"Mr. Lee has been accused of letting money influence his views on the subject. The Google Transparency Project, a nonprofit that tracks the tech giant’s connections to government, recently raised questions about whether he was influenced by donations from Google and its allies."
On November 5, 2019, CfA sent letters to Estée Lauder informing the company of an employee’s inappropriate use of the company’s name in her role as the board chair of Obria Medical Clinics of Southern California, an anti-choice religious ministry masquerading as a healthcare group, and requesting that the company discipline the employee accordingly.
"The complaint was filed by Dan Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, with the Florida Commission on Ethics. It cited property records, court filings and other documents to show Plakon bought and sold several properties in Seminole, Lake and Volusia counties that never showed up on his annual financial disclosure forms."
On November 4, 2019, CfA called on the Florida Commission on Ethics to investigate whether Florida State Representative David Scott Plakon violated the Florida Constitution and state ethics laws by failing to properly disclose information about his myriad business interests on his personal financial disclosure forms.
"A recent report from the Google Transparency Project highlighted how an opaque patronage system can capture a wide range of journalism resources at a relatively low cost."
"The Google Transparency Project collected all the available information on 16 different Google programs and related organizations to fund journalism. The report reveals that Google and related entities have committed between $567 million and $569 million to support at least 1,157 projects around the globe."
"The report, written by researchers at the Campaign for Accountability’s Google Transparency Project, shows a spike in funding in Europe when Google was under pressure in the mid- to late-2010s, and a subsequent uptick in the US amid a backlash that’s led to a Department of Justice investigation and calls for its breakup."
On October 9, 2019, CfA released a new report, Google’s Media Takeover, which documents how Google contributed more than half a billion dollars to news and media organizations around the world. In conjunction with the report, CfA also released a comprehensive database that contains information about each of the 1,327 grants Google gave to journalism initiatives. CfA’s report and database represent the most comprehensive effort to catalogue all of Google’s payments to media organizations.
"The Campaign for Accountability said Tuesday that it had filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) arguing that the robotexts were 'annoying ... dishonest and illegal.'"
On October 8, 2019, CfA called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate the conservative legal advocacy nonprofit Judicial Crisis Network for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by sending mass robotexts from a misleading number during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.