Media Companies Make HUGE Payday Protecting Industry Giants

Both corporate media and social media companies are hoping for big pay days during this year’s campaign cycle, and they’ve spent millions lobbying Washington lawmakers to make it easier to hide where the money is coming from. Mike Papantonio is joined by Independent newspaper publisher Rick Outzen to discuss.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Both corporate media and social media companies are hoping for big paydays during this year's campaign cycle. And they've spent millions, millions lobbying Washington lawmakers to make it easier to hide when they give money to big campaigns. They don't, for example, if you have a group that gives a hundred million dollars to 10 or 12 senators, whatever it may be, don't you want to know if that group is a weapons manufacturer? Don't you wanna know if that group is exclusively a pharmaceutical group that's trying to change the law? And don't you wanna be able to say, well, that Senator took all this money for pharmaceutical, from the industry, and oh, by the way, he voted 100% for the pharmaceutical industry? Isn't that something we ought to know, even with Citizens United, as bad as that decision is?

Well, it is. And the other thing that's happening, and we see it in state legislatures, Mike, is that because of term limits for state legislatures, the lobbyists are writing the bills. They're actually creating.

Talk about ALEC. Talk about ALEC.

ALEC, oh yeah. You look at ALEC, all the gun control, or anti-gun control, all those bills are coming. They have a big conference. They write it. They drafted, I know of state senators that had their bills drafted by ALEC.

By ALEC. We've seen the same thing with the weapons industry. Now understand, let's say it again, the group actually drafts the legislation.

Exactly.

We've seen cases where it's word for word.

State to state.

State to state.

You see it state to state.

The exact same. So, this money that's coming from the pharmaceutical industry, or it's coming from Wall Street, or it's coming from the weapons industry, the point is, we ought to be able to look behind that. Now, media's not gonna tell you. You've got corporate media hiding. I mean, they're doing everything to lobby against this, aren't they?

Right. They are.

National Broadcasters are saying, oh no, we don't wanna have to disclose this. Why?

Well, because, they're making too much money on it. And one reason you have this America's Lawyer is because the stories that you need to tell about PFAS about, gosh, you know.

Opioids.

Opioids, you're looking at all of this, they were making so much money you could not get the story told.

Yeah, that's true. There were times, Rick, when I would show up for MSNBC, I was a commentator with Ed Schultz primarily. And I'd be ready to do the show. I'd be ready to do the segment. Bayer corporation is making a product that's killing people. I should be able to tell that story, shouldn't I? And in the count, no, we gotta change the story. In the count 10, 9, 8. Gotta change the story. Talk about some inane kind of topic like constitutional law, some idiotic part of constitutional law. And so the industry that's supposed to be telling us this story is actually part of the people who are hiding the truth of the story. Why do you think, for example, we talk about this often, why do you think MSNBC has commercials for Raytheon? Are you gonna go buy a Patriot missile? Probably not. But they do that because Raytheon gives them advertising dollars. And when Raytheon wants to start a war, what do you think MSNBC's gonna do? They're gonna do the same thing they've always done all the way back to Iraq. They're gonna jump on the weapons industry bandwagon. Who was it they fired that used to, they fired early on because he was telling the story about what a, Donahue. Phil Donahue.

Yeah, Phil Donahue.

MSNBC fired him because he was telling the truth.

Well, Ed Schultz is another example.

Ed Schultz, they got rid of because of TPP. He said TPP, and first of all, they hated that he thought Hillary Clinton was an idiot.