It’s been one of the hottest topics on social media ever since the amount of waste at the U.S. Agency for International Development has become a topic of discussion: Was USAID funding and influencing mainstream media?
Both Elon Musk and conservative influencers have zeroed in on two publications in particular which are friendly to the Democratic Party, The New York Times and Politico.
Reports have stated that USAID funds went to these outlets under the Biden administration — which, conspicuously, provide rather complimentary coverage to the left.
The truth, however, is a great deal more complicated — and the full story has yet to come out, as an audit of the notoriously opaque USAID also hasn’t been conducted.
So, let’s start with the accusations and then the facts.
First, The New York Times: On Feb. 5, conservative social media Ian Miles Cheong posted screenshots of what were purported to be U.S. government expenditures on the Times, which were not exactly minuscule.
“The US Government gave the New York Times tens of millions of dollars over just the past 5 years despite paying relatively little money to the NYT in the years preceding 2021,” Cheong claimed. “For instance, in August 2024, the US government awarded $4.1 million to the NYT.
“The bulk of the funds came from the US Department of Health and Human Services at $26.90m, followed by the National Science Foundation at $19.15m.”
Department of Government Efficiency chair Elon Musk, who has led to crusade against USAID and other waste, reposted this last Wednesday, along with the assertion that “NYT is government-funded media.”
Do you trust federal agencies like USAID?
However, as the community notes included demonstrated, there were a number of flaws in this logic:
NYT is government-funded media https://t.co/GMK5GDYqNT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2025
As Newsweek reported, the genesis of the flaw in this analysis is likely based on an error in search criteria on USAspending.gov, which allows users to track public spending for over 17 years.
“Searching for ‘New York Times’ returns unrelated spending for other institutions that include the words ‘New York’ in some part of the spending entry,” the publication noted.
“They include grants to The Research Foundation for the State University of New York, New York University and the New York Genome Center Inc.”
Over the past five years, federal money to the Times is actually $1.6 million, almost solely in subscription fees.
“It was surprising to see social media attention on the fact that a small number of government offices, libraries and courts purchase subscriptions to The New York Times and other media outlets,” said Charlie Stadtlander, the Times’ managing director of external communications.
The case of Politico, however, is a bit more complex.
The same online sleuths and DOGE folks found that multiple government agencies, including USAID, were paying $8 million to Politico, as the Media Research Center noted. Musk, naturally, was out in front of this as well:
Not an efficient use of taxpayer funds.
This wasteful expenditure will be deleted. https://t.co/heR4q6Sg4x
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2025
This isn’t an error, but the explanation is complex.
First, Politico doesn’t just offer its regular news outlet as its only product. The politics-centric outlet also has a premium service called Politico Pro, used mostly (and rather ubiquitously) by those on Capitol Hill.
In a note published by the CEO and editor-in-chief of the outlet after the scandal broke on Thursday, Politico noted that Politico Pro was “a professional subscription service used by companies, organizations, and, yes, some government agencies.
“They subscribe because it makes them better at their jobs — helping them track policy, legislation and regulations in real-time with news, intelligence and a suite of data products. At its core, POLITICO Pro is about transparency and accountability: Shining a light on the work of the agencies, regulators and policymakers throughout our vast federal government. Businesses and entities within the government find it useful as they navigate the chaotic regulatory and legislative landscape. It’s that simple.
“Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction — just as the government buys research, equipment, software and industry reports,” the note continued.
Think of it, in other words, as a Bloomberg Terminal — albeit somewhat cheaper and for Beltway wonks.
A note to our readers, from Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and Editor-in-Chief John Harris: pic.twitter.com/duHv5xh1xJ
— POLITICO (@politico) February 6, 2025
So that is an explanation for where the money was going. However, the first paragraph of the note to readers is what complicates matters significantly: “Politico is a privately owned company. We have never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years.”
Politico — the publication — has not. Politico — the company — has. Both Politico and Politico Pro are under the same corporate umbrella, first as an independent publishing outlet and now as a part of German-based media conglomerate Axel Springer SE, which bought the Beltway publisher in 2021.
Several conservative pundits noted that to pretend there was no conflict of interest between the government outlays to Politico Pro and the coverage the government receives in the regular Politico publication is disingenuous, to say the least.
“Having worked on the Hill I get the ubiquity of Politico Pro and its cost,” wrote Drew Holden, managing editor of the American Compass.
“But I think it takes an enormous suspension of disbelief to call it a conspiracy theory to look askance at the millions of dollars the Biden admin paid the paper that ran this hatchet job on his opponent,” he added, noting that Politico was the outlet which broke the letter from 51 former intelligence officials declaring Hunter Biden’s poxed laptop Russian disinformation in the run-up to the 2020 election — despite the fact that the American intelligence community apparently knew it was genuine.
Having worked on the Hill I get the ubiquity of Politico Pro and its cost.
But I think it takes an enormous suspension of disbelief to call it a conspiracy theory to look askance at the millions of dollars the Biden admin paid the paper that ran this hatchet job on his opponent. pic.twitter.com/j3c3cdSMnX
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) February 6, 2025
And even if this didn’t influence the coverage, pundit and CNN contributor Mary Katharine Ham said that the explanation from Politico was hardly sufficient.
“I understand it is a subscription and taxpayer funds are purchasing a service (a pretty specialized one, which is far better than regular Politico). But people are kinda done with “it’s a $20K subscription. It’s a drop in the bucket. We don’t have to explain it, you rubes,’” she wrote on X on Thursday.
“No, you are in your Explain Yourself Era. If someone I reported on gave me substantial money for subscriptions for my product, I should mention it in said product,” she continued.
“And there is something extra galling about the fact that, if you understand Politico Pro, you know that it’s ostensibly a service that tracks the intricacies of a federal government that is so big and complex and out of its lane that people who work IN IT nonetheless need a $10K+ subscription service to decipher it, which they of course pay for with our money.”
I understand it is a subscription and taxpayer funds are purchasing a service (a pretty specialized one, which is far better than regular Politico). But people are kinda done with “it’s a $20K subscription. It’s a drop in the bucket. We don’t have to explain it, you rubes.” No,… https://t.co/spjlHFsg9h
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) February 6, 2025
And that’s the concern here: There’s no way to ensure an editorial or ideological firewall between Politico and Politico Pro. Furthermore, this is just what’s gotten uncovered in the past few weeks. What other creatures lie under the Beltway rocks once they’re overturned?
Nevertheless, while the relationship is unseemly and the evidence of even an attempt to reduce the appearance of a conflict of interest appears to be missing in Politico’s case, the facts aren’t there to support a one-to-one quid pro quo relationship between the mainstream media and opaque government agencies like USAID.
This isn’t to say there isn’t one or that more stringent rules regarding government spending on purportedly independent media don’t need to be adopted in the wake of these and other revelations. But as for a direct link, if one is to be established, it hasn’t happened yet.
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