it looks like money might not be able to buy love after all it's been over a week now and the anti u.s. protests are still playing up cross the middle east all this while the american government continues to funnel money into the region i had a critical look at the cash flow. we will want to see that candidate whom we can trust will just inherently instinctively turn right always err on the side of conservatism but the age old question of the media's influence over politics might have finally been solved at least in the case of fox news coming up we'll tell you

about a new study that accuses the cable giant of pushing conservatives even farther to the right. and put down that corn cob turns out that genetically modified corn is causing massive tumors in rats so before you munch down on your daily dose of vegetables stick around for this report. it's thursday september twentieth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. well as anti-american protests persist in the middle east some lawmakers are asking a critical question is it time to slash funding for aid overseas maybe we should first ask why exactly do we give aid according to usa id quote we provide economic development and humanitarian assistance in support of the foreign policy goals of the united states well some say the recent protests as evidence the u.s.

has fallen short of those goals now senator rand paul is raising this question in congress. we need to have a debate in our country about whether we should send u.s. taxpayer money to countries that cannot or will not protect our embassies and i personally think that until we can be assured that they can protect our embassies and we will we shouldn't send him another penny he wants lawmakers to vote on a measure that would cut aid to pakistan egypt and libya. these are countries where we've seen some of the most brutal anti-american protests probably not the foreign policy goals usa he had in mind but beyond the nation cited in paul's bill the u.s. provides aids and several other countries that have also seen anti-american protests meanwhile the the u.s. doled out makes a makes up a significant part of their budget let's take

a look afghanistan the u.s. gave two point three two billion dollars and foreign aid to the country in two thousand and twelve afghanistan's budget is estimated by the cia to be at three point three billion dollars in other words we provided over seventy percent of their budget other countries provide less stark but still notable examples of u.s. aid influence take pakistan for example the country got over two billion dollars of aid from the us their total budget is thirty nine point nine billion dollars so the u.s. contributed over five percent kenya six hundred twenty five million seven point four five percent of its eight point four billion dollars an expert enters and ethiopia got five hundred eighty million dollars so they can thank the u.s. for almost ten percent of their five point nine billion dollars budget so we want to ask the question should americans keep funding countries abroad that are biting the hand that feeds them. we turn now to the fact that members of

congress seem to be affected by media bias this is confirmed by a study that came out recently by vanderbilt university that takes a look at how the following coverage has influenced lawmakers there's a problem here where that's what obama does that's what the left does they don't want the wealthy the job creators they. play class warfare games all the time she thinks that iran is a serious threat he's been talking about this throughout the campaign right any time going to the ocean and that now doesn't mean that if you seriously you may not like the other guys that we're close to you but i don't know if i'm on your plane don't use or you're going to romney telling supporters that a large portion of the american population is dependent on government and most likely will not vote for him here's my question why is that controversial that's true. the study shows that the rise of fox news has polled members of congress to the right it takes a look at the political positions of congress after fox news came to their

districts fox launched in one thousand nine hundred six and this study takes a look at the stances of our elected leaders between that time and the year two thousand the study states quote representatives from districts where fox news begins broadcasting become slightly more conservative relative to similar representatives and other similar districts where fox news is not present given the distinctive ideological content of fox news the effect is predictably largest among the more liberal members so as the media becomes less objective and more biased how will that continue to impact the way lawmakers and and the american people the way that they think the discuss i'm joined now by r t correspondent christine for the christine nice to see you had to be here so now there is proof locke's is making its mark on the mindset of those we elect in congress should the american people be concerned well i mean i think it's a really interesting study and i think it brings about a whole lot of points and i think the results are not that surprising i spoke to

a bunch of lawmakers on capitol hill today about this study and let's look at a couple different aspects of it i think the most important thing to point out is you know there's a chicken or egg question here does national policy affect media coverage or does media coverage of fact national policy and i think that. changes on a case by case basis the bottom line is all media all cable networks affect viewers we know lives here at r.t. we sit down every morning and we decide what stories to cover that's what other networks do as well let's take for example the romney video that just came out ok so that romney video has been played over and over and over again on m s n b c which tend to have more left wing liberal hosts on their show they've played it a million times on every show that is their lead story every day. news on the other hand the fast and the furious the scandal involving the attorney general's office and the guns being found in mexico that has been their top story for quite

a bit so what happens is you have viewers who more and more only watch are either a fox viewer or m.s.n. b.c. viewer or you know sometimes especially during breaking news a c.n.n. viewer but people now don't watch the news to find out what's happening in many cases they watch it to find out rather to have their opinion reaffirms that so you have networks and again every network does set their agenda in terms of what stories they deem important and that affects the viewers ok so then the viewers then you know constituents they go to their congresspeople and that's what a lot of the lawmakers i spoke to said you know we listen to our constituents and what's important to our constituents is what's important to us so it's a really interesting argument the study is very interesting as you mentioned what it did is it went into districts where there was no fox news in the beginning of fox news and compared those districts where there was and the more people watching

them because remember these lawmakers they spent a lot of time here in washington so they're not necessarily at home watching television every night watching fox news channels but they are you know going back to. their communities to their districts they're hearing from people when they go back and what people want or find important definitely can impact them so i think the study is an important one and this study is kind of singles out fox news so can we presume that other networks that lean a different direction have similar impacts on the audience well that's the thing i mean fox news they measure this this point in time one thousand nine hundred six to two thousand because these were years where fox news was a rounded sort of you know was born but it wasn't born everywhere so it was very easy to study what was happening decisions being made on capitol hill in certain. districts where there was fox versus where there wasn't so i think it's safe to say that if you watch m s n b c all the time in

a similar way you may think certain things are important think certain things are outrageous but that's the thing is the study was done with fox because it you know remember even though its motto is fair and balanced you know when he who works there or who watches it doesn't think that it's a leaning conservative station i'm not breaking any ground here by mentioning that so it was i think these factors that made it very easy and very concrete to study the results so i think that's why all right and i know that you are on capitol hill today you asking lawmakers yourself thought about this i got some interesting responses so you know there's a big vote today and we sort of were hanging out outside of the house chamber and spoke to several lawmakers walking by managed to catch a bunch of republicans and you know i really got some mixed reactions people left in my pay phase people thought this idea was preposterous but let me show you a snippet of what a couple of them told me. it's absurd. you don't think there's an m

s n b c decides how democratic lawmakers will do more or less than any other news media newspapers and radio and all the other outlets that are out there they all have a role to play in providing information to voters and and then having voters contact their legislators on their positions on issues i do watch fox news but i take everything into consideration and that's not the only news outlet that i get information from you know i think i think very highly of fox in reporting that they're doing it generally it's very fair and balanced. one thing i've got to say liz i mean bigger than fox bigger than any network is this twenty four hour news cycle age that we're living in networks need to fill that time and certainly as we know sometimes they're filling it with the same story repeated over and over again . and so in that case things sort of get drilled into people's minds because there's so much time to fill issues that would have never been covered that would have never seemed important are now sort of explored more in depth now is that

a good thing is that a bad thing that's for anyone to judge something that's really interesting let's go back just two years let's go back to the two thousand and ten election as we saw quite a few republicans tea party members work their way into some races and got elected what was one of the issues that they got elected on one of the main issues that really upset voters what they call quote unquote obamacare the affordable care act now let's take a step back from the affordable care act how many people in the united states actually you know went to the hospital and realized the affordable care act had negatively impacted their lives well zero because it hadn't gone into effect there were a couple instances and when it went into effect and that was for you know people under the age of twenty five were able to stay on their parents' insurance people with preexisting conditions i think but the fact is it was the media and in particular fox news that talked over and over about obamacare but was it because

the tea party members were drilling this and making this an issue it was certainly getting people riled up remember we saw those town hall meetings people yelling especially at democratic lawmakers or democratic candidates how could you do this to us you know do what to us because the bottom line is and this is the story that i personally think went under reported and that is the affordable care act didn't negatively impact anyone but certainly all the media coverage and all these town hall meetings of people who frankly didn't really know what they were talking about . you know made some noise and had a good family was holding what is important to do that they should care and that's the thing a whole lot of the lawmakers really showed you if you would a whole lot of them said you know this is a chicken or egg question and it's hard to tell and let's remember our elected officials you know they're people too they go home they want the news they talk to their families their constituents their you know aunts and uncles and cousins and

they hear what everyone's talking about around the water cooler the deeper question is why are people talking about what they're talking about at the water going i do think the media has a role that according to this study fox news has played a role and they do have some concrete numbers here so it's an interesting study very interesting christine and thank you so much for telling us all about it and two legs getting the lawmakers over there in capitol hill to weigh in as well that was our to correspondent christine for that. well here's a story that will make your stomach turn a french study that was just released signed rats that are fed genetically engineered corn suffered from tumors and severe organ damage this is in the wake of a battle going down in california over big agribusiness as like monsanto and proponents of food labeling proposition thirty seven would require all food that contain genetically modified organisms or g.m.o. as of their better known to be labeled such a move could have a major impact on what food people buy in eat to discuss this and more it was joined by alexis baden mayer political director of the organic consumers

association has also part of the california right to know campaign that is fighting to label g.m.o. foods i first asked her if what happened to these rats could happen to humans. absolutely we're seeing a huge uptick in cancer among our population diet related diseases gastrointestinal disorders allergies among kids autism all of these things could be related to genetically modified foods the studies need to be done but is there any study connecting the ailments that you just listed specifically to g.m.o. well the study that came out yesterday is a very important one this is a first study that's looking at the effects on rats of eating too that if we modified foods over their lifetimes human beings in the united states are also part of the study the way the study was connected conducted they gave the rats the genetically modified corn they gave them the genetically modified corn with the herbicide that the corn is used with and they also gave the rats water that has

levels of the herbicide and that are the same as levels permissible in the united states to point out we are looking at the study exactly what has happened to these rats you can clearly see the use of fairly large tumors especially the comparison to the size of the rats so i mean and even though it hasn't been. that there aren't clear conclusive results in humans we can only presume that we would there would be a similar result in humans yet the rats had tumors in their memory plants we have a huge rate of breast cancer in this country why are we having a rate of cancer that subjecting about half of us to cancer in our lifetimes is probably because of our diet and very well may likely be related to genetically modified foods scary stuff there and this is all going down amid a battle in california over proposition thirty seven which would require labeling of g.m.o. food and those for or against or splurging on funding this measure i want to pull

up this chart here it shows the funding on both sides of those that want food labeling and you can see mostly health and organic food companies they raised three point eight million dollars but giant. agro corporations like monsanto bayer nestle and coca-cola they all spent. those against this measure drastically they raised over thirty two million dollars so i mean alexis to proposition thirty seven stand a chance when you're looking at huge spending on lobbying against it but we expect to be outspent about ten to one and we're not going to have the money that they'll have to put up a lot of television ads we're relying on the consumers who care about this issue to spread our television radio ads via e-mail via social networks to tell their friends to engage in our phone bank we're organizing a phone bank all around the country to call california voters so we need volunteers

and we need the small contributions to put out this campaign and give us up and give ourselves a chance but i think we're going to win nine out of ten people support labeling and so no matter what lies they hear even of the other side is able to drop that support significantly i still think that we can beat them so i hope everyone will get involved to help nine out of ten people support labeling i mean that's a huge majority there why is there such a fight against getting labeled on the food that we're putting into our bodies well as you mentioned it's all about money in a race like this the voters get to choose but politicians are a lot more susceptible i believe to the influence of large corporations when their campaigns depend on raising money from companies like monsanto so congress hasn't been able to stand up to months and to but i think the voters of california can now let's say this does pass and we do get labeling on our food what do you think the consequences of that be of that will be and how will that affect the types of food

we see in our grocery stores and ultimately what the american people eat. well we already see people choosing or janick whenever they can when it's available and when they can afford it so i think we'll continue to see organic grow as it already has but in europe a lot of the companies rather than labeling their food as containing phonetically modified ingredients chose to take those ingredients out that would be the best case scenario and i hope that the companies work with their consciences and want to serve say food to the public so let's say this does pass in california do you think that will have a ripple effect on other states absolutely california is the seventh largest economy in the world and ten percent of grocery stores are in california so i can't really imagine companies labeling things differently for the california market than they do for the rest of the country and lastly just want to ask you to put into context how widespread g.m.o. is are how can you describe when somebody goes to the grocery store and we're looking at aisle upon i love how much of those that food actually contains g.m.o.

about eighty percent of all processed foods contain genetically modified ingredients and that's according to the grocery manufacturers association and they're one of the the groups that is opposing our right to know about genetically modified foods so they admit that it's in there the difficulty is figuring out which ingredients but what i tell folks is if you have void the worst ingredients if you're avoiding trans fats high fructose corn syrup you're going to be cutting out to most of your diet but you know it's just overwhelming than that of products that contain these ingredients absolutely and this study just came out that shows that our i guess that proves or doesn't prove because of course when you buy organic it's more expensive and a study just came out that says that just because it's organic doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthier what do you think about that claim well an apple that's

raised organically and an apple that has pesticides sprayed on it is not surprising if you're again. well isn't a lot more nutritious for you is still just an apple but you're avoiding all of these toxins that are probably giving us cancer and creating a whole raft of diseases so wouldn't you still to the organic apple even if you weren't convinced that it might have more vitamins i mean pesticides and chemicals certainly don't seem doesn't sound healthy rather keep those that out of my body of possible alexis very interesting thank you so much for coming on the show that was alexis bate and mayor political director of the organic consumers association of the biggest names on the internet are joining forces to form ve lobby we're talking google facebook and amazon to name a few of the fourteen members the internet giants are banding together to form the internet association the lobby says it's focused on internet freedom so should americans have faith that they will do just that to discuss this i was joined by r.t. web producer andrew blake. really aren't too sure exactly how things are going to

happen we're going to speculate we're going to look at the records of the places involved to really see what's going to happen but it is simply a new thing there's not a lot of information out right now that's why i'm here that's that's where that's why we're glad to have you here do you think that this is a good thing for internet users i don't know it should be they're saying it's going to be the internet association is made up of fourteen different so far fourteen different groups that are pretty much a who's who of world wide web and i'm talking facebook google amazon e-bay a yahoo monster linked in pretty much every big name has some sort of input in this lobbying organization what they say is that they want to take their influence and they want to take it to capitol hill and they want to make sure that we can continue to have the great friendly open internet that everyone can enjoy and to keep everything nice and great who doesn't want a great nice friendly all those adjectives that you just used and that's what

they're saying they're going to promote they're not they are lobby though and lobby does promote their own interests as we expect that or is there a danger that their interests can clash with the interests of internet users as a whole absolutely so we have like google and facebook for example or on arguably the biggest names involved here and they spend millions of dollars every single year on lobbying on their own part so when you take lobbyist of these groups and you put them together you're combining these millions of millions of dollars and sure i'm sure they're going to go ahead and going to rally for internet freedoms hopefully will be successful i'm absolutely rooting for them but when you look at their track record on the hill and you see what these companies have done before in and out of washington it raises some questions like for example both facebook and google have to a degree. they were failing for the cyber intelligence sharing probe protection act which you know has failed but isn't that great of a legislation if we go back to earlier similar. talking about it what that would

have done was a cyber skew legislation that would have let the government pretty much go into the servers of third parties and take private in information from users like mean you and give incentives to those companies for sharing and pretty much you let them go in and see everything that you're doing so while they're going to go ahead and fight for internet freedoms these are companies who've also. kind of wanted to take away a privacy online and so that raises a whole other cold whole bunch of questions right now is that the same company is that the flip side they did take part in that internet blackout that didn't pose i also. they were totally against those which is awesome and they are a lot people were in awesome to me but yeah exactly what really are they going to do after here and you have to look at what they've done in the past like google and facebook they are not known for being like the the best most welcoming a heartwarming lovely entity is that there are they've done some questionable

things in the past there's been like f.c.c. investigations into google so when they're taking all this money they're combining with other money they're going on the hill and that there are lobbying for like you said to protect their own interests what are those interests you know that they're already rallying for through legislation that is bad for the public so are they going to start putting those millions and billions of dollars into that we don't know it's only day two so far of the internet association so i guess we'll have to wait and see but what we do know is that these are the biggest players on the internet where a lot of power and joining together how much power exactly do you think they'll have in influencing legislation hell of a lot i mean this is google and this is facebook google and dig this up for you have someone do this homework so let's go over this real fast facebook this year alone five hundred thousand dollars in contributions they includes fifty k. to obama himself ok then we go down there and google. they. and

when we were way way way more but if you look at the relationship between the money that they have and where they put that money and who is using that money it raises a lot of questions so google has one hundred eight lobbyists right now more than eighty of them have previously had government jobs yahoo twenty two out of twenty six of the lobbyists have had jobs both legally they've given money to romney and it's even money to obama who both have major conflicting ideas about how the internet should or shouldn't be regulated so where are they going to put this money in the also when you go in look at other connections for example we have a myth who actually sponsored a stop online privacy act it's also railing through the foreign intelligence surveillance act or knew all of that he he held shares of google so obviously he's going to be wanting them to do one thing and we already know what he wants to do. i'd also raises another good question if you go back and look at who google and

facebook have given money to the paper trail shows a lot of politicians have been favored by these companies who have done some other things even as recently as last week which are too favorable for online rights like that the face amendments that we were just talking about google has handed out five thousand dollars apiece to several congressmen who have voted to reauthorize that legislation which in turn will let the government go and continue to snoop through all of your e-mails and phone calls so might be good for internet freedoms might not be too good for privacy of like i said we're really only on day two so we're going to have to just wait and see i guess all right so i guess we can kind of take a look at their past actions and predict what they're going to do in the future in way to educate and i guess in a way i can't really that's what you're best at that's why we have you here i'm sure they're well intentioned the inner solution seems like they're actually trying to fight a good fight but when you take money and you put it into politics i think a lot of people argue that doesn't times that can be a dangerous. they have

a lot of a lot of money they have to have more money than god yes. that's that's a lot of money what about cyber security what about it how do you think that they will act in terms of cybersecurity and influencing legislation on cyber secure all personally i don't think it's going to be good like i said we already know that google and facebook were opposed or i'm sorry they were supporting service through legislation which is damaging to the public's privacy outline. and through other legislation has been passed around on the hill so if they're going to go ahead and put their money. back towards you know whatever's going to be good for them are they going to go ahead and continue to ramp up donations to these people to try to get those issues moving along i don't think is going to that could really just enough do with though we're going to have to wait and see there is one thing that i do know for sure that you are going to be keeping a close eye on them i'm going to be writing all about it on the web so i wouldn't be too sure slash usa that's me follow and you're blake and you're great to have

you on that was a web producer here at our team thanks liz. we have an update tonight on a story we've been following for months a police officer from the university of california at davis will not face charges for dousing students with alumni and alumni with pepper spray during a campus protest last november you probably remember this video could forget. right. actions caused an uproar nation why images of the tenants spraying orange pepper spray in the face of nonviolent protesters became a rallying point for the occupy wall street movement but today the yellow county district attorney's office in california said in a statement that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of force was illegal and reaching their conclusion the d.a.'s office said the officers perceived they were dealing with a hostile mob and needed to spray the protesters to clear

a pass. to safety so how can a group of people sitting on the ground as you can see there be perceived as an angry mob. the university of california governing board last week reached a settlement proposed are they proposed a settlement excuse me with twenty one current and former students who sued after being hit with pepper spray the terms of the settlement have not been publicly released because a federal judge still needs to approve the deal and that's going to wrap it up for this hour but for more on the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel we post all of our interviews on line there in full that's you tube dot com slash artsy america or you can check out our web site that's our t.v. dot com slash usa can follow me on twitter at liz wall for now we'll see you back here at eight.