I’d also point out that I didn’t get around to writing about Taibbi’s piece on AIG in March—which if not as talked about as his Goldman one, was a close second. AIG is not an Audit funder, by the way.

The Audit has never made any claims to be completist. We’d love to critique everything, but our resources are limited. And, you know, we try to do things that go beyond merely reacting to the article of the day, such as this deconstruction of business failures pre-crisis.

I went back to the archives to see if I could find one time we’ve mentioned Goldman Sachs in a positive light but couldn’t find one. We have been hard on Wall Street, including and perhaps especially Goldman.

Here’s a post from July 7 in which I asked if a prosecutor’s statement means that Goldman has the power to manipulate markets in unfair ways and called for the press to dig into that area (with a follow-up highlighting it again three days later). Weirdly, Kantrow cites this as evidence that we were covering up the Taibbi piece.

Still, nothing was forthcoming — a state of affairs that got stranger when an Audit piece on the Goldman Sachs code-theft case linked to two stories on the powers of “Government Sachs” but made no mention of Taibbi’s blockbuster. Now, we understand that The Audit isn’t necessarily comprehensive. But we were also tempted to speculate that the silence may stem from the fact that Goldman is one of The Audit’s backers. In fact, reacting to the brouhaha over The Washington Post’s fundraising “salons,” The Audit recently disclosed that it holds semiannual breakfasts for its funders and potential funders, including Goldman and Citigroup Inc.

But that’s made even stranger by the fact that Kantrow admits that The Audit has hammered Goldman.

That could make it decidedly awkward for the site to deal with Taibbi’s takedown. It’s a tough situation. Praise Taibbi and piss off a funder; tear the story apart and look like its mouthpiece. Still, The Audit has not shied from criticizing Goldman in the past; it even got into a public spat with Goldman spokesman Lucas van Praag over its take on the firm’s role in the AIG bailout and how it benefited from it.

Which we have. Here’s Audit CEO Dean Starkman zeroing in on Goldman last fall, calling the events “Goldman’s Backdoor Bailout. And more here and here. Here’s that “spat” Dean got into with Goldman last year.

Here’s one from April in which I took the press to task for not nailing Goldman on its first-quarter earnings chicanery. And for not giving more play to a massive mortgage settlement the firm paid to Massachusetts (with a follow-up).

There’s a lot more like that in the archives. Go have a look.

This is not to mention a freelance piece Dean did for The Nation that goes out of its way to debunk Goldman’s claim that it was somehow wronged by The New York Times during the turmoil of last September.

Another point I’d like to make is that I made it clear from when I joined that I didn’t want to be involved in fundraising. I’ve never been involved in it, have never attended an Audit Breakfast or any other fundraising event, and have never talked to a funder (I did have a dispute with a Goldman spokesperson over email once, but nothing that didn’t happen when I was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal).

As Dean wrote in response to questions from Kantrow (she didn’t bother to quote him):

To clarify a bit about fund raising since Ryan is kept cloistered in DC and is blissfully unaware of what goes on. I talk to funders a few times a year, give updates on progress etc., but we have a fulltime person who does that and reports up the business side to our chairman, Victor Navasky. That’s the state to our church, such as it is.

Every publication, including Kantrow’s not-exactly-hard-on-Wall Street The Deal, which has funders known as “advertisers,” has to manage conflicts, as Dean pointed out in his email to Kantrow:

Finally, it’s worth noting that we get comparable or more money from several places, including The Nation institute, a Soros-funded group, a short-selling hedge fund, Kingsford Capital, etc. It’s all over the map, which I guess is good. Is this the perfect model? No, but none of them is, including, I’m sure, and no offense intended at all, The Deal’s.

We’d like to think journalists can manage these kinds of things—after all most of us got into this business because of principles, not pecuniary reasons. Barney Kilgore, the legendary editor of my alma mater and Dean’s, The Wall Street Journal, faced with a devastating boycott from his biggest advertiser, General Motors, famously told them to stick it. We’ll do the same if we ever sense any influence-wielding.

That’s what journalists with integrity do. I don’t like having mine attacked with innuendo and poor reporting.

But what really hacks me off about this is: I hate working on weekends.

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