NewsLab

I’ll start off by being completely honest.  I knew little to nothing about the Tea Party, what it stood for, or who was a part of it; before reading the article anyway. I had done zero research, and had only heard of it because of little blurbs on the news. 
 
But then again, why should I be completely honest about anything. I mean, after reading the Jane Mayer article, “Covert Operations,” I realize that politicians and their supporters are either dishonest about things, lie by omission, or use “specific” words to get around the actual truth. 

If the leaders and moneymakers of our countries are dishonest, why should an “Average Joe” like me have any reason to be?  Well, no matter. I feel that it is we average, middle-class citizens that keep our country running anyway.
 
After reading the article, I learned a lot about the so-called “Grassroots” campaign and the Tea Party Movement. I learned about all of the foundations that the Koch family heads, and how much funding and support they give (or don’t give… wait, they do. Maybe they don’t.) to the TPM. 

It was also good to understand everything that Kochs were involved in and how much money they had floating around. I learned that this money floating around seemed to float to the TPM and that the Kochs are very involved in the TPM. 

A lot of the article was confusing to me. It took a little bit of explaining and discussion for me to grasp what it was about, but the more important thing (to me anyway) was the solid base that it set for the article I wrote.
 
The article I wrote was about the “Grassroots” campaign, and how the TPM was all natural, and not funded by large corporations, such as those headed by Koch’s. 
 
I focused mostly on Americans for Prosperity, a Koch Foundation. The Kochs denied any funding “specifically” to the TPM.  However, in my research, I dug a little beyond the surface of that statement and found out that the word “specifically” meant “directly.
 
I found that the Kochs do fund the TPM in indirect ways. They donate money to events that support/fund the TPM, fund organizations that have TPM representatives (door to door campaigners and such), and that they fund anti-Democrat advertisements. 
 
In my article, I used specific examples of funding from AFP to exploit the fact that Koch’s claim was only a partial truth. 

The main goal of my story was to show that the “Grassroots” campaign is not all natural, and is not grassroots at all.  Rather, it receives funding from large corporations and foundations in an indirect manner.