The Right is Where the Money Is

The Department of Justice charged two employees of the Russian state TV channel RT with illegally pouring nearly $10 million into a Tennessee company, Tenet Media .

The company, founded by now-former Blaze TV personality Lauren Chen and her husband, had six right-wing YouTubers on its payroll.

Frida Ghitis : It's unnerving that a revanchist, imperialist regime like Vladimir Putin’s has the ability to so effortlessly con U.S. media figures.

The right is swimming in a Scrooge McDuck money pit that is simply inconceivable to those of us on the left, says Julian Zelizer .

Zelizer: Conservative commentators who slurped up this Russian cash may have thought that receiving that amount of money was normal.

He says right-wing media is able to spend millions of dollars a year to plaster high-traffic sites with ads.

Frida Ghitis: Right-wing media outlets would not exist if they did not provide value for the billionaires that fund them.

She says when a fundamental part of your philosophy is that billionaires shouldn’t exist, billionaires won't be eager to give you money.

Ghitis says the profit motive has hollowed out journalism and media back into the realm of public service without relying on shadowy donors.