Brad Slager at REDSTATE has worked to put together the details on federal spending for POLITICO Pro and other news outlets that have been uncovered by DOGE, what he calls “eye-popping money figures that sometimes defy explanation.” Not all of what has appeared in the news has been accurate, he says, and, of course, we’re all about accuracy here.

Some have reported that all of POLITICO’s funding was coming from USAID, which, of course, is not true. But the payments made to POLITICO Pro, which is POLITICO’s coverage of the “DC” world for supposed “professional journalists” (ha), are, in Slager’s words, “significant sums,” estimated by some to be in the tens of millions of dollars over just the past “handful of years.”

“The scope of these government contracts is the issue,” Slager says, “and the sums paid out reveal a massive dose of revenue for the news outlet courtesy of federal contracts. This places POLITICO in a precarious position regarding objectivity.”

That might explain a lot. Or it might be sort of a chicken-or-the-egg thing.

Read the article for specific examples of what Slager is talking about. This particular news outlet had an exclusive deal within federal agencies. Why? They were raking in an incredible amount of money for these subscriptions, and each year there were price increases. As Slager says, “There is no way this can be considered a healthy matrix for unbiased news reporting to be taking place.”

Well, of course not! In this scenario, bias isn’t a bug; it’s a feature! This story is a must-read, just to see how it relates to the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian disinformation” lie...

https://redstate.com/bradslager/2025/02/06/untangling-some-inappropriate-financial-relationships-with-politico-other-outlets-and-the-federal-govt-n2185300