How Journalists Follow The Money

Welcome to Another Way, the podcast produced by Equal Citizens, a nonpartisan pro democracy organization founded by Lawrence Lessig. This is Adam Icam, the organization's campaigns manager. Before we begin, please support us on Patreon. If you become a Patreon supporter, not only will you allow us to keep this podcast going, but but you'll get access to some cool bonus episodes. To sign up, go to patreon.com/citizens. That's P A T R E o-n.com/citizens. A link is in the show Notes. Now to the episode. Joining me by phone is Andrew Perez. Andrew is currently a writer and researcher living in Portland, Maine. He previously spent five years as an investigative reporter covering money in politics for Maplite and International Business Times in Washington, D.C. his work has appeared in NBC News, the Intercept, the Guardian, and Huffington Post. And now that he's out of the journalism game, at least for now, he's agreed to come on the podcast to share some of the secrets of the trade. My hope is that this conversation will provide some insight into an aspect of democracy that we so often take for granted, that a robust press keeps politicians in check and the public in the know. Welcome to the show, Andrew.

Thanks for having me.

So there's a broader conversation about the media landscape and the state of journalism in general that I want to have with you. But first, I want to get a bit into the process behind uncovering influence in D.C. because that's what you know so well, and it's neither as simple nor as cinematic as many may believe. So I really want to dispel myths and kind of give people a sense of what this looks like to be an investigative journalist in D.C. so let's start with a foundational question. Why did you decide, of all things, to become a money and politics reporter?

Well, so when I was, I guess, a little younger, I was, like, interning at the Huffington Post, and I realized that was like, one kind of area where I could sort of make my mark and kind of report on things that other people weren't talking about. And that's probably how it started. And the other thing is I just think I realized at some point just that the money in politics is just a central, you know, foundational problem in D.C. and it just, it just colors, like, every kind of policy outcome. And it affects what we, you know, what we think is what we, well, people in the media think is, you know, reasonable or what is what is achievable or possible. And so I think, I think it's just really kind of a central, central element and it's sort of, it's sort of overlooked for in large part in Washington D.C. so what year was that

when you first started?

I guess I was at HuffPost in 2014, and then I started working with the International Business Times in 2015. And then in 2016, mid-2016, I started working with Maplite in California, which is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that covers money in politics.

So when you first started, though, I mean, money in politics, it was beginning to get more salient in the press. But I think the point here is really when you first started, it still was pretty obscure. I think now we're in a different place. But in 2014, you certainly were unique. I mean, there were other reporters on the beat, but it certainly was more or less an undercover topic.

You know, there's, it's really not a big beat. There's, there's like probably like a dozen people in D.C. if even, or maybe around the country where it's like their full time job covering money in politics. And I mean, that's at least on a national level. There's, you know, occasionally a reporter or two, like in the States. But yeah, it's really, there's, there's not that many people on it. It's a pretty small and competitive beat for that reason.

Right, right, right. So, okay, here, here's the real question. So just how swampy is dc? How common is influence pedaling? Is it really as bad as we say it is?

Probably worse. It's probably way worse in that there's just all kinds of, you know, any, any kind of consulting firm in D.C. that has just some, you know, stupid little acronym for a name. You've never heard of them. You know, their job is working for like, you know, trade organizations or, I don't know, foreign campaigns like any, you know, there's just a million different jobs in D.C. that center around influence pedaling. And you know, I think there's some argument as to like, how bad each one of them is. But really, I think, I think most things, people take what they can get. Right, Right.

So. So you're saying even, even if you're a little bit jaded by this, you're still surprised at how much is uncovered?

Yeah, I've definitely, like found, you know, new things that disturb me and amaze me all the time.

Okay, so what do you make of this argument that in general, we have more than enough transparency in our political system to know who the funders are and who is trying to influence whom. You know, we have relatively good disclosure laws. Certainly they could be improved, but the base of information is actually pretty strong. So given everything you just said about learning new things, do you agree with that statement or not so much?

Yeah, definitely not. I mean, there are some, like, levels of transparency here. Like, obviously, like, the most political spending kind of gets disclosed, but there's, you know, there's a ton of dark money that really doesn't ever get any kind of light shined on it. Like, there's. There's all kinds of stuff that we have no answers to as to, like, who's helped put Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. We have no idea who's funded a single shred of. Of like a percent of any of the money that's gone to that. And then, you know, there's all kinds of other little games that get played in D.C. like front groups, kind of like normal 501C fours, or like, sometimes they're called coalitions. You know, their funding is really, really dark. And there's. There's very, very little way to figure that out. And that's. That's not anything that anyone's even really talking about in D.C. when we talk about exposing dark money like that, that kind of stuff. You know, groups that aren't spending explicitly on politics, but are spending on, like, issue advertising, et cetera. Like, all kinds of stuff that are designed to influence the debate, influence policy debates. You know, there's very little, Very little sunlight there at all.

And I would also say, Andrew, that the information that we do have is often disclosed in such a way that it requires digging and a lot of compiling of information, which, again, underscores the need for. For journalists, because they're the ones who actually do the work to put all the pieces together and report upon it. I mean, it's. A lot of this information is disclosed, but not necessarily in a manner that is easily digestible for the layperson.

Yeah, well, and it's often late, too. It's often very delayed. Like, you know, the. There's a super PAC right now that closely allied or allied with the Joe Biden campaign. And, you know, it's what we're like a few days from Iowa right now, and we don't have a single idea been funding that ad campaign. Just no idea whatsoever. And that's just one thing. And then there are ways to kind of go about tracking what we call dark money. But the delay there is massive. It's really like, it could be a full year after the end of a year after everything happened, until you even learn any clues about who's been funding dark money campaigns. And often you don't at all.

Can you explain a bit for our listeners? What exactly is dark money? It's something that's throw, that term is thrown around a lot.

Yeah. Well, so it's, I mean, dark money is generally like spending, political spending by a nonprofit, by a 501c4 group that doesn't have to disclose its donors publicly and never will have to disclose its donors publicly. And ever since the Citizens United case, there's been just a massive, massive outpouring of dark money spending in D.C. and yeah, there's there, there are ways to go about finding it. You can sort of find if like one nonprofit donated to another nonprofit, the first nonprofit would have to disclose that, but the recipient ultimately does not have to. And you know, if, if you're an individual, if you, if you want to talk about like Sheldon Adelson, like, he's, he's probably, he's one of the bigger financiers of the, you know, conservative groups in D.C. and like, you know, that'll never get disclosed. And same thing with big hedge funds executives. If they, if they donate individually to a dark money group, they, they never have to disclose that donation anywhere.

Right.

At least not publicly.

And it's ultimately like a game of, you know, it's a shell game. Right? I mean, that one nonprofit will donate to another nonprofit again and again and again. And so your job as a journalist is often just going through, you know, very vague sounding organization after organization after organization to try and find something. And ultimately you, you may end up coming up short.

Yes. Yeah, totally.

Okay, Andrew, let's take you back to D.C. though. You're sitting in the newsroom. How do you figure out what you're going to write about? What makes a good lead?

Well, yeah, so I, you know, I was lucky I got to when I lived in Washington, D.C. the last five years, I was reporting remotely, so I didn't really have to work in a newsroom. But yeah, I would just do as much research as I could until I found something that really hadn't been reported elsewhere. And you know, I think I always tried to, in the outlets that I worked for, emphasize this, but we always tried to find stories that had like a policy implication that had some type of effect on regular people just because, you know, a lot of people cover, I mean, politics and money in politics, like it's like some kind of sport, like it's espn. But we always kind of wanted to it call find like a human impact so that we could tell a story that was relevant to a general audience.

Right. Like something like healthcare.

Yeah, yeah. So I focused a lot on healthcare. We focused a bit on the Supreme Court. And yeah, I also did some focus on like the EPA under Scott Pruitt. That's another thing I really kind of covered.

But so I want to dig a little bit deeper here, which is. So what are you doing in this process? I mean, really, I want to get into your mindset here. Are you reading the news and you're just kind of going, this seems fishy, or I wonder who's financing these efforts. I mean, is that what you're doing is you're just looking through the news and just trying to find anything that gives you a hunch?

Yeah, I mean, some of it's reading people's stories and seeing if there's like some item in there that, you know, they didn't really build on, that they didn't really explain that they could like, use additional sort of coverage to make it relevant to people. Or maybe it was something that was sort of missed. And then, you know, I would look through campaign finance reports a lot, look through lobbying reports and look, look through nonprofit tax returns. I made a pretty big emphasis at Maple on requesting nonprofit tax returns to try to get them early to see who is funding, you know, this organization. And then I would also spend a lot of time looking through corporate disclosures too. Some companies voluntarily or like, due to shareholder resolutions, will disclose their donations to trade associations and dark money groups. So, yeah, I was looking like through those four stories that really hadn't been, hadn't been covered anywhere.

And your, your job really was going through a lot of pretty minute filings. I mean, you really did spend a lot of time going through these pretty hard to read documents of disclosure.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I think, I think by the end of it, I kind of saw my job as like just being able to tolerate just a high level of tedium to just to just try to find something that, you know, hadn't really been covered elsewhere. And then we also used a lot of public records requests too, to try to try to get like, access to like, emails from legislators or emails from, you know, agencies at the state and federal level to try to document correspondence with interest groups.

So can you explain a bit more about a public records request? What exactly is that? I mean, do you, do you have the right to see everything?

You know, really, it really is just kind of going to depend on like, what agency you're requesting it from and what state they're in or what the federal government is honestly fairly hard to FOIA is what I've realized. It just requires a pretty substantial time investment that I just didn't really have patience for. But, you know, there are a lot of states where they have very good record laws where you can get pretty much anything.

And what you just, you fill out a form.

I mean, you can. Or you can just write a letter to the agency basically saying, you know, most agencies will have designated public records officials. In some cases, you might be dealing with like a spokesperson there. But yeah, you know, so, like, a lot of agencies have designated public records officials and you can just send them an email saying, like, I would like access to these documents, sort of requesting copies of xyz. It pays to be kind of specific, but you can sort of do some fishing expeditions within this work, like where you can you know, basically just see, like, if I, if I want to see if this agency is talking with, you know, this lobbyist, you can just ask, you know, and you might not get anything, but, you know, you never know what you'll get. Sometimes you'll get something really fun when

you're doing digging, when you're trying to find information that's not publicly available. So you use all of these skills. Do you also go in person to places like to conferences or interview individuals to try and get them to go on record about certain donations or just to try and get a little bit more information about industry efforts?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so dealing with, like, dark money groups, you know, you can kind of request their tax return. Same thing with trade associations. They have to give it to you within a certain timeframe. But if you go there in person, they have to give it to you. Like in the filing was already sent to the irs. Like, they have to give it to you that day. So I definitely went a lot to these offices to request the files to try to scoop my competitors. And yeah, I would go to conferences, too. I attended a couple kind of healthcare industry conferences. And those. They really kind of blew my mind. There's all these organizations in D.C. that, that have like tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, and they exist solely to, you know, to advance their line of business. I went to the American Hospital association conference last year in D.C. and that was really the first one that I'd gone to. And I was just kind of stunned because you have politicians who will go to these events. I should say, these are just lobbying organizations that's their primary purpose. But I watched Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and Richie Neal all give these speeches to the hospital association as if, like, you know, they're like, they're their audience in D.C. they call them like stakeholders, but, you know, like, they, as if they're like someone who has a stake in the, in the healthcare debate, which is obviously true, but they have a massive financial interest in preserving their industry's profits. That's their whole interest, basically. You'll kind of have Nancy Pelosi come there and sort of tell them, like, this is what we're focusing on in Congress. And it's sort of like a list of items that the industry is okay with Congress taking on. They're just trying to. They'll come there and they'll try to appeal to them. And the other thing you'll see is Washington, D.C. pundits and journalists also go to these events, like, to speak to, almost like entertain them.

And do they get paid, Andrew?

I think they do get paid. Yeah. There's, if you ever look up speakers bureaus and these journalists, you'll see they all have some kind of fee listed. And I don't think you go to talk to the American Hospital association for free. I wouldn't. It's just a really boring thing you can do. The worst was I went last year, this was one of the more fun reporting trips I did, was I went to the America's Health Insurance Plans Annual exposition and conference in Nashville. And so they're generally known as ahip, but they represent the health insurance industry like the kind of giant health insurers in D.C. they represent their interests and they're very powerful group. You know, they, as far as D.C. trade organizations go, they're not the best finance. You know, they're only pulling in, like, $60 million every year, which it sounds like a lot, but I assure you that in the scheme of this, it's not that bad, but it's not as much as you'll see, like the hospitals raise whatever whatever. But 10 years ago, during the Affordable Care Act, AHIP raised a lot more money from its members as sort of like an emergency. And they then quietly funneled all this money into the US Chamber to run these ads against the Affordable Care act to try to block the bill and then sort of shape it a little to remove a public option from it. So that's, you know, that's sort of. They're known as like, a very powerful interest group. And yeah, I went to their conference and I watched, like, David Axelrod And Dana Perino on a panel talking about, you know, what healthcare will look like, like the, what the 2020 healthcare debate will look like, as if, as if these people don't know, you know, they're like actively trying to influence the debate. So.

Right.

You know, so, so you have like, yeah, Obama's former, like, campaign chief, current CNN pundit, and Dan and Perino of Fox News are going there to like, pretend to give them some, some useful news they can use. And even worse than that was, I saw Bob Woodward, you know, like famous Watergate reporter, you know, Washington Post, basically. I mean, I guess, I guess he's sort of a mascot at this point, but he's still writing books. And yeah, it was, it was really ridiculous, his, like, speaking speech there with these people. It was, it was pretty pathetic to me. And it was just really kind of eye opening that if like a pundit like Bob Woodward is going to go talk to these people and no one's going to bat night. Just really, it's really a symptom of a larger problem. And you know, we did a report kind of looking at all of the pundits and former politicians who go to these events and current politicians, and it's, I don't know, it was pretty staggering. We only went through like, maybe like 75 groups and we just found so many great examples that made me want to cry.

Do you think that decreases trust in journalists or at least those who can, you know, who are invited to these conferences? Does that, does that violate a certain journalistic integrity?

I mean, I think it should. I think people understand, like, people who aren't doing these speeches know that, like, it's pretty messed up. There's definitely been some criticism of it, like, over the years, but it really just doesn't get a lot of coverage. Like, I did a story on it and honestly, like, I don't think there had been another story, story on it in like, probably like seven years.

Okay, going back to your journalism, I want to focus on three particular reporting projects that you were a part of. And I want you to take us through your process, how, how you got the scoop, what the story was and the ultimate thing that you published. So the first One was in 2016, or maybe it was 2015, about Carly Fiorino and her super PAC. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?

So, yeah, so Carly Fiorina like filmed all this material with, with a group that they gave the acronym Carly for America, and she filmed all kinds of material with them. And then the, the super PAC would, then, this had been reported, would go to her events, like when she was holding presidential events and they would stash them. They would put up all these signs for Carly for America and they would, you know, I guess sort of be the people helping, helping like hand out lit and stuff and basically doing advanced work, you know, because that's, that's just not, that's something you'd need to pay something, someone for. But it was just sort of a byproduct of this sort of like, you know, rush from campaigns to try to like to place any kind of expenditures they could with super PACs since, you know, they can accept unlimited donations, they can accept donations of any size, whereas candidates are sort of restricted to only getting like 2,700 or $2,800 per person per election. So yeah, these campaigns have all outsourced, especially in 2016, they really outsourced as much as they could to two super PACs. But Carly was maybe the most amazing example in that she literally filmed an entire documentary with her super pac and then she announced her campaign. So it didn't then qualify as an in kind contribution, you know. But yeah, I just, I went to this to her like documentary launch from the super pac and it was just one of the like weirdest, funniest things I'd ever attended. It was like a half hour or maybe hour just like mini documentary about her life. It looked like it had been filmed in her home with her husband, you know, and they're just sharing all kinds of personal stories to try to humanize her. And yeah, that's, that's sort of the genesis of it. And yeah, I just like went there and I listened and I was sort of waiting to talk to her husband just to ask him the question like hey, was this filmed in your home? And as I'm standing there, I'm just recording as he's talking to someone from the super PAC and you know, they're just chit chatting but she's like sort of reminding him what his schedule is going to be, like what events he's going to go to in like Iowa, New Hampshire to like to pitch the documentary. He went on the documentary tour. He was like, they'd hold like an event and he would, you know, just show up just like as a special guest. Right.

And of course, you know, for our listeners there aren't many regulations around Super PACs, but coordination is really the only big no, no, you can't do that. And so what Andrew really discovered is they kind of were coordinating, I mean Maybe the FEC didn't levy a fine, but I mean, it was right out there in the open. If the husband of a presidential candidate is openly talking about scheduling and with the super PAC doing advance work for that campaign, in all intents and purposes, that is a huge red flag. Did that, did that shock you, Andrew?

I mean it's sort of, you know, you've seen it, we've seen it since like probably 2012. But I mean, I think she probably still pushed the boundaries of, you know, the coordination rules as much as anyone, anyone before or since. Right.

And we don't quite know what will happen in 2020 yet. So I want to, I want to transition to a different story, Andrew, which is you're reporting on 501c6 organizations. Can you talk a little bit about what a 501c6 organization is and what you found, the kind of the increased political expenses than previously reported.

So 501 groups are traded trade organizations, as I was sort of discussing earlier. But they, they're designed specifically to kind of advance a line of business. So if you're like, you know, ahip, the America's Health Insurance Plans, like AHIP is designed to advance the health insurance industry's interests and all of its members interests generally. And that, that generally takes the form of lobbying or advocacy work or hosting these conferences, these sort of luxury conferences where politicians come and sort of kiss the ring and where like pundits speak. And they also then spend lots of money in ways that are pretty hard to track. And that's what we worked on in a story between Maple and the Intercept. And we were just, we basically tried to tally up all the kind of expenditures that are sort of similar to lobbying, that operate within this gray area of like sort of advocacy or consulting or sometimes they'll even call it like program issues. You include that some. And lobbying, it's about double what's publicly reported as lobbying in D.C. so there's, you know, basically just many, many ways to influence the political and policy process that don't get covered in traditional lobbying filings. As I was talking about with ahip, these groups can funnel money to other organizations. They can give money to the US Chamber to run, you know, run this campaign, prove it for us, run this ad for us, or run these ads. And they don't actually then have to disclose that they ever sent money to the Chamber or to another kind of trade group or front group or coalition or whatever. Like they kind of bury it in the fine print of their tax returns. They'll Just call it advocacy. And they're not alone in that. That's what we figured out. It's like we asked some other groups like, hey, what did you mean here by program expenses? They're like, oh, yeah, that was us giving money to coalitions. And yeah, they never have to report ultimately who the recipient of that money is. That. That's the story that really kind of shocked me. And it was. We. I only figured it out just reading about how the AHIP had funneled all this money to the U.S. chamber in 2009. And. And I was just like, wait, wait, wait, you can do that? Like, you can just report this without ever seeing who you gave the money to. Some reporters, like, figured it out because it was like AHIP listed $86 million in 2019 in advocacy, and the chamber listed an $86 million anonymous donation in its own tax return. So I think reporters just figured it out. Like, they were just like, this has to be it. And I think the Chamber might have just said that it come from ahep, this reporting project.

Took you a while, right? It was about two months.

Yeah, that was like a two month project. And part of it was like, the more we dug, we were just like, okay, we have to like, there's much more here that we've missed. And I just, like, ended up going to the AHIP conference too. So we wanted to, like, include some stuff from that.

And did you have to get comment from these, you know, the spokespeople from these 501c6 organizations?

Yeah, we reached out to every organization that was listed in the story. And yeah, we asked them, like, what, what, what did you mean by advocacy, like, or what did you mean by program issues? Or what, what do you mean by coalitions? And yes, some of them responded. Probably most of them didn't. And, you know, I think like, AHEP told us, like, oh, yeah, we report, you know, we follow all IRS regulations and report stuff as required. And like, you know, course they do. The level of transparency required is pretty, pretty minimal.

The influence peddling is, is just really

a problem in D.C. yeah, I mean, look, every, every consultant and their mother wants to get a contract with a big trade group like that, right? Because they have limitless money. And then that's something that's like, really worth emphasizing is they have limitless money. You know, they represent industries that are just swimming in cash. And like, if they have a real kind of threat to their interests, they can just basically issue of like, capital, call to their members and be like, all right, it's go time. We need $10 million from you today. It's really kind of sick and it's not something that gets a lot of coverage in D.C. so, you know, I think, like, you'll see these kind of stories that just sort of like, list like, oh, here is the number one lobbying expenditure group for all of 2019. You'll see a lot of stories like that. But, you know, I don't think they dive into what that means, like what these people are lobbying on or like, you know, what it, what it means for the average kind of consumer. And you know, the other thing worth emphasizing is the money that goes into these trade groups is like, from like corporate treasuries. It's treated as like a business expense. So, like, if you're like talking about like the health insurance industry, like, that's paid for by like your premiums. It's not like your premiums get used to ensure that it is harder for you to access health care or to ensure that it's not any easier for you to access health care.

It's pretty sick when you look at it like that. Let's change now to almost, maybe an even more distressing story that you helped uncover, at least to a certain degree, which is the role of dark money groups around supreme recent Supreme Court nominations. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So we did a lot of digging on this group called the Judicial Crisis Network that's been just really, really influential. And it's like closely affiliated with the Federal association society in D.C. which is this kind of like conservative lawyers group. And it's sort of like an academic exercise. And, you know, they'll host these conferences where they bring in, you know, like conservative and liberals to talk about whatever policy discussion is happening. They have a lot of influence in D.C. the Federalist Society. They, you know, like I went to their conference in D.C. i think late 2018, like their kind of annual lawyers conference. And at it was just like a who, who's who of like Trump administration officials. Like Jeff Sessions was there, you know, RIP to him and the Trump administration. But yeah, Sessions was there, Don McGahn was there, Alexander Acosta spoke there. And then, you know, I went to their, like dinner later that night. They rent out like all the union station, basically. They host like sort of dinner and like a black tie kind of affair. And they, you know, Neil Gorsuch was there and I listened to Gorsuch and so that's, that's sort of the one front of it. But then Judicial Crisis Network sort Of has acted almost as. They're like kind of dark money arm. And it's done a lot of work boosting from court picks and, you know, Bush court picks before them. And they, they'll spend a lot of money on like state Supreme Court races. They, they spent like something like $10 million to, to run an ad campaign telling senators, Republican senators, like, don't approve Merrick Garland, the Obama court pick before Trump took over. The guy they blocked. They've spent just tons and tons of money on these ads and we have very little clue who's given anything to them. And part of that, well, it's all by design, but they had a separate outfit called the Wellspring Committee that was used. It would take all the donations in and then it would donate to Judicial Crisis Network. They even operated on different tax schedules too. So it made tracking who these donors, like it made tracking the money between Wellspring and jcn, you know, difficult. But we have zero idea whoever, whoever has ever funded the Wellspring Committee, the kind of original donor. But yeah, so they've operated that way for years and we did a lot of reporting on them just to try to figure out. You can see like this kind of size of the anonymous donations coming into these groups. Like, you could see that it's like 20 million at a clip and God knows how that even worked. Right. Like, the way that the money went into these organizations is it's so, so obscured that like, you have no idea. It could have been that, like it was literally one person or it could have been that everyone's been pouring money into an LLC when they feel like it. And that LLC then gets used to funnel money to Wellspring and then into jcn. So it's really, it's really, really dark. It's about as dark as you can get.

And this was again, you know, they were spending money to help shape the Supreme Court. You know, a lifetime appointment that, that has massive influence over basically everything we do in this country in terms of the powers of Congress, the powers of the executive. I mean, we see it playing out every, you know, every Supreme Court term. And, and so, you know, in terms of, you know, bang for your buck, it seems like that's a pretty good return on investment.

Oh, yeah, yeah. They flipped the court potentially for a generation. And you know, again, they've also, they focus on a lot of state Supreme Court races too. Like, they probably keep Scott Walker in office in Wisconsin just by keeping the court conservative.

Right. So basically their influence extends even on the state level. Too.

Yeah. And they definitely had a lot of pull with the Republican attorneys general. They've been a pretty big Braga donor, the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Andrew, I want to ask you kind of a dumb question. What would happen if journalists stopped digging here? I mean, could this political behavior get worse, Worse without being checked by this kind of reporting?

It could. Yeah, I would say so. You know, I'd also kind of question the impact we ever had just in that it's. When you're covering dark money, it's so delayed. Right. Like, they, they already got Kavanaugh on the court, they already got Gorsuch on the court, more than just trying to backtrack like a year later.

So. So a lot of what you're doing is after the fact.

Yeah. So like, in the fact, like during the, during the fact, can you, can you make a lot of impact? It's very difficult.

So what could the FEC do to make, you know, your job as a journalist easier?

I mean, I think they could kind of try to make campaigns and groups disclose donations in real time. It's really kind of ridiculous. You know, the presidential campaigns, many of them have been operating on quarterly schedules, so, you know, you really don't know anything for months. Tomorrow's the SEC deadline. Right. For presidential campaigns, super PACs since. And it's the first one since, I guess, October 15th, which covered June through September. So, yeah, we have, we've had no idea who's, who's donated a dime to any of these candidates or to a lot of these candidates since October 1st.

Right.

And we have no idea who's donated anything to the Joe Biden super pac, the super PAC that spent like four and a half million dollars in Iowa. That's, that's real money. That's probably more than anyone else spent other than, like, you know what, like Mike Bloomberg. Right.

And so, so if you were to have real time disclosure, it would actually allow you to put the pieces together potentially in time for the primary. And at the time we're recording this, this episode will come out later, but it's right before the Iowa caucuses. You know, I, I think that there's information that, about donors and about political influence that would be worthwhile for voters to have. And so I think that's, that's a good, good point. Point. What about 501C4s, though? I mean, is there a way to, like, would that help? Is it if 501c4is and other groups had to disclose donations?

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely been some push for them to disclose donations, like, when they're spending on politics. And I know CREW has sort of succeeded a little bit. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. They've. They've sort of succeeded in requiring some dark money groups to disclose, like, who's sort of funding certain political campaign ads. But like, you know, the FEC is largely like, at least the Republicans on that have really kind of fought against that for a long time. Any kind of disclosure of dark money political spending. I mean, I think that's a very, very basic one that we can require. But there's very little movement to require, like trade associations to disclose who they give money to, you know. Right. Or like, or who's funding like, certain coalitions or whatever that lobby. I think it's something that, like, people need to grapple with if we ever want to, you know, pass like, substantial, you know, reforms that might improve people's lives. That needs to be at the top of the ticket, right. In terms of like, wish list items that needs to be up there. Because it's really, I don't think, you know, look, if Bernie gets elected, like, if somehow he's allowed to become president, I don't think that anyone is ready for the kind of onslaught that he's going to face from the Washington business community to try to block any kind of legislation. And you know, look, that even goes down the line if you're going to talk about like, people who talk about like public health insurance option, like Buttigieg or Joe Biden are talking about, like, even that is going to face very, very substantial pressure. Like, again, AHAB spent $100 million to kill that same item in 2009 and 2010. So, right. If they were able to do it then, right. Like, what's stopping them from doing it now?

And of course, I should say that, you know, the FEC can only do so much. And as you're saying that Congress does have to step in, that we do need legislation to make disclosure better across the board, you know, whether it's for campaigns or otherwise. So, okay, let's shift gears a bit and let's talk about journalism in the age of Twitter, which I know you know a lot about. Is there a little bit more of an immediacy to the stories that you have to work on in, in kind of the age of social media, where you really have to get it while it's hot to get clicks?

Yeah, I think, I think so. I mean, you know, we, we, we definitely tried to push our stories as much on social media as we could. On Twitter specifically. Yeah, definitely.

But. But does that determine the kind of stories that you can do? In other words, your two month long project, I mean, was that, you know, not fast enough? I mean, I, I guess your situation was a little different at Maple, but maybe more with, you know, IBT or otherwise. Was there a need to just start pushing out content instead of taking two months to do the investigative reporting around, you know, dark money?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, at ibt, at International Business Times, you know, that place is like, it's like rapid fire. Really rapid fire. And like, I, like, we published, I helped. I had a hand in publishing like 160 stories in a year.

Wow.

That people at other outlets and also anyone who worked on the breaking news team there published way, way more than that. But those were all kind of like original, like, enterprise stories or at least kind of like, you know, finding buried stories within other news stories, like finding things that have been missed. But that, that place, there was a lot of pressure to produce. And that's just, you know, that's kind of the nature of the digital journalism companies. This, they're all like that because it is like, very much based around like, like clicks.

Right.

And like, who, you know, advertising. Their advertising model was definitely based, like, click per page. Maple was different. Yeah. Because that was, that was a nonprofit. And they definitely gave me. Gave me more time to work on stories than other places.

You know, in. In this age of digital journalism, a lot of media outlets just can't sustain the business model anymore. In just the past year, I mean, there have been a number of outlets that have closed shop, and in fact, there's, you know, a lot of great journalists now who just don't have a job. So what do you think? Is, is it the business model? Is it the ads? What. What's causing these outlets to. To fail?

It's definitely the business model, like digital journalism outlets, and IBT is one of them, definitely took some kind of cues from Facebook that just royally screwed them and not, not even as much as some others. But like, what, like Mac Mike and like Mashable kind of like reconfigured their whole business model around, like, producing videos to share on social media because they thought that was, you know, sort of the next big thing. And Facebook sort of lied to everyone about. About how many people were viewing videos. So that. That definitely really, really hurts some places. And yeah, I mean, the truth is that the, like, digital advertising market is dominated by like, two companies, right. Like Google and Facebook. They don't really pass on revenue that. Well, you know, newspapers and digital and digital outlets are like getting like a fraction of the advertising revenue they used to. And that's why you've seen so many moves to subscription models and stuff and paywalls, which makes sense, but that's a whole nother can of worms. I don't like paywalls. I'm sure you don't.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It deters readership too, some might argue. And I know you don't believe this, but. Oh well, freelancing is not that bad that if we just have a bunch of free labor going across to, you know, gather stories that are interesting to them and you know, pitch them to outlets, you know, that's also, it may not be as ideal as a newsroom, but it's a sustainable model of journalism. What would you say to that?

Yeah, I mean, look, it's, it's definitely not, you know, there's, there's, I guess for like, unless you're like talking about a really big outlet, you know, you can basically get like 3 or $400 for a freelance piece and like depending what you write about, if you're doing kind of like quick hit stuff, like maybe you can make that sustainable, but I really doubt it. As, as for the journalist, right. Like this works sort of for the news outlet, but you know, it's not going to pay the bills for, for people like on my beat, like, I don't feel like I found enough stories to be able to freelance. Like, I just really, it's, it would be, it would be way, way more work than it's worth.

And of course it also deters stories like the ones you were talking about earlier where you spent two months digging deep. In other words, you can't do that on a freelance model that just doesn't work because you need money to pay the rent.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the other thing we didn't talk about, I guess I could bring it up is a lot of these like nonprofit outlets, you know, they rely on like foundation donations. Like donations from people's what are effectively like multi generational tax shelters, right? From People's 501c, three personal foundations had billionaires set up in their, in their, their children. So nonprofits end up relying on that for, for money. And if you're, you're talking about like, you know, money in politics, journalism getting funded like that, like it's, it's really, you're sort of begging people to you know, be like class traders, to like, to like hurt their own financial interests. Like, let Me, let me cover the, the bad things that billionaire scions are doing. It's not a sustainable fundraising model, but that's in. The truth is it's been very difficult for especially like civic and democracy sort of focused nonprofits. They've all had shortfalls in the last few years. Very few of them are doing well. And that's just because donors like, again, not exactly in their class interest to give money to organizations like that. And they also are fickle, right? They're like, they're like, what's, what's happening in Russia today? Like I want to fund some, some Russia investigation. You know, you don't really want to have like donor driven projects like that. Like, and it's in it sort of has, has helped contribute to, you know, the death of, of a bunch of like money and politics groups. Like there's like a few of them have gone under in the last few years. And you know, I'm also sort of bearing the lead here, which is that, you know, I ended up getting laid off at International Business Times because they had a massive financial crunch that no one really expected. After hiring up a whole bunch of people, they ended up kind of gutting their newsroom and cutting it by something like 80%, just kind of leaving the breaking news team and the sports team, which at any outlet like that is sort of what keeps the lights on. There's people who publish like 78 stories a day just on, you know, whatever, whatever is breaking news. And it's, it's not a very fun job. But that's, that's what keeps the lights on at most of these outlets. And then, yeah, I ended up getting laid off more recently too. And it, you know, it's been very difficult for, for money and politics groups to raise money effectively.

Right. And, and to sustain a level of investigative journalism focused on these issues which as if anything this conversation has shown is that there aren't even enough of those reporters out there anyway. And to lose the ones that we have is, is a real crisis for democracy. I mean we talk about a crisis in journalism overall, but I think there's a particular crisis about journalism focused on these issues. And again, there are great journalists doing this work. But as you said, Andrew, and as you've illustrated, this is really time intensive research. I mean, going through these filings is not something you can do and churn an article out in two hours. You know, the requests you make to get information that's not public takes time. I mean, how long do you have to wait for some of these Requests,

I mean, for public records requests, it can be anywhere between like a week or two or months. It could be six months sometimes.

So we have to be starting these projects to, to do this research, you know, months in advance. And if we're short on, on, you know, journalists, there's a real lack of people who can do that work. The flip side, of course, Andrew, is that as you were saying, that there are some journalists who are engaging in the practice that you've written about called buckracking, of going to conferences and, you know, getting paid to appear at industry driven events. So there is really a two tiered system of journalism going on and one is much more adversarial potentially than the other, which again, poses some, some real ethical questions, I think, about the role of the fourth estate, especially when it comes to issues like industry influence.

I mean, look, it's absolutely outrageous that these like, journalists can get paid like tens of thousands of dollars to go help an industry group. Like crap they really didn't need to hear, right? You know, like, stuff they don't need to hear. It's like I'm like, literally just your entertainment for the day. Like, I wouldn't watch. Like Robert Kof said the Washington Post. This is one of the things I snuck into at the American Hospital Association. They had a networking luncheon for government relations professionals, you know, AKA lobbyists and consultants in the healthcare industry. And he gave this like, almost like a stump speech. Like, sort of like, this is my reporting and this is what I've reported on him. Like, I was one of the first people to notice like, Trump's rise. And like, I was also one of the only people to take Bernie seriously in 2016. And just like it was sort of like a stump speech, like, like you might hear like a politician say, or it was like mixed in with some resume. It was really, it was really kind of embarrassing. And yeah, it was, it was like for, in a special room specifically for lobbyists. And I don't know why they let me in, but they did. Very nice of the staff at the. Aha. But yeah, it was, it was really embarrassing. And I don't think you do that for free. Right? Yeah. And then it, you know, it raises the question because you see all these people on tv, all these pundits, it's very common for political pundits. But yeah, you know, they, they know that like, that it's in their financial interest to just basically espouse views that are considered acceptable among the D.C. lobbying industry.

It's very similar to the the corruption dependency that we talk about with campaign financing. It may not be a quid pro quo, but certainly if you're, if you're getting your money from somewhere, you unconsciously think, I don't really want to make them angry or I don't want to say something to, to cut off the spigot of, of cash. And again, I don't think any of us are saying that there's this quid pro quo here. It really is just much more insidious that at minimum it raises the appearance of, of a certain corrupting style of, of ethics breach I think is the real takeaway here. Um, so some journalists are doing very well, it seems, and others are, are, are struggling. And I think that's a real shame for, for democracy because we rely on a strong fourth estate to keep politicians in check and to keep us informed as a public. Because as you said, it may well be that politicians act a certain way regardless. But I think that it's critical, the baseline has to be that the public is aware of this kind of influence peddling. So I want to give you an open ended question here Andrew, which is if you had unlimited money to start your own money in politics outlet, like a specific outlet for that, what are some of the avenues that you would most like to pursue in terms of what, what are some of the angles of influence that you think are just totally unexplored? And if you just had an unlimited budget with a team of reporters, you would love to just spend a year seeking out that influence.

I mean, I think I would want to send a team of people around to all these trade groups to listen to these speeches because you know, they don't get posted anywhere, at least not that, not the good stuff. You'll never see Bob Woodward speech to Ahab. I did, I have tape from it, but most people will never see it. It's just, it's amazing. It just gives you a real behind the scenes look at how, how big name like pundits and journalists and industry interact and also politicians who go to these events. And then, I don't know, I mean, I think the other thing is really that like there hasn't been like a kind of substantial like investment by any outlets that like getting people into political fundraisers, like some politicians have opened their fundraisers lately. But that to me is really a missed opportunity because I think that's probably where you really learn how this all works. Right? And like what really gets said behind closed doors, I don't think we'll ever know. And I Think it's really probably the most undercovered element of politics.

And so what would that look like in terms of how would you actually get into that fundraiser? Would you give them the money and get invited, or would you physically sneak in?

Oh, I think people should buy their way in, if you're asking me. But I don't know if every outlet would do that. But I. But, you know, okay, I'll just say this as an example. I went to ahep. I went to their conference. Like, I had almost open access, but there were a couple events where they said, if you try to go to this event, we will revoke your badge. And, like, I was like, okay, you know, my company paid to send me all the way to Nashville. I guess I can't do that. Like, I can't. I can't jeopardize that. I can't go watch the CEO of Merck, the, you know, the big pharma company. I can't go watch him speak to the health insurance industry, even though I'm sure was far and away the most fascinating thing that happened in the entire conference. Like, I couldn't have gotten into that. So.

So you think that getting access to that room, even if it requires spending a little bit of money, would be worth it?

Yeah. And look, they have, like, some certainty that the press isn't going to be in there. They. They know that they're right.

So. So that's, you know, these are some of the undercover places that you think your ideal outlet would. Would look towards.

Yeah. So I don't think anyone's. Anyone's throwing money at me yet to start a news outlet.

Well, maybe not yet, but maybe. Maybe soon because it seems like we need it. So I want to give you an opportunity to tell our listeners. So you're. You're now formally a journalist, and unless you change your mind, because we could obviously use you in this effort, but you're. You're doing some great stuff now. So who, who are some of the reporters that you respect the most right now who are on this beat of influence peddling?

I really like the people at Open Secrets. I like. I definitely have some friends there. Like, Anna Massaglia is one of them. I really like the work she does there at Open Secrets, AKA the Center for Responsive Politics and Clear.

They're the ones who publish all of the campaign contributions. I mean, they are the champions of turning public data that is generally hard to read into something that is. It couldn't be easier to use for the public.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the end they do then reporting and they'll, they'll cover dark money too. And so, yeah, they're, they're definitely like, kind of up on my list. I like to work the Daily Beast that they do on campaign finance. You know, some of my reporting buddies have all kind of left. Like I, I worked closely with David Sirota, who's now on the Bernie Sanders campaign. And I, you know, when that campaign's over, like, I think people better just watch out because I really don't think there's better reported than him in this country. And that's not just because we're friends, but who else? My buddy Alex Koch just left Sludge, which was a big solely a money and politics focus news site. And it's just funding is an issue kind of across the board. So, yeah, he just left there for the center for Media Democracy, and he's still doing good work.

Very quickly, Andrew, I will just say that that Sludge is an absolutely outstanding outlet. I mean, talk about, you know, an emerging media site that focused really on these issues of, of influence of money in politics, of, of the investments that politicians hold. They've produced some of, on a shoestring budget, some of the most outstanding reporting on these issues that we've been talking about. And I just think about what would happen if that was a newsroom instead of, you know, a couple of reporters really just, you know, skating by. I mean, they've done remarkable, remarkable work.

Yeah, I think if you gave them a lot more money, they could really have a ton of impact. Just a ton of impact. Because I think they get it like they understand, you know, how the system works and what's, what's important.

So do you miss being a journalist? I mean, I guess this is my last question for you. I mean, do you miss the thrill of it or is it, is it so. So much of a grind that you're kind of, you had, you did your time and you're out.

It's not to say I wouldn't love to do it again. I just think the finances are just really difficult right now. But, you know, I'm still doing research and I'm getting paid for it and I'm trying to get stories in the news. So, yeah, I'm not that far away.

You're not that far away, and we wouldn't want it any other way. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. And any final words for our listeners about the, the influence game in D.C. and in states across the country and the importance of journalism.

Yeah, it's worse than you think, and you should all be angry as hell.

It's a great way to end it. Andrew, thanks so much.

Thank you.

This has been another episode of Another Way. Make sure to support us on Patreon. I'll see you next time,

Sam.