While I appreciate that this article must be brought into existence, I certainly wish the title CNN had assigned it had better reflected the substance of the article. The title CNN assigned it?
Senator purchased stock in defense contractor after pushing for more military spending
The content of the article?
Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, purchased thousands of dollars in defense stock after successfully pushing the Trump administration for more Defense Department spending.
Sounds terrible enough. But wait, there’s more!
Inhofe’s communications director Leacy Burke told CNN in a statement that “the senator was not aware of this stock purchase until it came through the system very early this morning.”
“All of Sen. Inhofe’s financial transactions are handled by a third-party adviser,” Burke said. “The senator has had no involvement in and has not been consulted about his stock transactions.”
Burke said that Inhofe told his financial adviser to reverse the transaction once he was aware.
To my sleep-sodden brain this is a reasonable scenario, a financial advisor not quite understanding how this all works. The Senator reversed the transaction immediately.
It’s important that these articles be published as a warning to ethically challenged members of Congress, but I have to deplore the title.
It is worth exploring why Inhofe is even aware of the stock purchase at all, since it’s within the realm of possibility that a committee chairman, given knowledge about the activities of his financial advisor, could manipulate government business to his own benefit.
Now, if there’d been a mention of the FBI investigating the Senator for corruption, the title’d make sense. But, so far as I can see, he’s just a Republican Senator who has a notorious connection to the climate denialists. I doubt he’ll be spoken well of in future history books because of that, and his membership in the current Congressional class.
But it’s no reason to use a misleading title on this article.
