By the Editor
Good journalism is important especially when there is so little of it. While the networks have digressed into reporting mostly corrupted news tabloid infotainment, formerly respected news sources such as The Hill and Forbes have been falling into the same unethical trap in hopes of generating “conflict” and “red meat” for certain groups of readers in hopes of keeping circulation and click rates up.
While Forbes still does some good reporting, their employee, Dan Alexander, continues to post dishonest hit piece after hit piece. He uses the same technique that many other corrupted journalists do, instead of just making things up he delivers partial facts from an incomplete context and combines that with a false narrative.
One such hit piece, “How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business” is especially egregious.
The article, starts by insulting those who attend the Eric Trump Foundation (ETF) charity event at Trump National Golf Club. After giving Eric Trump the obligatory pat on the head for raising money for St. Judes Children’s Hospital, the article goes on to explain to the reader how the Eric Trump Foundation is some kind of criminal front to launder charity money right back into their own pockets. The article however, omits key facts.
The Trump’s allow the use of the their golf course for free. The article paints that out to be a lie because the golf course billed ETF for expenses, quite deliberately blurring a very important distinction:
Say I want to hold a charity awards dinner at your house and you offer up your home for free for the event. Does that also mean that you will supply the food, catering personnel, parking, lights, extra seating, PA system, music, security and cleanup at your dime? Of course not.
Not charging for the use of the golf course is one thing, but the course should be reimbursed for the employees it needs to have on hand at the event, parking, catering, top VIP level security, repairs to the course after the event, etc.
While acknowledging that the golf event raises millions, Eric Trump is blasted because the expenses for the event keep going up every year, the article all but straight up accuses the Trump’s of criminally skimming the charity for personal gain.
What the article omits is that as the Trump’s global fame has increased exponentially thanks to “The Apprentice” having been a number one rated show and their increased political status, so it also makes sense that the charity event grows bigger every year, with more people showing up, more VIP’s and celebrities, more television coverage, better entertainment, bigger awards, more security etc.
In 2015 the ETF Charity Event raised just over $2 million minus $320,000 for expenses, which means expenses for the Trump National Golf Event were only 16%. ETF as a whole only spends 13% of its revenue on expenses. To put this into perspective, Give.org rates an effective charity as one that spends no more than 35% on expenses.
There is your big scandal folks.
Also keeping things into perspective, why would the Trump’s risk their entire brand, lawsuits and all that goes along with it, just to skim say $20-50 thousand in charity funds per year when such an amount of money is literally a pittance to a Trump?
According to Dan Alexander, author of this hit piece so carefully worded to just avoid a
- Dan Alexander
libel suit, he and his pals at Forbes could not conceivably need $320,000 to run (their words) “a golf tournament”, and they know because they asked the lead golf instructor at Trump National too.
Last we checked, neither Dan Alexander, nor the lead golf instructor, have any experience running huge media celebrity charity events.
Alexander’s Twitter feed is typical Trump-hate fare complete with Russian conspiracy theories. Why Forbes employs someone like this can baffle anyone who took J-School ethics seriously.
The other big scandal mentioned in Alexander’s hit piece is that some of the money raised by ETF is given to other charities so all of it does not go to St. Judes. How nefarious. What Alexander omits is that this is not unusual among charities in the least. One needs to look no further than to the Red Cross, who shares a portion of its donations with various charity partners around the world.
If someone would like to investigate a criminal enterprise posing as a charity, the Clinton Foundation may prove a promising target.
By libeling the Eric Trump Foundation, Forbes is not likely to damage President Trump, but it is likely to impact the donations coming ETF, which only serves to hurt the children served by St. Judes.
Political Arena 