Tom delay money laundering trial begins in texas . (2010, November 1).
Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11671062
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Tom Delay went on trial today in Texas for money laundering while he was in office. Delay has been accused of funneling money into the legislative races in Texas during the 2002 elections. It is said that Delay collected money in the realm of 190,000 dollars to send to candidates he favored in the elections by sending money through a group he started into the Republican National Committee in order to get the money to the candidates. The problem is that in Texas it is illegal for candidates to receive corporate donations. Tom Delay currently denies any wrongdoing and also denies any wrongdoing whatsoever. If he is convicted, the maximum penalty is life in prison. I found this article to be quite interesting and useful for the blog post.
A term that we discussed earlier in the semester that I believe applies to this article is the idea of free media. Free media is the idea that no matter what the media does, it is giving free promotion and publicity. This goes off of the idea that no publicity is bad publicity. This article about Tom Delay fits this term perfectly in my opinion. Yes, it is quite a negative article for Tom Delay to have out about him, but he is currently out of the actual political realm and could use any bit of publicity he could get, because it wouldn't be surprising if he still had ambitions of getting into politics.
I enjoyed this article as well and it made me think of journalists as being watchdogs. As the article says, Tom Delay is not currently in the political world but that doesnt stop journalists from pikcing up juicy stories for the public. He is suspected of doing something wrong and this journalist 'barked' to alert the public to issues of concern. As jcoy1622 brought up, this article is also a good example of free media although I'm sure Tom would disagree. Even though he may be happy his name is back, he wont be happy when the trial begins and comes to a sad end for him!
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