Media Matters points to another ‘objective opinion’ in the press. Who is able to follow the money?

Since 2004, Clifford D. May, former Republican National Committee communications director and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), has appeared in the media several times to defend the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war — most recently in his September 5 Scripps Howard News Service column, where he listed as “Al Qaeda’s hope[s]” that “Congress will save them by legislating America’s retreat from Iraq” and “that lawmakers in Washington will vote to stop fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and to abandon those Iraqis who have been fighting with us and relying on us.” However, in none of his columns or on-air appearances has May disclosed that FDD has received at least $1.2 million in State Department grants since 2004, or that May himself is a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion.

Who to trust is not a new issue, but shouldn’t this sort of thing stay private market, not privatized market/government? How will we be able to tell the difference if psy-ops itself goes internal?