Mainstream Media 'Discovers' AIPAC's Money Trail
The New Arab alerts us to 'Track AIPAC,' a new platform detailing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's lavish donations to US politicians. Mainstream outlets (like, say, CNN or Fox) consistently frame Israel-related policy debates as organic exercises in democratic deliberation, effectively ignoring the elephant (or rather, the multi-million dollar lobbyist) in the room. This 'new' tool
merely centralizes publicly available data from sources like OpenSecrets.org, which has allowed anyone with an internet connection to see that Senator Chuck Schumer, for example, received over $1.5 million from pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, over his career. (OpenSecrets.org, 2023 data). We're supposed to marvel at this transparency, while the media largely fails to connect the dots between
those millions and, say, the near-unanimous votes for unconditional aid to a foreign government. How many more 'transparency tools' do we need before journalists start critically analyzing how a lobby, legally registered but foreign-focused, shapes US foreign policy with American taxpayer dollars?