ACTION ALERT: At NYT, Now You See Corporate Influence, Now You Don't
Julie Hollar
 A New York Times report (11/12/20) noted that "Biden’s [OMB] team included executives from Amazon Web Services, Lyft, Airbnb and a vice president of WestExec Advisors...whose secretive list of clients includes financial services, technology and pharmaceutical companies."
As President-elect Joe Biden begins to assemble his team of cabinet members and close advisers, progressives and others who care about corporate influence in politics are sounding alarms. But the way top establishment media outlets like the New York Times cover the revolving door between government and corporate positions means that those alarms get siloed into "corporate influence" stories that rarely inform broader political coverage.
At the New York Times, two reporters regularly cover issues of money in politics. Reporter Kenneth P. Vogel has worked the "confluence of money, politics and influence" beat since 2017, and investigative reporter Eric Lipton won a Pulitzer in 2015 for his work at the Times on lobbying and corporate influence. Lipton and Vogel have filed two lengthy reports in recent weeks detailing the conflicts of interest plaguing many of Biden's picks.
The pair reported on November 12 on progressive pushback against the growing list of corporate lobbyists, executives and consultants under consideration for important posts in the Biden administration. For instance, Biden campaign chair Steve Ricchetti, a "former pharmaceutical industry lobbyist," was a top contender for chief of staff before being named senior counselor to the president. His corporate ties were so deep that Biden's eventual pick for that spot—Ron Klain, who "recently worked with Steve Case, the founder of AOL, in a venture capital firm called Revolution," and "warned in 2015 about the impact that government regulation can have on technology start-ups"—was, according to the Times, viewed by many as an ethics victory.
Lipton and Vogel were back on November 28 with a piece headlined "Biden Aides’ Ties to Consulting and Investment Firms Pose Ethics Test." The article went in depth on links, first mentioned in their earlier piece, between Biden picks and two revolving-door Washington firms: consulting firm WestExec Advisors and investment fund Pine Island Capital Partners.
WestExec, founded in 2017 by ex-Obama officials, advertises itself as "a diverse group of senior national security professionals with the most recent experience at the highest levels of the US government," trading on its team's "deep knowledge and networks." Pine Island, a strategic partner to WestExec, invests heavily in military companies. Lipton and Vogel ran through the many WestExec and Pine Island veterans on Biden's wish list for his administration or already steering the transition, including:
- Antony Blinken (co-founder of WestExec, Pine Island adviser), secretary of State
- Michèle Flournoy (co-founder of WestExec, Pine Island adviser), Defense secretary
- Avril Haines (WestExec), director of national intelligence
- Christina Killingsworth (WestExec), budget office transition
- Ely Ratner (WestExec), Pentagon transition
- Jennifer Psaki (WestExec), transition adviser
- Lloyd J. Austin III (Pine Island), Defense secretary
As Lipton and Vogel explained, these officials use their government experience and access to help big corporations (and themselves) when out of office, and then, when they cycle back into office, "bring with them questions about whether they might favor or give special access to the companies they had worked with in the private sector."
The reporters pointed out that the links don't stop at WestExec. Flournoy, for example, is also
a member of the board at Booz Allen Hamilton, a global firm that has billions of dollars in federal contracts, including a deal signed in 2018 to provide cybersecurity services to six federal agencies. That company paid her about $440,000 in the last two years, much of it stock awards.
Troubling entanglements
 The story (11/22/20) that informed New York Times readers that Antony Blinken would be named secretary of State didn't even mention WestExec, the corporate consulting firm he co-founded.
It's commendable that the Times has two reporters tasked with shedding light on corporate influence in US politics. The problem is that the paper's leadership seems to view this as a way to wash their hands of any obligation to consider such information in any of the other articles the paper churns out regarding the presidential transition and the team Biden is assembling. It's a neat trick: The Times can point to its Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting on corporate influence as evidence of its own independence, yet leave all but the most avid readers largely oblivious to the deep and troubling entanglements of so many government officials.
For instance, in a profile on Blinken (11/22/20), a team of three Times reporters explained that
his extensive foreign policy credentials are expected to help calm American diplomats and global leaders alike after four years of the Trump administration’s ricocheting strategies and nationalist swaggering.
Lara Jakes, Michael Crowley and David E. Sanger found space to note that Blinken had earned "admirers even among conservative Republicans in Congress," and that he
also has a lighter side that may not be immediately evident when he is seen testifying or meeting foreign diplomats. He plays in a band. He has a tight group of close friends from his days as a student at Harvard and his rise through the Washington foreign policy firmament.
Yet nowhere did they reveal his role at WestExec (or mention how progressives feel about his hawkish worldview).
Even after its own in-depth WestExec piece, the Times continued to elide that information in other reporting. A piece by White House correspondent Annie Karni (11/29/20) reported that Biden had "announced an all-female White House communications staff, with Jennifer Psaki, a veteran of the Obama administration, in the most visible role as White House press secretary." The piece noted Psaki's previous experience working for both Obama and John Kerry, the fact that she and many others on the team were "mothers of young children," and that she "said she saw her job as trying to 'rebuild trust of the American people.'" Yet it didn’t mention her role with WestExec, reported the day before by her Times colleagues, nor how that might impact Psaki's trust-building mission.
Other times, corporate links are briefly mentioned as nothing more than a bullet point on a resumé. A later piece (12/1/20) on Biden's communications team perfunctorily noted, in a paragraph on Psaki's past experience, that she "has served a principal at WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm founded by Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden's choice for secretary of State." This after quoting glowing assessments from former officials that Psaki will represent "professionalism and decency and commitment to transparency," praising her "steady, experienced voice."
Likewise, four days after Lipton and Vogel's piece about Ricchetti and Klain, the paper's Michael D. Shear and Katie Glueck (11/16/20) reported Biden's formal announcement of a handful of appointments, including Ricchetti as counselor to the president. The piece included the cursory note that Ricchetti "lobbied for the pharmaceutical industry and served as Mr. Biden's chief of staff when he was the vice president."
 The New York Times (11/17/20) noted that the appointment of Cedric Richmond "drew an immediate rebuke" from climate activists--but didn't mention the "big money from the fossil fuel industry" that prompted the criticism.
By assigning particular reporters to the "corporate influence" beat, the paper seems to let others reporters off the hook in terms of providing relevant information about officials' corporate influences. For example, Glueck and Martin penned a long profile of Rep. Cedric Richmond (11/17/20), a pick for senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, describing him as "one of the most influential Black voices on Capitol Hill...who maintains an extensive political network and is known for delivering candid advice." They wrote:
Mr. Richmond had relatively moderate instincts on some of the most urgent political issues of the 2020 campaign — and his appointment drew an immediate rebuke from the Sunrise Movement, a group of progressive climate activists. His relationships extend across the spectrum of the Democratic caucus as well as across the aisle, and include his fellow Louisianian, Representative Steve Scalise, the Republican whip.
Why did it bring a rebuke from Sunrise? The passage suggests that it's simply because of his "moderate instincts." For the few who click through to see that rebuke, it turns out it's because, as Sunrise tweeted, "Cedric Richmond has taken big money from the fossil fuel industry, cozied up w/oil and gas, & stayed silent while polluters poisoned his own community."
Or take the November 24 piece by Karni and Sanger on Biden's national security picks. Describing how the announcement event, which featured comments by the chosen, "avoided any discussion of policy...and focused on their personal stories," Karni and Sanger presented UN ambassador pick Linda Thomas-Greenfield only through the lens the Biden event offered, writing that her story was "perhaps the most powerful," as she "was the first in her family to go to high school or college," and treated Southern cooking as a source of American soft power:
At her diplomatic posts, she said, “I would invite people of different backgrounds and beliefs” to her kitchen to make the signature dish of her native Louisiana. “I called it gumbo diplomacy.”
It's a story that suggests a commitment to a level playing field. But readers might be better served by the news that after exiting the State Department in 2017 Thomas-Greenfield joined Albright Stonebridge, another strategic advisory firm named in Lipton and Vogel's November 12 piece.
Very Timesian
 The New York Times (11/28/20) frames criticism of potential Biden nominees as coming from "interest groups."
And in the very Timesian "Top Contenders for Biden’s Cabinet Draw Fire From All Sides," Shear and Jonathan Martin (11/28/20) acknowledged leading Defense pick Fournoy's corporate conflicts, but made no mention of such conflicts for several other contenders.
To give just two examples: Rahm Emanuel, floated for the transportation department, "is disliked by some liberals for how he handled police issues as mayor"—which barely hints at the level of "dislike" Emanuel's disastrous neoliberal and racist policies have generated, but elides his deep corporate ties as well.
And Ernest J. Moniz, Energy secretary in the Obama administration and under consideration for the same post for Biden, "troubles environmental groups who believe Mr. Moniz did not do enough to steer the country away from fossil fuels." That's Times-speak for "has had several lucrative relationships with fossil fuel companies during his career," "accepted a paid position with a fossil fueled utility whose work he supported at the DoE," and has been a key champion of fracking and natural gas (New Republic, 9/15/20).
Imagine if the Times and other prominent outlets named corporate influences on government officials on a regular basis, rather than in one-off, segregated special reports. Articles like the Times' recent piece (by Shear and Martin) on centrist Democrats blaming leftists for 2020 down-ballot losses (FAIR.org, 11/10/20), in which Rep. James Clyburn argued that Democrats will lose if they run on “Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine,” would have to tell readers that Clyburn has received more money from Pharma in the last ten years than any other member of Congress (Post and Courier, 12/16/18). But by keeping such information safely siloed away, the gatekeepers effectively neutralize its potential power.
ACTION ALERT
Please urge the New York Times to incorporate information on officials' corporate ties into daily reporting, rather than relegating it to special reports.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @NYTimes
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