Update: This headline and story has been edited to reflect that post-travel U.S. House disclosure forms listed a scheduled event at FOX News which did not take place.
A FOX News spokesperson tells Sludge, "The Progressive Policy Institute never scheduled a tour or networking discussion with FOX News producers and bookers and the network has no record of a meeting with our staffers ever taking place.”
Last month, while Democrats in Congress were struggling with their messaging strategy for responding to Trump, a group of their staffers traveled to New York to get communications advice from the Wall Street Journal and other corporate media outlets.
The communications-focused trip, paid for by a corporate-funded centrist group and disclosed in gift travel filings, came at a crucial time for the Democrats. While Trump was mass-firing federal workers and attempting to end birthright citizenship, the party’s response was seen by its own leaders as fragmented and ineffective, and voters and groups like MoveOn and Indivisible were pushing Democrat leaders to show more fight.
While some House Democrats have been experimenting with digital outreach in the style of younger caucus members like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the group of staffers for House Democrats who attended the trip, alongside their Republican counterparts, were seeking to improve communications strategies by consulting with corporate media concentrated on the finance industry. Among the attendees were the communications directors for the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the House Democrats’ chief deputy whip.
