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‘See how this works?’: Trump drops cases against corporations that funded his inauguration
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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I think your points are well made, but there is another possibility to consider, and that is deliberate language choice for effect. They certainly could have simply called it a bribe, and that would be true enough, but in my opinion lacks 'punch'. We're so used to that sort of behaviour that many people would pretty much just go "yup, that's expected" and move on. By deliberately, and somewhat archly, using understatement, the reader goes "Buying good will?? That's not buying good will, that's bribery! Buying good will shouldn't even be a thing!" thus neatly bypassing the first level of cynasism that a simpler statement would run in to.
I'm not going to say that us definitely what happened here, but looks quite deliberate to me. Language can be weaponised in many different ways, for different causes.
Journalists and news outlets should strive to be as neutral as possible by only presenting the verifiable facts and painting the picture for the reader/viewer. Good journalism should not make assumptions, speculate, inject opinions, or tell you how to feel about something. Use of loaded words or phrasing meant to evoke an emotional response should generally be avoided.
There is no proof these are bribes (though, yes, it's pretty obvious to anyone with common sense what they are). CommonDreams is rated to have a "Left" bias, so it's pretty safe to assume "buying goodwill" was the safest, most precise phrasing they thought they could use given the facts of the matter.
What you're describing / seemingly demanding is colloquially called "a rag": a biased news source that tells you what you want to hear whether all the facts are there or not.
Whist I would very much like a news source that just presents the unbiased facts, no such thing can exist as all of what we consume is mediated by humans, from story selection, to information gathering, to how that information is filtered, presented and finally how the reader processes it.
Even choosing to use the word 'bribe', the phrase 'buying goodwill' or just calling them 'donations' would be an editorial decision that would influence the reader. Depending on the reader each of those phrases would inspire different opinions. A reader who is more disposed to being positive about this administration may find 'buying goodwill' to be just about tolerable journalism, 'bribe' to be outragious slander and 'donation' perfectly reasonable and accurate. A more left reader would probably consider 'donation' to be unacceptable whitewashing, 'buying goodwill' to be euphamistic, and 'bribe' to fit their world view best. Therevis no phrasing that would avoid an emotional response, so either this can't be reported, or the publication chooses to do so in line with their own biases.
There is also a constant tension between presenting just the bare facts of the current matter, and contextualising them for the reader, who may not be fully versed on the matter. How that contextualisation is done is also going to affect the reader's perception.
There is, however, a very large difference between the presenting the information with some bias, and "a biased news source that tells you what you want to hear whether all the facts are there or not." I would agree with you that the latter is a "rag", though I would classify it that way for the willingness to draw a conclusion unsupported by fact, rather than necesarily for having bias. All sources, even your own senses, will give you a biased view of events. The critical thing is to acknowledge that and understand the bias you're being presented with. Trying to make sure you consume sources with a variety of different biases is a good way to try to balance that, though I personally find it hard to stomach anything further than moderately right of my personal views anymore.