After listening to William March I have decided that I would not be suited to be a political reporter. Although finding out about the spending in political parties is interesting I’m not sure I would want to do it.
The most interesting aspect of March’s presentation was that people have found ways to beat the system on contributing to political parties. So how it works is that the max limit for a U.S. citizen is one thousand dollars. What a person might do, such as the person March talked about, is have people who work for their company donates to the party with their money. This is the part that is illegal.
March walked us through some websites that allowed him to research the donations to the Clinton party in 1996. By using this website he was able to find that Mark Jimenez had contributed around three hundred thousand dollars to the Clinton administration. By using the website for Florida Corporate records, sunbiz.org, March was able to connect Jimenez’s company and his employers to donating rough five hundred thousand dollars to the Clinton administration.
Being able to have this type of public record is crucial for a political reporter. Without this information March would not have been able to connect the dots. This is the part of political reporting that I find most interesting.
I always love a good scandal and the Jimenez case was exactly that. March was able to present hard evidence against the employees of Jimenez’s company. Some of the employees had not even voted since they registered. Many of them were even republicans which throws a red flag instantly. All of the evidence was gathered together and made into a story and ended up ruining Jimenez’s company and ultimately forcing Jimenez to serve jail time and pay fines.
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