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January 30, 2006
Why CBS Misleads on Abramoff
CBS reported tonight that the Abramoff scandal was bipartisan. They said that though Democrats did not receive money directly from Abramoff, like the Republicans, they did receive cash from his clients. The American Prospect reports the results of a non-partisan research group that analyzed Abramoff and client donations. (AmPros)
But the Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it's highly misleading to suggest that the tribes's giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.
The analysis includes a detailed look at seven of Abramoff's tribal clients, and a comparison of their giving with that of approximately 170 other tribes. (Abramoff is often said to have had nine tribal clients. But Morris omitted two of the tribes - the Pueblo of Santa Clara, whose donations were virtually nonexistent, and the Tigua Indian Reservation, because it isn't listed in Federal lobbying files as having a lobbyist and Abramoff worked on contingency. At any rate Santa Clara’s post-Abramoff donations to the GOP were overwhelmingly higher than to Dems, so including them would have added even more to the GOP side of the ledger.)
So why would CBS ignore this information? So they don't get burned by the highly partisan Republicans. CBS assumes, with good reason, that the Republicans will punish them if they do not do absolutely everything possible to be "fair and balanced". That means that each side in this, and all, debates is seen as equally at fault. If not, one can expect that regulators will come down hard on CBS in one way or another. It might be some regulation, it might be a request for some type of application or approval, whatever. The point is that the Republicans will make their business that much harder. That would hurt their bottom line, and they don't want that. Their goal is to increase their business. Too often that means pleasing the political powers that be, which in this case means the Republicans and the White House.
Posted by Chip Spear at January 30, 2006 10:36 PM