Just when you thought dominant establishment “journalism” couldn’t sink any lower, the floor of the muck-filled Swamp drops another 100 feet. It looks like a prominent DC insider media outlet has been openly selling pay-for-play access to big advertisers. Meanwhile, the larger “news site” it broke away from has entered into a sponsorship deal with abortion retail giant Planned Parenthood, an organization on which it regularly reports.
Don your hazmat suit and follow the corruption. It seems to lead directly to the canned Jan. 6 political theater that resulted in hundreds of American citizens being imprisoned on questionable charges.
“Breaking Points got a hold of a leaked pitch deck [a short presentation that outlines a business idea to potential partners] from Punchbowl News. The document reveals how [the site] allow[s] corporations to buy influence over editorial decisions,” conservative journalist Emily Jashinsky, host of the BP podcast, reported May 9.
‘Editorial Features’ for Purchase
“Here’s some amusing language from the deck: Sponsors can buy ‘editorial features exploring different areas of a mutually agreed upon topic’ and a podcast series,” Jashinsky noted. Social events starting at $100,000 that provide access to “Washington’s elite insiders” are also available, the pitch doc proclaims.
Punchbowl News has been charging the princely sum of $210,000 for sponsorship of its main daily newsletter. There has been no shortage of takers.
“Throughout the deck, Punchbowl highlights its previous partnerships with [powerhouse global firms] McKinsey, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs,” Jashinsky declared in a video exposé that is worth a full watch. “One slide ... has the logos of 37 major corporate, quote, ‘partners,’ from massive pharmaceutical companies to defense contractors to oil and gas heavyweights.”
When called out on this, Punchbowl chose the path of denial. The pitch deck is “an outdated price sheet that no longer reflects accurate data about Punchbowl News,” the site told Breaking Points. But is that true?
“So the deck that we got our hands on touts a quote from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on March 11 saying he reads all of Punchbowl’s newsletters, indicating that the deck is recent to at least the spring. And actually, we verified that Punchbowl was passing the deck along just within the last week,” Jashinsky stated. That would be early May.
Punchbowl News was founded in January 2021 (interesting timeline) when three key “journalists,” formerly of the well-known DC media site, Politico, departed to form their own venture. Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer had co-authored Playbook, Politico’s signature newsletter, while John Bresnahan had served as the outlet’s Capitol Hill reporter.
February’s Rage Is April’s Shrug of the Shoulders
As Liberty Nation News has documented, Politico routinely sells sponsorships of its various “journalism” offerings. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has been a paid sponsor of its Global Insider newsletter. The outlet became a cause célèbre among opponents of President Donald Trump in February when his administration canceled lucrative federal department subscription deals made with Politico under Joe Biden’s presidency.
It's a war on impartial, independent journalism, exclaimed outraged media types and appalled Democratic politicians. Oh, was it now? Fast forward a couple of months.
“For the past two days, Politico’s flagship newsletter has been sponsored by Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider and a supporter of Democratic candidates up and down the ballot,” Mediaite reported April 29.
“Inside and at the end of the newsletter, there are graphics for the controversial organization that read ‘Everyone Should Have The Power to Control Their Own Body and Future’ and ‘I’m For Planned Parenthood.’”
Not only is Mediaite late to the party (our LNN article was published more than two years ago), it refused to fully spell out the journalistic repercussions inherent in a direct media partnership with Planned Parenthood.
On Dec. 17, 2024, the abortion behemoth issued a press release solely featuring a Politico “news” article on the supposed catastrophe that would ensue should the federal government stop subsidizing PP. Nowhere, of course, was any financial relationship with Politico disclosed.
“Yesterday, POLITICO Nightly published a critical article that reinforced efforts to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood would wreak havoc on our public health care system and would cost the government $130 million, according to a 2015 CBO calculation,” the release read. “This comes as the leaders of the incoming Trump administration’s new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) threatens [sic] to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood.”
This is how pathetic brand-name journalism in America has become today.
But wait, there’s more. For not only is Politico alum and Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman enmeshed in compromise via his news peddler candy store, he also served as a supporting character in one of the Swamp’s cornerstone fables of the Trump era.
Media Participant in a Political Passion Play
On Dec. 14, 2021, Sherman “outed” himself as the source of text messages sent to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as the US Capitol was being “attacked” by the so-called insurrectionists of Jan. 6. Sherman did so after Jan. 6 House Committee Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (then a representative of Wyoming) read the texts aloud in an attempt to utilize them as evidence against the Trump administration.
“Here they are from my phone. Anyway, I’m sure it will come out that this was me. Seems impossible that it will stay a secret. So out of transparency, here it is,” Sherman wrote in a Twitter post. “I got no response, for what it is worth. And that’s the end of the conversation.” Sherman’s perfectly timed texts to Meadows were meant to illustrate that the Trump White House was aware that a violent assault on the US Capitol was taking place and refused to do anything about it.
“Do something for us,” “we are under siege in the [Capitol],” “there’s an armed standoff at the House chamber door,” and “we’re all helpless,” the messages read.
It sounded like the hysterical stuff of old B movies, yet Cheney and her cohorts believed Americans would accept this as an eyewitness account of an assault on democracy from an on-the-spot journalist. Sherman wholeheartedly endorsed the DC establishment storyline on Jan. 6. “[Cheney] and Adam Kinzinger are the two Republicans on this [House] committee who are willing to talk about January 6 or investigate January 6 in a truthful matter,” he told PBS in January 2022. “This needs to be documented for history. People need to be held responsible for what happened on January 6th.”
Tragically, hundreds of innocent Americans were. “It’s the largest prosecution in Justice Department history,” the Associated Press wrote on Jan. 6, 2025. “More than 1,000 rioters have already been sentenced, with over 700 receiving at least some time behind bars.” The high price of DC corruption isn’t measured only in financial terms, and the leftist media outlets that egged them on are complicit in what many believe is a travesty of justice. Meanwhile, these so-called journalists advertise that they are for sale – if the price is right.
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