Lisa Graves on dark money

Angie Coiro/Newsjunkie

Let's talk about the first Trump administration. With all you know about dark money, what’s your impression of news coverage at the time? Were you seeing what we needed to know? How does it compare to the scrutiny and awareness we need now?

Lisa Graves/True North Research

We had a burst of investigative work by journalists at mainstream or corporate outlets, and from the progressive sphere, in response to Trump. That combination of work by corporate and nonprofit journalists had a substantial impact, shining a light on the dark money influencing that administration—as well as the courts and other levers of power. Now we come into 2025 with a weakened corporate media that has in many ways really begun obeying in advance to Trump, and that has failed in recent months to stand up.

The Washington Post is undergoing a severe retraction of its former commitment: democracy dies in darkness. It's actually darkening almost by the day at the Post. 

And we saw a rise of fact checkers and fact-checking, including by the Post, but also by mega entities like Meta Facebook. Now we're seeing a retraction from that role as well. Elon Musk purchased Twitter, which he later said he did specifically to get Donald Trump into the White House. So its fact-checking role has been utterly decimated; it’s being used to advance rank lies by the guy in charge of it. And now we've seen Facebook withdraw from its role in fact-checking shared materials that are blatantly false, misleading or otherwise not grounded in facts and science.

I think we face a more challenging environment in this second Trump term because the corporate entities have receded. That's not to say that the ones I haven't named are doing a stellar job either. The New York Times front page has been mollifying Trump in countless ways on a regular basis.

In each of these institutions, there are still excellent investigative journalists–if they're allowed to do their jobs. But we are facing a much more challenging environment in 2025 than we faced in 2017 through 2020, or even through 2023.

We're going to need more public-interest reporting and nonprofit reporting to fill that gap. And I haven't even touched on television, and NBC's efforts to separate itself from MSNBC. That, despite the important role MSNBC has played in shining a bright light on Trump's extremism.

Angie

Why do you think MSNBC has been able to do that? Ultimately, they're still a corporate television station. 

Lisa

I think MSNBC's nightly coverage was really excellent. It featured a lot of experts—myself included—and provided a real forum for shining a light on the legal challenges—the risks that we're facing in terms of our democracy, and the economic realities we face in terms of the pandemic and the recovery from it. All this in the face of outright lying by Fox. 

It really rubs me the wrong way when people try to make Fox and MSNBC equivalent. They're not at all equivalent. The material presented on MSNBC is factually grounded in reality. The stuff that's presented on Fox is routinely just gross distortion and propaganda. It’s true that MSNBC has a perspective its been open about, although that perspective is more apparent in the evening shows than the daily shows. Those can also sometimes can be a little bit too sympathetic to Trump.

But MSNBC was and remains an important counter to Fox. Not as an equivalent in terms of distortion, but as an antidote to the heroin of hate that Fox routinely puts out. Fox is constantly lying about the specter of widespread violent crime by immigrants, which is simply false. They take an example and hype it. In fact, they routinely lie to their viewers about the crime rate, which by every documented independent measure has been declining.

It was the same thing when President Obama was in office, and the stock market was going up. Fox wasn’t telling its viewers, “Hey, the stock market is going up again today.” But when Trump became president, it started featuring the stock market, as if it just appeared out of thin air with him. 

Then it continued to spread disinformation about the economy again under Biden. It was fueling anxiety that was already there—we went through this global pandemic. But the economy in the U.S. was recovering at a rate far exceeding other countries. Yet that was never the conversation on Fox. It wanted to ply its audience with lies and fear, and reinforce a notion of a failed economy when the evidence is to the contrary. 

That's not to say Wall Street is the measure of all things. Wall Street is one perspective–a distorted perspective–and price inflation has gone up. But the president is not responsible for price inflation. And yet Fox let Trump get away with claiming he was going to fix inflation by these grocery mega corporations. Which the president can't fix. Of course, after he won, he says, “Oh yeah, that's really complicated. I can't do it.”

So, Fox is a propaganda outlet. MSNBC is not a propaganda outlet, it is an antidote to that propaganda. And it's a well-needed antidote, because the other major news stations in their primary coverage–ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS–are responding to Trump in a way that, in general, normalizes him. “He said this thing today” as if it's not crazy. “He asserted this thing” as if it's true. Without having that televised antidote to Fox, we're in worse shape.

Angie 

News silos are a given. People pick their preferred sources and that's what they consume. That’s subject to false equivalency, too–we see that isolation more on the right than on the left.* Can your hard research on dark money reach people not intrinsically inclined to look outside their bubbles? Is the onus on you to expand into areas where people only trust isolated information streams? 

Lisa

I think there are a couple of different ways to answer that question. Some people addicted to Fox are unreachable, like addicts who are only going to change when they decide they want to change.

Facts cannot penetrate that level of cognitive dissonance when they have been so addled by this mass of surround-sound propaganda. But, it's also the case that some people are not as addicted. They tune in because they're watching football—and then Fox (News), when Fox has the football contract. So it's a seamless sort of thing.

I've thought about this a lot: how do you reach that audience? And one of my efforts for 2025, 2026 and beyond is to identify new ways to reach some of these counties and towns. Bring them information about the corruption that this dark money scheme at the Supreme Court and elsewhere is grossly distorting our public policy, how that affects our rights, how that affects our opportunities.

So there are a lot of challenges. I want to make sure that people learn about what's really happening with the economy, what's really happening in terms of our freedoms, what's really happening in how these institutions are distorted by Trump and these dark money groups.

I'm going to focus on 30 to 40 counties in the U.S. to really try to drive the research I do and the stories I help with into those communities using a variety of means—reaching out to the existing media there, including campus media, but also to influencers or community activists, as ways to share information. 

It would be easy to be cynical in my position, given all the dark money that I see, and all the maneuvering by Leonard Leo, and the capture of the Supreme Court, and more. But in reality, people hate corruption. They hate it on a trans-partisan basis. When the story broke about Clarence Thomas's corruption, people got it: it was not okay for a Supreme Court justice to be taking secret gifts and be flying on the plane and going on the yacht of a billionaire. Public opinion of the court, as a result of those revelations and the court’s extreme decisions–including overturning Roe v. Wade–has shown in polling across the board that people don’t have confidence in this Supreme Court. And they shouldn't, because the Roberts Court is surrounded by this cloud of corruption. It has abused its power. 

So those stories penetrated. They made it into the zeitgeist. Corruption isn't a complex story to tell. It's pretty clear when you can show those dots. But reaching people is the first part. The second part is to not have people think there's nothing you can do about it. The challenge is trying to light a path forward. Highlight the good work of allies and organizers who are not giving in and want to see reform. I not only have an obligation to make that outreach, it's vital for our civic life, for the health of our democracy, to break through some of those silos by really targeted efforts in those communities.

Angie

How are you picking those counties? 

Lisa

I looked at counties that have changed their politics over the last two to ten years, where people seem receptive to change. This county may have moved more Democratic, or this county may have moved more liberal or Republican, where it’s not seventy-five percent one way or the other way, but some indicator people may be open to like solutions or ideas that aren't just doctrinaire. 

Angie

I want to talk about the whole concept of dark money, because so much is happening out in the open now. What we just saw with Facebook: one of the world's gazillionaires made it very clear, I'm going to move my staff to a place where the mentality is different - it's okay to say gay people are mentally ill. I'm going to get out of California where there's too much constriction. Then we have what's happening with Bezos and the others. So I wonder if the concept of dark money is changing, because money’s influence is in broad daylight.

Lisa

That’s one of the challenges. Musk, the richest man in the world, helped to buy this presidency, spending an unprecedented amount of money. So it is more visible in some ways.

But celebritization has had this other impact on U.S. society. Like “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in the 1980s—it was such a weird show. People were tuning in to see how these rich people lived. Then we had this whole boom of the Kardashians—this attraction to this celebrity lifestyle. Then social media changed that as well. So I think people have not yet come to grips with the destruction Elon Musk is unleashing just stupidly. He doesn't have a grounding in how civil servants work. He just has this “wrecking ball of destruction” agenda—and it is hurting people. If his plans are implemented—on social security and other things–they’re going to devastate people.

People will be very receptive to knowing exactly who to blame—and why to blame them—for harming their economic interests. Whether that's Trump putting Musk in charge or Musk himself. People who were just not paying close attention because “oh, he's this super rich guy and he has rockets and Tesla so maybe he knows what he's doing,” this generic blind faith in the power of a guy who's bought stuff other people made having good ideas, when he really just has a lot of money—that gets him a lot of people around him who say “yes.” They never say “no” because they'll be fired or lose access to the private jets. 

People are going to have a real reckoning in the months to come about the destruction by these tech bros who actually don't care about ordinary people's lives, using their money to get power or government contracts. We're seeing in real time a parade of terrible ideas backed by dark money. 

The lemonade of it is, we'll have more opportunity than ever before to reveal just how atrocious public policy is when you let dark money fiends—unqualified, unelected billionaires—have power over policies that affect our lives, our schools, our retirement. It is folly. I am here to help tell the story of that folly. 

Angie

I want to talk about the dangers of covering that. I interviewed Jane Mayer about her book “Dark Money.” What was striking about that was that she was literally followed, by people presumably connected to the Kochs because she was covering them. Dark cars in the dark of night. That's scary stuff. Do you find risks in the work you do? How do journalists gird themselves against personal danger?

Lisa

Those are real risks. We know that from previous investigation into the Kochs detailed in her book, that the Koch operation was following the FBI when the FBI was investigating Koch Industries!

If Charles Koch or his henchmen are willing to follow the FBI, that's something they could well deploy against journalists. Some of these multinationals have terrible track records in foreign countries in treatment of protesters who oppose a pipeline or a particular policy or a plant emitting toxins, or what have you. There are real dangers for journalists around the world; the U.S. is facing unprecedented dangers from people who don't want the truth reported. That’s the reality. Trump has made it more real through his hostility toward journalists, his attacks on them, and this ridiculous anti-First Amendment, anti-Constitutional notion that reporters are the enemies within. That's some real un-American nonsense.

The reality is that people who have the capacity, the ability to stand up to that must stand up to it. And we cannot live our lives in fear. We can't let them chill us. We can't let them shut us down through this or that threat or the specter of being followed. We have to perceive this moment in our history as a moment that builds on other moments. We have to be in this moment and do whatever we can to help protect people's interests and people's rights.

At the end of the day, we have to be like seeds. If a flower is shaken down the seeds spread. People will rise up from those seeds of truth to continue the fight forward.

Angie

You mentioned nonprofit journalism. Everyone I've talked to for this series has, too. How does it fulfill its role moving forward? 

Lisa

I think, for example, ProPublica's reporting has been excellent, but I could name a lot of nonprofit outlets that are doing a great job shining a light. The difference is that they're not owned by a billionaire like Jeff Bezos, who apparently has such dreams from of his childhood of rocket ships that he's willing to kiss up to Trump, and block a legitimate editorial against Trump being president. As his own paper documented, Trump lied more than 30,000 times in the course of four years—he’s a fundamental threat to our democracy and freedoms.

But Bezos–you'd think that a guy who's one of the richest guys in the world would have the courage to stand up to a guy who's been bankrupt many times due to his being such a terrible businessman. He can't even make money as the owner of a casino in New Jersey. Good Lord, anyone could make money as the casino. But not Trump. So you think that billionaire Bezos would have the courage to stand up to him. Instead he seems determined to turn the Post into a right wing rag led by a guy right out of the Murdoch machine.

We were counting on the Washington Post to continue to play a vital role in covering Trump, but now we can't. They weren't the only game in town, obviously. There was tremendous reporting by independent outlets–nonprofit news centers, nonprofit investigators funded by or tied to nonprofits. Now we need that investment even more. Because we can see it’s folly to rely on billionaire-owned corporations. 

I would have liked to see the type of interplay between nonprofit and for-profit journalism we saw from 2017 to 2023. It was a really healthy environment—having reporters from different sectors honing in on what was happening and telling the truth about it.

We're not going to be able to count on the for-profit media playing that role it did in the prior Trump administration, but is clearly receding now. 

Angie

How about funding nonprofit journalists? Your research has depended on nonprofit in the past.

Lisa

There are some gigantic nonprofits, some nearly billion-dollar nonprofits like the one Leonard Leo was given by the billionaire Barry Sye to extend the capture of the Supreme Court into other parts of our society. But a lot of the funders that fund nonprofit journalism are smaller foundations. They're not helmed by the billion-dollar fortune of a previous industrialist, or anti-labor industrialist like the Bradley Foundation. So it's a challenging environment. Those foundations are being asked by a lot of organizations for help to support investigative reporting.

There’s a need to deal with these raids that Trump is pursuing, targeting immigrants and immigrant-rights groups, trying to protect American citizens—born here—from being unilaterally declared non-citizens. It’s an absurd and obscene effort to rewrite the 14th Amendment.

Some of the same foundations funding journalism are also asked to fund legal services; litigation to defend people's rights. They’re called on by a lot of different groups to support that work. It’s a challenge for funders—how do they assess the importance of journalism telling the story versus litigating X or Y or Z. But I think it shouldn't be viewed as “versus”. It's all part of that common defense of our freedoms and our opportunities. 

Angie

Let me ask you to speak directly to fledgling investigative reporters. It’s a very different world to step into now than it was, say, 20 years ago. Any advice for them? 

Lisa

First, there's a new newsletter called “Reporting,” that one of my colleagues has started distributing to new reporters across the country, and to college students.

University newspapers are a good place to start. Reporting Right provides tools for covering the right-wing propaganda machine and the dark money machine. It shares stories for reporters targeting people in their own silos, who aren’t seeing what's happening in other states. I definitely would recommend people to sign up.

The other part of the story for journalists is, we need you now more than ever. We need the truth tellers. More than ever, we need people who can use their platforms to get the truth out about how these policies affect people's lives–what the source of those policies are, who's making that happen, which billionaires fueling that attack on Social Security. 

I know a lot of the universities over the last 30 years have moved their journalism schools into communications, training people in PR as well as journalism. They're like a combo thing, and there are a lot of jobs in PR, maybe more than there are in journalism these days. But journalism is an honorable, deeply necessary profession. It's one of the only professions actually protected and exalted by the Constitution and the First Amendment.

We're entering this new chapter where we have a leader in the U.S. who is overtly authoritarian, supported by a political party that has lost its moorings. It’s fully engaged in propping up Trump’s uncheckable power. That's when the world needs to change. Journalists to help bear witness to what's happening, help explain what's happening.

And it's really important for journalists to not just highlight over and over again why someone believes Trump. Highlight the people organizing in opposition to this authoritarianism. At one point CNN had embedded a reporter on a bus tour by Americans for Prosperity, Charles Koch's group in Wisconsin. It stopped at towns in Wisconsin–six people would show up. I remember vividly the person at CNN in Atlanta asking the embedded reporter how many people are showing up. The guy said, you know–a few people.

And I just thought, man, if you had a reporter embedded every time six progressives stand up or six concerned centrists stand up, you'd have wall to wall coverage of amazing organizing happening around all sorts of issues in every town, every city, every county in the country, because there are a lot of people who are organizing, librarians organizing, nurses, teachers, doctors. All sorts of people want our world to be a better place.

In fact, nearly 75 million people didn't vote for this authoritarianism. That's a lot of people out there who are not on board for this. A significant number of them are organizing to protect their communities, their families—to protect our freedoms. We need burgeoning coverage day in, day out, week in, week out on that fabulous, amazing resilience of people to organize against authoritarian impulses. Not just in the US, but around the world. Not, “why is your uncle still watching Fox all the time?” But the coverage of people doing something to make our world a better place. There's so much that could be covered that would inspire more action, more courage, more resistance. And beyond this, more envisioning of the world that we can create together

Angie

Last thoughts? 

Lisa

Now is not the time to give up. It's the time to double down. Get some 

rest, but don’t give in, don’t give up, stand up. It can be scary. It's challenging. But it's vital. For me–I keep near me a little note that says, “Worry never made anything for the better, but action has”. It's easy to be consumed with worry. But worry is a thief. Worry robs you of the present moment, of joy in the present moment, and it can rob you of your capacity to take action in the present moment. And all we have is a series of present moments.