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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged campaign finance

1. April 26, 2011 11:20 AM

   LAT Surveys “Parallel, Opaque System of Political Giving”

   If companies don’t disclose, nobody knows

   By Liz Cox Barrett

   A tip of the hat to the Los Angeles Times for spending six months surveying the political spending disclosure practices of the seventy-five largest publicly traded energy, healthcare, and financial service companies and then rating them, spreadsheet-style, on transparency (methodology explained here). It should not startle you to learn that "only a few" of these companies fully disclose their political...

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2. December 16, 2010 10:34 AM

   A Midsummer Donation Spike, With Context

   Reports from recent campaign finance reports

   By Liz Cox Barrett

   There is much that can not be found in publicly available federal campaign finance reports: the identities of all the entities and individuals whose funds fueled the surge in third party ad spending this year; or, a true tally of how much, in all, was spent on the midterm election. Still, there are stories to be told from these disclosure...

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3. May 11, 2011 11:49 AM

   A Mining Disaster Follow-up Follows the Money

   L.A. Times’s revealing report on inaction after the WV coal mine explosion

   By Joel Meares

   A belated laurel to the Los Angeles Times team of Kim Geiger, Tom Hamburger, and Doug Smith, of the paper’s Washington bureau, for their story from last Sunday, “Families of dead miners feel let down by Washington.” The piece is a follow-up on promises made in the wake of the mining disaster that killed twenty-nine men at Upper Big Ranch...

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4. May 24, 2011 10:54 AM

   Bloomberg Digs on Secret Money

   A report on unreported election spending

   By Liz Cox Barrett

   A tip of the hat to Bloomberg for a recent quadruple-bylined story on the growing role of outside spending—much of it anonymous dollars—in federal elections. Noting that the “restocking of the outside-money war chests for the presidential election has already begun," (not to mention the opening of new war chests) Bloomberg looks back at how some such money flowed in...

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5. October 18, 2012 11:30 AM

   Laurels to Politico and National Journal

   For exposing the shady side of the campaign-industrial complex

   By Greg Marx

   Back in April, an excellent column by Walter Shapiro here at CJR urged reporters on the money-in-politics beat to display some “skepticism about the self-interested role of political insiders and campaign consultants in ballyhooing the merits of unlimited campaign spending”—both to maintain some perspective about how much that spending does to decide elections and to uphold “the rights of...

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6. October 20, 2011 12:28 AM

   Occupy Wall Street, Democrats, and Campaign Finance

   By Ryan Chittum

   This Politico story on Occupy Wall Street's influence on the Democrats' campaign donors is awfully interesting: After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent email urging supporters to sign a petition backing the wave of Occupy Wall Street protests, phones at the party committee started ringing. Banking executives personally called the offices of DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and...

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7. April 22, 2011 09:49 AM

   One Year After the Spill…

   …BP campaign contributions no longer “toxic”

   By Liz Cox Barrett

   A year, more or less, is apparently how much time had to pass after the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico before members of Congress felt okay about once again accepting campaign donations from BP. (Just in time for election 2012!) We know this because Tuesday marked a deadline for political action committees, including the BP North...

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8. January 10, 2011 12:56 PM

   PAC Man

   USAT, NYT on skirting federal campaign donation limits (creatively)

   By Liz Cox Barrett

   How do potential presidential candidates circumvent donation-limiting federal campaign laws? Let us count the ways. There’s the federal PAC way. There’s also the state PAC way. USA Today recently reported on these work-arounds and their use by a number of possible presidential aspirants. From that report: Six prominent Republicans considering challenging President Obama in 2012 have raised millions in campaign...

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9. August 2, 2011 03:25 PM

   Pack of Gum, PAC of Candidate

   WaPo on frequent political impulse spenders

   By Liz Cox Barrett

   What “phenomenon” will the Washington Post’s T.W. Farnam find next within the rows and columns of politicians’ campaign finance reports? Last month, after an analysis of FEC data, Farnam and Dan Eggen introduced readers to the term “money blurt,” or when “an up-and-coming politician blurts out something incendiary, provocative or otherwise controversial” which then “bounces around the blogs and talk...

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10. January 21, 2011 12:32 PM

    Q & A: Election Law Expert Richard L. Hasen

    How the press fared covering the post-Citizens United landscape, and stories to do now

    By Liz Cox Barrett

    On the eve of the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court's controversial decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, CJR's Liz Cox Barrett spoke with Richard L. Hasen, a visiting professor at University of California Irvine School of Law and an expert in election law and campaign finance regulations, about Citizens United, its effect on the 2010 midterm...

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11. December 22, 2011 05:07 PM

    The Journal on Congress’s Inside Dope for Investors

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Wall Street Journal continues to investigate the fuzzy intersection between Congress and insider trading, with a good page-one story yesterday on how investors are lining up to meet with Congress and coming away with potentially market-moving information that's not yet publicly disclosed. The Journal looks at a firm called JNK Securities that sets up meetings between hedge funds and...

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12. May 11, 2011 03:41 PM

    The Secret Money “Seduction”

    Democrats get their Priorities in order for 2012

    By Liz Cox Barrett

    The Center for Responsive Politics recently published an analysis of the effects of last year's Citizens United Supreme Court decision (which, as the Center summarizes, "allowed corporations and unions to use their general treasuries to pay for political advertisements that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate, also known as independent expenditures"). The conclusion: Citizens United "profoundly...

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13. March 17, 2011 11:30 AM

    Unpacking Rory Reid’s 91 PACs Maneuver

    How political reporter Jon Ralston got the story

    By Liz Cox Barrett

    If this isn't illegal, it should be. This has been the "almost universal" reaction, says veteran Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston, to the news he broke March 4 on his "Ralston's Flash" blog with this arresting headline: "Rory Reid's gubernatorial campaign circumvented contribution limits, created 91 shell PACs to infuse $750,000 into campaign." Where there are campaign finance laws, there...

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