Liberals Condemn Fox's Donation to RGA
The New York Times reports:
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is playing a larger and more directly partisan role in this year’s elections than it is known to have played in any previous American campaign.
The news late Thursday that the company, whose holdings include the Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, had given $1 million to a business coalition that is advertising heavily against Democrats came roughly two months after election filings showed that its News America division had given $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.
The latest disclosure of a large donation by the News Corporation, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is largely working to elect Republicans this year, drew swift condemnation from Democrats and liberal groups. They cited it as more evidence that Mr. Murdoch was pursuing a political agenda.
“What these contributions make clear is that the Republican Party is a division of News Corporation, just as Fox News is a division of News Corporation,” the Democratic National Committee said Friday in a statement that was echoed by other Democratic and liberal groups.
Had it not been disclosed in news reports — first by Politico.com on Thursday night — the donation would not have had to have been made public by the News Corporation. As a 501(c)(6) trade association, the chamber is not required to disclose its donors publicly.
Under tax rules, it must funnel its donations into a general fund used for all of its activities, political and nonpolitical alike. Its donors are not permitted to direct funds to specific political uses.
Still, word of the News Corporation’s donation fed what was already a heightened focus on its role in this year’s campaign. The chamber has been particularly active in this election, vowing to spend $75 million on behalf of candidates who are for the most part Republican (exceptions include its support for Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat, in his bid for the Senate, and Representative Walt Minnick, Democrat of Idaho).
Mr. Murdoch’s more prominent involvement in American politics comes at a time when campaign finance rules have effectively been loosened in ways that require less disclosure of donations and have facilitated a flood of money into independent groups that are intervening directly in many races, with the bulk of the spending this year benefiting Republicans.
And the criticism of Mr. Murdoch’s donations played out before a backdrop of new, open sniping between the White House and Fox News, which President Obama criticized in a new Rolling Stone interview as advancing “a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.”
Fox News Channel officials said Friday that they had learned of the donations on Thursday night from the news media, and they referred questions to the News Corporation, which declined to comment. A spokeswoman for The Wall Street Journal also would not comment.
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