Media Won’t Investigate Fraud, They Have Algae To Track
The article critiques the mainstream media’s focus on algae blooms in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, viewing it as a politically motivated distraction from more serious issues facing America. It highlights how major outlets like CNN, ABC, and CBS devote extensive coverage to this minor story, while largely ignoring significant national crises such as sewage spills in the Potomac River, violent crime, homelessness, corruption, and other urban problems, especially when these issues involve Democratic leaders or cities. The author asserts that the media either ignores or downplays these crises to protect their political allies, neglecting to hold accountable Democratic officials responsible for environmental and public safety failures. Additionally, the piece questions why investigations into corruption and fraud, like the welfare system scandal uncovered by autonomous journalists, have been largely overlooked by corporate outlets.the focus on algae blooms is seen as a strategic move to generate anti-Trump narratives before the issue resolves itself. the article accuses mainstream media of purposeful bias, negligence, or complicity in covering up real problems affecting Americans.
Corporate media are pulling out all the stops, sending their most seasoned left-wing reporters to cover this week’s national scandal: algae blooms in the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Their dedication to this minor story shows how these media outlets have the capacity to focus on important things like crime, fraud, homelessness, and drug use plaguing America’s cities, but choose not to in order to score political points in favor of their Democrat friends.
Americans have been bombarded with algae coverage by the likes of CNN, ABC, CBS, and the rest of the usual suspects, who are offering wall-to-wall coverage of algae growing in the reflecting pool to undermine President Donald Trump’s push to beautify the nation’s capital after decades of disrepair and neglect. They are essentially arguing that the $14 million renovations were not worth it, and that somehow its previous state of total disrepair is better than the attempt to fix one of America’s most recognizable national monuments.
As the Department of the Interior, which oversees the pool’s maintenance, pointed out, algae “has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening — most infamously Obama’s reopening — since 1922.”
Notwithstanding the fact that the reflecting pool has had algae problems essentially since it was built, the time and money put into news coverage of the algae issue stand in stark contrast to the lack of time and resources these deep-pocketed outlets put into reporting on the genuine national crises plaguing the country.
Take, for example, the near-media blackout on coverage of one of the nation’s largest sewage spills in history in January, when between 200 and 300 million gallons of untreated sewage spilled into the Potomac River — a body of water that is just hundreds of feet away from the Lincoln Memorial. The result was 12,000 times the safe amount of E. Coli in the water.
For CNN’s part, it offered an Associated Press wire (meaning the outlet did not even assign a reporter to cover the issue at first), followed by a 1:18-minute segment on Jake Tapper’s program, an article stating that “politicians snipe” about who is responsible for the spill, and a smattering of social media updates.
No wall-to-wall coverage of this major environmental crisis and sending reporters out to take water samples. For all intents and purposes, there was nothing.
Why the lack of coverage?
Because everyone responsible for the spill is a Democrat: The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, is a Democrat, and the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, is a Democrat. Even worse, David Gadis, the ousted CEO of D.C. Water — which is responsible for the spill — was not plucked from obscurity: He was one of the central executives at Veolia North America, overseeing the Flint, Michigan, lead pipe crisis. But the media could not be bothered to dig any deeper than “this spill just happened,” perhaps because he appears to have been a DEI hire at Veolia and was likely a race-trailblazer at D.C. Water too.
Corporate media also will not effectively cover the crime, homelessness, or dilapidation in D.C. or in any other major city for the same reason. In fact, when Trump sent the National Guard into D.C. to stop rampant crime, journalists and other Democrats quickly took to social media to outright lie about the state of D.C., claiming it was as safe as ever. It might be tough, then, to explain the subsequent plummet in a wide array of crimes.
It is not just D.C. Every major city gets the same treatment. Beyond turning a blind eye to crime, these outlets will go out of their way to cover it up in order to protect their Democrat friends. To the extent anyone reports on crime or homelessness generally, it is by way of raw statistics, and left-wing journalists almost never draw connections to public policy.
Why did it take Nick Shirley, an independent journalist with a camera and a YouTube channel, to uncover billions of dollars of fraud in the American welfare system? How is it possible that these corporate outlets, with all the resources in the world, were not on top of this story for years?
They are either complicit, do not care, or both.
These outlets refuse to cover human trafficking at Biden’s open border or his mental decline, the permanent damage caused by “transgender” child genital mutilation, backlogs at Veterans Affairs, or anything that actually matters to the American people.
There is one possible Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool algae avenue for an enterprising journalist awash in resources to pursue: The potential that the bottom newly-applied paint was torn off by saboteurs or vandals. But that is not the angle legacy outlets have decided to pursue; instead of asking why or how, they are focusing on the singular fact that it is coming off.
The Department of the Interior has said that the issue is being resolved quickly with treatments, which may offer a partial explanation of the media blitz: These left-wing outlets want to squeeze as much anti-Trump fodder out of the algae bloom before it is gone.
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
