Right up front I want to explain why I’m writing this diary. It isn’t to defend or decry Elon Musk for donating to a GOP PAC. He did that, and it’s between you and him whether or not you’re okay with it. I’m writing this diary to provide some much-needed clarification in the face of some pretty blatant muckraking.
He we go!
Yesterday, The Daily Beast (TDB) got their hands on a scoop when they reported on Musk’s GOP donation. As Musk is a major defender of science and ecology, him being a “top” donor to anything GOP-related could be considered newsworthy. In their report, Elon Musk Unmasked as Top Donor to House Republican PAC, TDB said that Musk “has been revealed as a top donor to a Republican PAC”, “in the PAC’s top 50 donors”, and that he “contributed $38,900”.
Of those three statements, only one is fully true.
First up, it should be said that “has been revealed as a top donor to a Republican PAC” is a seriously misleading statement that I’m happy to call false. FEC filings are public record, and this isn’t the first year where Musk donated to this PAC. Anyone concerned about how Musk spreads his money could have looked the information up for themselves. It was never hidden. In truth, Musk has donated regularly to both parties (under $100k total each year), and his donations to eco and tech seriously overshadow (by $millions) any fiscal involvement he has in government lobbying, and that’s as a private businessman vying for government contracts at the state and federal level. According to Musk himself, the PAC donation is “about 0.5%” of what he gave to the Sierra Club and it was done to ensure “they are willing to listen when I call” (they are the House majority). Besides all that, if you bother to actually check the numbers yourself, you’ll see that Musk isn’t even someone you really can call a “top donor”.
Musk does appear “in the PAC’s top 50 donors”, so that’s the one statement that’s true, but TDB failed to note that he ranks no.49 on a very, very long list of donors. In their article, they also compared him directly to donors no.1 and no.2, “casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair”, who each donated $371,500, or nearly 11x the amount donated by Musk (each guy!). Then they also failed to provide a direct link to their source (here’s one to ProPublica) in the article, even though they provided a link (here that is) to an Open Secrets page that only shows Musk’s political donations (not any other donors to the PAC or anything else to which Musk donates).
Next false statement, Musk didn’t donate $38,900. That was the donor listed above him at ProPublica. The top 30 donors to the PAC each donated $100,000 or more. Musk donated $33,900. Both Open Secrets and ProPublica got that number right. The +$5000 error originated with TDB. That amount may not seem like much, but (since other news sources are using TDB, not ProPublica, as their source) now Salon, Newsweek, and Bloomberg (to name three) have all posted articles with headers claiming that Musk gave “almost $40,000” to the PAC. So, thanks to rounding up for a tidy headline, that +$5000 error grew to +$6,100 in one day!
Now, to be fair, TDB isn’t alone in making numerical gaffes on this story. Here’s what Newsweek wrote in their article: “He said his donations to Republicans are about 5 percent of what he gives to environmental organization the Sierra Club, and that he would pay more attention in future to the amount donated in his name.” He didn’t say that. He said his GOP donations were about 0.5% of what he gave the Sierra Club.
So, what to do?
When reading news in these fast-paced and under-edited times, please do it with a eye for information rather than emotion. If something sounds like it might not be the whole story, or even true, and you care at all about the subject, take the time to do a bit of fact checking. You may see a whole different side of a story if you do.