The NPR Politics Facebook page promoted their favorite Not-Actually-News story of the day on Thursday:
The Federal Elections Commission has proposed new rules that would further restrict foreign contributions to U.S. election campaigns — including the kind of "dirt" Russians offered the Trump campaign on Hillary Clinton.
You can see the bias right there in the framing. If the "kind of dirt" the Russians offered the Trump campaign is rejected as a foreign contribution, then what about the dossier of "dirt" the Russians helped Christopher Steele collect on Trump for the Hillary Clinton campaign?
Ewing is reporting on the efforts of FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat who's popular on CNN and MSNBC shows...and on NPR shows. In 2016, she screamed through a speech at a "Democracy Awakening" rally organized by the leftist group Public Citizen. She ranted about how rich white males had too much power with their super PACs.
Here is how reporter Philip Ewing framed his opening:
The Federal Election Commission is considering proposed new rules to outlaw exchanges like the one that took place when a Russian delegation visited Trump Tower in 2016 to offer Donald Trump's campaign "dirt" on Democrats.
Although U.S. law already forbids contributions from foreigners to American political campaigns, President Trump has said that the meeting taken by his son Donald Trump Jr. and others was business as usual and that everybody in politics accepts "opposition research."
Why is this not news? Because after ten paragraphs of describing this new proposal, Ewing admitted:
If the proposal does get voted on by the commissioners of the campaign finance watchdog, it probably won't advance. The agency currently has only four confirmed commissioners (at full strength, it has six). By law, four commissioner's votes are needed for any official action to proceed, a hurdle that in recent years has been high enough to deadlock much of the FEC's work.
So the FEC can't pass any proposals, why would NPR by hyping their proposals? Because Democrats doing anything after the Mueller Report fizzled is apparently newsworthy. Ewing added:
Advocates are trying to change the political climate in Washington and build support for post-Mueller changes to policy. Members of Congress also are calling for new legislation.
Democratic Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — who is running for president — called for action by Congress on Thursday.
The senators have offered proposals that include new restrictions on social media, mandating a paper backup for every ballot cast in the U.S. and requiring campaigns to report contacts with foreign agents.
NPR's story goes on and on about alleged Trump collusion, and never mentioned similar activities by the Clinton campaign.
