been showing.
I got the dreaded 404 page when I tried to follow your link to the NPR ombudsman.
fossil fuel money is striking a nerve.
so has npr got her back ? apparently! it amounts to media lies. distasteful (as always)
Dont forget Norway aswell, they’re the biggest oil economy in the EU.
Then u F.ck Fair should also says where that money is spend too. Full of f.cked up misleading lies. Also why don’t u also talk about sanders involment in 1960s were not as a white privilege man standing up for the ones who are being discriminated but was a fighting as much for rights of Jews as for African Americans. During those days Jews were also being discriminated and then after seeing the success of Martin Luther King, formed an alliance in movement with them.
Sounds like a serial CLINTON PAR$E $TRING-Along by her Nixon Parsing Radical FactChecker’s $peechwriter! Maybe she should jest hire retired General Oildinero to flak for her.
Greg Singh asked “can you be “bought and paid for” by fossil fuel, Wall St., and Monsanto all at the same time?” The answer is yes. The proof is Hillary. https://youtu.be/RO9EV_NAenY
Money raised lobbyists is reported as a total, but these lobbying firms lobby for many different firms and industries. Therefore it’s misleading, at best, to put all this money under the heading of “fossil fuel industries”. Also a candidate has no control over money raised by outside super PACs. So ‘Fair” needs to do a little more fact checking of its own.
If you arent able to accurately check and choose who super PACs gather their donatiosn from, why accept money from Super PACs? Sanders hasn’t taken from Super PACs which allows him to do this, Clinton absolutely has, so using the argument that “Well Clinton cant monitor what her super PACs give to her” is ludicrous, because Clinton could simply refuse to take their money if she was so worried about where her money came from.
He is lying or the very least exaggerating grossly…No contributions from Oil and gas. Contributions from individuals in the business to the tune of $300,000 vs $50,000 for Bernie…Is this a story? Since when is it illegal to contribute to the candidate of your choice…the innuendo is that she will and has helped Big oil with legislation or something…her only opportunity in the past was when she was NY Senator…if there was any evidence of such it would be front page news by now…instead it is all a smear job by Bernie’s side…the one true act of malfeasance has been the intentional hacking of Hillary’s campaign data bank by Bernie’s side…what does that say about his morals?
WOW, who’d have ever thought that investigating the investigators would be imminent in the US.
I’ve wondered for many years why NPR has never discussed such important issues like the real cause of GHG emission methane, livestock agriculture ( http://www.cowsapiracy.com/facts/) or interviewe hundreds of medical doctors who use plant based nutrition, a whole food plant based diet and lifestyle, to reverse and cure so called chronic, predisposed diseases.
Despite my many emails since 2002, to vegan doctors, athletes, authors, they’d not touch the issue with a ten foot carrot.
I’ve contacted NHPR health reporters, environmental reporters, ombudsman, producers, news directors, to plead with them to take the lock off these issues since every fiber of human and animal life is impacted badly, by our concept of animals as products.
Also, it appears they ignore Senator Sanders yuge popularity and hardly mention his name. Trump gets the lion’s share of name repeating.
Thank you for providing what true investigative reporting should be, down to the specific details.
NPR should stop reminding listeners during fund drives, how fair, balanced, and in depth they are regarding their news coverage.. It’s insulting.
All of this graft right out in the open, yet the press is only worried about Putin and the Panama Papers
Hillary it’s disgusting you would use Sandy hook children to further you political agenda agenda ,There’s a special place in hell for you!!
Okitaris NPR National Propaganda Radio