were actually paid by the malaysian government to write a critical piece of opposition leader anwar ibrahim buzz feed discovered that from may two thousand and eight until april two thousand and eleven conservative writer joshua trevino was paid nearly three hundred ninety thousand dollars to focus on politics of malaysia and some he used to track to ten other writers to write in columns in publications from the guardian to the washington examiner examiner and beyond you can see some of those titles there now to break down this case i'm joined by michael brooks he's a producer for the majority report hey there michael so this seems like a cut and dry case of a conflict of interest but really a defense insult by saying he's not a journalist so is that an applicable defense here. meghan it's great to be talking with you you know that would probably come as news to many people who've read his columns and his blog posts he wasn't identified explicitly as representing the government so obviously implicitly or not implicitly very directly you would think that he was offering objective analysis an

these cases i don't know why anybody would be interested in what just trevino had to say about anwar ibrahim or malaysia i mean frankly the only other sort of public distinction that this guy has is calling for foreign governments to kill u.s. citizens when he recommended that you know the israeli government kill american citizens on a gaza flotilla a couple years ago i mean he's kind of a low balls propagandist not particularly interesting writer with not much to say so i think it's a tip off as to you know why is this guy writing about malaysia what's his interest here and what's the relevance of what he might have to say but obviously the process in general should be tightened because there are a lot of interested parties out there and a lot of different loosely getting information and if nothing else it should remind viewers too and readers to always check what they're being told before they just believe that michael brooks producer of the mage. report thank you for joining us thank you so much it's that time of the year again time for hundreds of america's conservative elite to file int