“WILL OBAMA RETURN $994,795 IN GOLDMAN SACHS CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS?” screams the Drudge Report, in response to the Obama Administration’s charges of fraud and corruption at Goldman Sachs.

What exactly is this headline trying to imply? Is its implication that the contributions (which were not directly from Goldman Sachs, but rather from the company’s PAC, employees, officers and their families) are “dirty money?”  As the S.E.C.’s claims have yet to be proven or tested in court, this is profoundly unfair. Nor is there any reason to believe that all or even most of the Goldman Sachs donors had any involvement in the illegal activities being investigated, if they indeed took place. (Drudge also highlights a Republican who is returning his campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs personnel, although his ethical logic for doing so is more than a little obscure. It appears to be pure grandstanding.)

Or is Drudge suggesting that because Obama’s S.E.C. is after the company, Obama has broken some kind of implied quid pro quo relationship with the firm, as in “you give us money for our campaign, and we leave your scams alone once we’re in power,” requiring him, in all fairness, to return the cash? That would be an admission that the money was accepted as a bribe, would it not? On the basis of appearances alone, this makes it unethical to return the money, because doing so would suggest that the President’s financial industry policing had been offered for sale, and the Administration was canceling the deal.

The headline presumes guilt based only on untested allegations, unfairly impugns the innocent, suggests bribery, and signals its endorsement of conduct that would create a serious appearance of impropriety.

Even for Matt Drudge, that’s an impressive amount of unethical content for one headline.