Media Should Investigate Federal Waste Instead Of The People Uncovering It

By: Beth Brelje
February 10, 2025

EXCERPTS

As usual, the media are missing the target. They should follow the money, not the people uncovering the massive spending racket.

The avalanche of wasteful spending uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a mere hint of deeper secrets lurking within funky federal funding. Even a cub reporter knows the juiciest news is uncovered when you follow the money, but that is not where the legacy media are looking.

DOGE is highlighting spending information that is ripe for investigative reporting. A lot of this information has been readily available on the government spending website USAspending.gov, which was spurred to life in 2006 in part through the efforts of Federalist CEO and Co-Founder Sean Davis.

The corporate media have had years to tell the public the extent of government glut, but why would they when they were on the take themselves, enjoying fat government handouts? As Federalist writer Logan Washburn recently reported, the federal government has paid Politico $34.3 million since 2015; Reuters, $10.6 million since 2020; The New York Times, $2.7 million since 2008; and $1.7 million to The Washington Post since 2014.

It is a conflict of interest for the media to receive money from the same government it is ostensibly covering. It’s hard to imagine a heavy-hitting investigation challenging spending such as “$8 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid ‘binary gendered language,’” as Federalist writer Tristan Justice recently reported.

There is good news: The lazy media have a newfound curiosity. The bad news is that traditional media have turned their attention to the people investigating the federal funding. Instead of following the money, the left-wing media complex is following the money followers.
Funding is just the surface of the story. If the budget line item seems odd, corruption could be involved. The media should be asking questions. Who advocated for this funding? Why? Which journalists were trained? How many? What were they taught, specifically? Is this project connected to other contracts? Which people are behind this spending? Are they connected to lawmakers or high-level government officials? If so, what other contracts are they connected to? What were the salaries of the people who received the contract? Did the work get done? What was the result?

These questions are just a starting point. It would take time, records requests, interviews, and maybe a trip to the work site to get the answers.

Meh. It is so much easier for government-funded media to smear the investigators and try to keep the funding streams flowing.

Full piece:  https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/10/media-should-investigate-feder...

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