 Noah VailSon made my AvatarPremium
join:2004-12-10
Lorton, VA
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 ·Bright House
| BoingBoing covers Largest Conflict of Interest in history BoingBoing does something rare and remarkable by pointing to the Massive Elephant in the Media Room.
said by BBoing :TV news programs ignore false claims in the thousands of political ads that pay their bills Holy cow.
I am stunned with amazement that someone actually
• broke the Taboo and
• brought up the incestuous relationship between candidates and news orgs.
Even the well respected ProPublica does story after story on political ads
all the while
bending itself into contortions trying to ignore how political ad spending effects political news coverage.
said by BBoing :Tim Karr just released a report exposing the billions spent on political ads around the country -- and how that money is pocketed by local TV stations.
Are these stations offering any local news coverage to debunk the lies in these ads? Are they exposing the deep-pocketed interests behind the groups buying ad time? The short answer is: No.
The local stations we looked at in the report provided no local stories exposing the special interests behind these ads, and only one station among the 20 surveyed devoted even a few minutes to investigating whether these ads told viewers the truth." BoingBoing goes on to source This Blog that actually did the leg work for the story.
(I led with BoingBoing's repost because their headline more accurately outed the problem)
said by FreePress : We have a political system whose players are constantly chasing dollars -
a system gamed to a point of dysfunction by wealthy, undisclosed donors and media corporations that are all too content to just cash their checks.
• The Super PACs vs. Justin Bieber: The hundreds of hours of local news that aired in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin's June 5 recall election
included no stories on the 17 groups most actively buying time on Milwaukee's ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates.
While these stations were ignoring the impact of political ads, they found time to air 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber. It should be mentioned that the FreePress expose only seems interested in naming Republican superpacs.
The word "Conservative" appears 5 times in their report - "Liberal" not at all.
(ProPublica takes a more PolitiFact-like approach. They cover problems with both parties but highlight Republican issues 3-to-1 over Democrat.
The Republican issues are also covered in a more negative in tone than Democrat issues are.)
The legacy bias issues aside, that this news+politics corruption is even mentioned is huge.
It give me hope that one day a Fourth Estate could arise that would hold all government and candidates accountable in a meaningful way. |
