{"id":2660665,"date":"2026-09-14T08:26:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T12:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignpolitico-hocking-lobbyist-pr-shows-just-how-corrupt-the-washington-media-bubble-is\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T08:37:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T12:37:02","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignpolitico-hocking-lobbyist-pr-shows-just-how-corrupt-the-washington-media-bubble-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignpolitico-hocking-lobbyist-pr-shows-just-how-corrupt-the-washington-media-bubble-is\/","title":{"rendered":"How Politico Operates As A Gossip Rag For Lobbyists"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignpolitico-hocking-lobbyist-pr-shows-just-how-corrupt-the-washington-media-bubble-is%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2660665&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The article critiques a Politico story that claims hospitals face significant financial losses due to recent Medicaid-related regulations. It argues that the story relies on unverified premises, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trumps-court-loss-in-ny-called-corporate-death-penalty-and-its-as-bad-as-it-sounds\/\" title=\"Trump&#039;s NY court defeat dubbed &#039;corporate death penalty,&#039; as dire as it sounds.\">lacks concrete evidence<\/a>, and appears to serve as a promotional tool for certain interest groups rather than providing thorough journalism. The author points out that politico\u2019s reporting often functions as a platform for lobbyist influence, prioritizing access over accuracy, and highlights the absence of detailed analysis or sourcing for their bold claims.the piece condemns the media&#8217;s role in perpetuating narratives driven by special interests and questions the integrity of modern journalism practices.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Congress may have spent most of the last few weeks out of session. But despite lawmakers decamping from Washington for their home districts, rest assured that the swamp remains alive and well.<\/p>\n<p>A recent story in Politico provides yet another example of how K Street lobbying works \u2014 with the former serving as the free publicity arm of the latter. The publication ran a story about hospitals purportedly incurring large losses without including any explanation of or justification for its claims. If there\u2019s a more obvious way to shill for the organizations potentially paying thousands of dollars for subscriptions to one\u2019s publication, I have yet to see it.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Unproven Premise<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>At issue in the article: two Medicaid-related provisions of last year\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.juniperresearchgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/BBB-Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pelosi-schumer-file-measure-that-sets-up-process-to-ram-through-biden-stimulus-without-gop-support\/\" title=\"Pelosi, Schumer File Measure That Sets Up Process To Ram Through Biden Stimulus Without GOP Support\">budget reconciliation bill<\/a><\/a>. The first one involves provider taxes, which most states assess on various groups of medical practitioners (including hospitals) as a fancy way of <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >attracting additional federal matching dollars<\/a> from Washington. The second involves state-directed payments, supplemental payments that Medicaid programs make \u2014 often to hospitals, and often with the state share of the payments financed via provider taxes or similar budgetary gimmicks designed to shift funding from the states to Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The Politico <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/09\/02\/hospitals-say-coming-regulations-worse-than-medicaid-cuts-01060086\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">article<\/a> predicts catastrophe for hospitals:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Hospitals thought losing hundreds of billions in Medicaid funding through GOP-led cuts last year was bad. But coming regulations from the Trump administration could slash their funding even deeper than Congress did. Two recently proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] would cost hospitals hundreds of billions of dollars more, hospital executives told <em>Politico.<\/em> \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Hospitals say CMS\u2019 rules restricting state taxes and payments go further than what Congress intended. Hospitals expected to lose $340 billion through 2034 after Congress passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act last year. If the rules are finalized as proposed, they would generate $756 billion in savings to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/better-than-expected-u-s-economy-added-638000-jobs-in-october-unemployment-dropped-to-6-9\/\" title=\"Better Than Expected: U.S. Economy Added 638,000 Jobs in October, Unemployment Dropped to 6.9%\">federal government<\/a> and $265 billion in savings to states through 2035. Or as hospitals see it, they\u2019re losing $681 billion more than they expected.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It sounds frightening \u2014 which is in many respects the point. Because the article itself includes precious little evidence of the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Does Politico ever explain exactly <em>what<\/em> in the proposed rules would inflict the supposed \u201cextra\u201d $681 billion in losses on hospitals through 2035? Nope. For that matter, did the reporters in question ever actually read the rules? Given one of the two reporters\u2019 history of <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/03\/06\/politico-stealth-edits-error-filled-hit-piece-on-gop-spending-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">not paying attention<\/a> to a report, and then re-writing the story to cover his tracks after I pointed out the inaccuracies rooted in that ignorance, I highly doubt it. (For whatever it\u2019s worth, I read the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalregister.gov\/documents\/2026\/05\/22\/2026-10292\/medicaid-program-medicaid-managed-care-state-directed-payments-and-medicaid-fee-for-service-targeted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">proposed rule<\/a> on state-directed payments shortly after its release in May; I didn\u2019t get around to reading July\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalregister.gov\/documents\/2026\/07\/23\/2026-14897\/medicaid-program-amending-the-indirect-hold-harmless-threshold-of-health-care-related-taxes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">proposed rule<\/a> on provider taxes.)<\/p>\n<p>The reporters don\u2019t even include any type of citation, source, or math to explain where the $681 billion figure came from. That absence is part and parcel of the larger problem: The entire article is based on a premise that the authors did not bother to explain, elaborate, or justify. Essentially, their \u201creporting\u201d amounts to: <em>Hospital executives told us this is a problem \u2014 therefore, it must be true!<\/em><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Access Porn<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The article\u2019s questionable premise exemplifies Politico\u2019s role and function. Despite any hype about its \u201cPro\u201d service, its reporters <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/03\/06\/politico-stealth-edits-error-filled-hit-piece-on-gop-spending-bill\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">often<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/11\/18\/how-propagandists-at-politico-use-corruption-to-hide-their-ignorance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">demonstrate<\/a> that they don\u2019t have any particular policy chops or expertise. If they did, they could have written the hospital story to include, you know, actual evidence to support their claims.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, Politico seemingly acts as a gossip rag \u2014 access porn for K Street \u201cinsiders.\u201d A story, apparently planted by special interest group appears in the publication \u2014 in this case hospitals attempting to obtain regulatory relief from the administration as it finalizes rules implementing last year\u2019s budget bill. In other cases, Politico reporters appear to launder negative stories that lobbyists might not necessarily want their public fingerprints on.<\/p>\n<p>Therein lies Politico\u2019s apparent business model. No one in his right mind would pay <a href=\"https:\/\/openthebooks.substack.com\/p\/too-many-subscriptions-theres-an\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">thousands of dollars <\/a>per year to access such a shoddily written and thinly sourced story as the hospital \u201canalysis.\u201d But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politicopro.com\/faqs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lobbyists ostensibly do so<\/a> anyway, perhaps because they believe they get preferential treatment when it comes to planting material in stories in which the reporters accept premises without specific evidence.<\/p>\n<p>The best thing that can be said about this access porn is that taxpayers are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politifact.com\/article\/2025\/feb\/07\/claims-about-politico-dei-musical-and-usaid-spendi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">no longer paying for it<\/a>. Notwithstanding that fact, it still doesn\u2019t speak well of the culture that persists in Washington, or of the state of modern journalism.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and author of the book &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/chrisjacobsHC\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congress out, lobbyists thrive: Politico\u2019s biased hospital story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":2660666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Copy-of-Untitled-2026-09-09T123049.092.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[81435,4527,5894],"class_list":["post-2660665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-gossip","tag-lobbyists","tag-politics"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Copy-of-Untitled-2026-09-09T123049.092.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2660665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2660682,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660665\/revisions\/2660682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2660666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2660665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2660665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2660665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}