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Dan Kennedy has a great post wondering why journalists won’t follow the money when it comes to checking up on industry-funded interest groups. In general, “follow the money” arguments aren’t always quite as conclusive as many writers seem to think they are—a given politician, for instance, might be receiving industry money because he or she genuinely believes in X pro-industry position, rather than the reverse—but when a newspaper quotes some group as praising Wal-Mart, and that group happens to be funded by a financial arm of Wal-Mart, um, that seems rather important to note.
