Local TV stations are spinning favorable political stories after accepting money from campaign donors.
Big winners in the million-dollar political ad wars this year are local television stations, many of which have conveniently avoided delving into the murky world of campaign donors as part of their news coverage for fear of biting the hand that feeds them.
Take the network affiliates in Milwaukee, for example.
During the two weeks before Wisconsin’s June primary featuring the nationally-watched gubernatorial recall vote, the local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC stations didn’t broadcast any stories about the 17 groups buying air time to support or attack Governor Scott Walker.
But the stations did find time to produce 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.
The media watchdog group Free Press also found that network affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa did virtually no fact-checking of the claims made in political ads purchased by the four Super PACs and independent groups spending the most in those markets.
In the case of Cleveland, the four affiliate stations failed to air any stories about the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity, while at the same time broadcasting the group’s anti-Obama attack ads more than 500 times.
http://www.allgov.com/news/where-is-the-money-going/local-tv-stations-accept-big-money-for-political-adsand-dont-ask-questions-120926?news=845413
Left In The Dark... Local election coverage in the age of big-money politics:
With more than $3.3 billion in political ad spending projected by Election Day, Free Press has turned its attention to the local television stations airing these ads. Left in the Dark explores whether stations barraging viewers with political ads are balancing this out with coverage of the role money is playing in this year’s elections.
We focus on stations in five cities where ad spending has skyrocketed this year: Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa. Left in the Dark asks the following questions:
• Are these stations reporting on the Super PACs and other “nonaligned” groups behind so many of the political ads airing in these cities?
• Are these stations reporting on the role television stations and their parent companies play as recipients of political ad money?
• Are these stations fact-checking political ads airing in their markets?
First, Left in the Dark analyzes coverage on Milwaukee’s ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin’s June 5 recall election. This period saw an increase in ad spending similar to what stations in other battleground markets will expect before November’s general election.
Free Press sent volunteers into Milwaukee stations, where they inspected and photocopied broadcasters’ political files to identify the groups most actively buying political ads before the recall. We checked for mentions of these groups and their political ads in local news coverage.
We then compared these findings to the local coverage aired in August on affiliate stations in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Tampa, as well as Milwaukee. On Aug. 2, affiliate stations in these and other large cities began posting their political files to a newly created online Federal Communications Commission database, which also houses other important station information.
In August, the most prominent political advertisers increased their buying in the five markets we studied. Indeed, viewers in all of these markets experienced a constant stream of political ads. (The four Tampa affiliates, for example, aired an average of more than 200 political ads a day in August.) What Free Press found in the local news coverage was disturbing:
The hundreds of hours of local news that aired in the two weeks prior to Wisconsin’s June 5 recall included no stories on the 17 groups most actively buying time on Milwaukee’s ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates. And while these stations were ignoring the impact of political ads, they found time to air 53 local news segments on Justin Bieber.
• Our August survey of the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa found a similar imbalance between political ads and news coverage. With one noteworthy exception (see sidebar, page 11), affiliates in Charlotte, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Milwaukee and Tampa did not fact-check any of the claims made in political ads placed locally by the four Super PACs and independent groups spending the most in those markets.
• Cleveland’s four affiliate stations provided no coverage of the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity, despite airing the group’s anti-Obama attack ads more than 500 times. Americans for Prosperity has reportedly spent more than $1.5 million to place ads on Cleveland television stations.
• Charlotte’s four affiliate stations provided no local reporting on the three top-spending political groups, the anti-Obama American Crossroads, Americans for Prosperity and Restore Our Future. From Jan. 1–Aug. 31, 2012, these three groups cumulatively spent more than $4 million to place ads on Charlotte stations.
In August, only one Las Vegas affiliate ran a news segment on political advertising. During its 6 p.m. newscast on Aug. 13, KLAS aired an entire ad produced by the Super PAC Restore Our Future. The station noted that the ad “criticizes President Obama’s handling of the economy” and would air in Las Vegas. There was no additional commentary or analysis.
What happened in Milwaukee in advance of the recall is now playing out on television screens in battleground states across the country. The lack of reporting on political ad spending is egregious given just how many political ads these stations air — ads that are producing record revenues for station owners.
This profiteering may explain broadcasters’ reluctance to investigate the relationship between political ad spending and local media. In exchange for this massive influx of cash, broadcasters must take their public interest obligations seriously. They must cover the money that’s poisoning our politics, expose the groups and individuals funding political ads in their markets, and address the falsehoods presented in most of these spots.
http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/resources/left-in-the-dark-timothy-karr.pdf
New York Times a “Propaganda Megaphone” for war, says former reporter.
The New York Times has essentially become a “propaganda megaphone” to peddle the establishment’s narrative — especially when it comes to war — charged foreign correspondent Daniel Simpson, who resigned from the paper in disgust. According to Simpson, the paper, which is often lambasted and ridiculed by conservatives and libertarians for its blatant “liberal” bias, is actually just a propaganda tool for the ruling establishment.
In an explosive interview with the Kremlin-funded RT media broadcaster, the former Times correspondent, who was based in the Balkans during his stint at the newspaper, offered an inside look at how it all works. What appears to have bothered him more than anything was how the supposed paper “of record” was so determined to sell the Iraq war to the American people, even if it meant basically lying or repeating government lies to do so.
"It seemed pretty glaringly obvious to me that the 'news fit to print' was pretty much the news that's fit to serve the powerful," Simpson explained, citing the warmongering over Iraq as a prime example. "The way that the paper's senior staff think is exactly like those in power — in fact, it's their job to become their friends."
An ambitious reporter, Simpson joined the paper a decade ago when he was just 27 years old. He had been hired to report on the Balkans, where the U.S. government and other Western powers had intervened in an internal conflict. However, within a few months, disillusioned by the Times' war-mongering, he resigned.
"I was young and naive and idealistic, I suppose. I thought I was going to be holding people in power to account," said Simpson, who wrote a recently published book about his experiences entitled A Rough Guide to the Dark Side. "It turned out instead that when I joined in 2002, the New York Times was very much engaged in doing exactly what those in power wanted them to do, and printing fake intelligence information to start the war in Iraq."
As the establishment’s propaganda about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq was getting in full swing, Simpson said he was asked to report bogus information about Serbians selling WMD delivery parts to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Serbs, however, were actually just selling spare airplane parts, not WMD delivery systems, he explained.
"They were looking for every possible way of getting this weapons-of-mass-destruction story into the news media," Simpson told RT, adding that the Washington Post quickly jumped on the dubious allegations. "So I came under enormous pressure from my bosses to start looking at it the same way, and I couldn't see any evidence for doing that."
While the Times did apologize for some of its most outrageously bogus WMD “reporting” — or war-mongering, as critics have labeled it — the paper "hasn't really changed its policy," Simpson explained. Among other problems, he pointed to Howell Raines, the executive editor during his time at the paper, who wrote a long article in the Atlantic after losing his job in 2004 that offered insight into the way top officials at the paper view its role.
Raines wrote that the Times was “the indispensable newsletter of the United States' political, diplomatic, governmental, academic, and professional communities.” To Simpson, though, the former executive editor was basically admitting that "he sees his newspaper as being this propaganda megaphone for those who run the world."
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/12943-new-york-times-a-%E2%80%9Cpropaganda-megaphone%E2%80%9D-for-war-says-former-reporter
Free the Files: Help us reveal dark money in the election.
Outside groups are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the coming elections—money that has long been hard to track.
This summer, the Federal Communications Commission ordered TV stations to pull back the curtain a bit, requiring them to publish online detailed records of political ad buys. Before, these records were only available by visiting stations in person, an issue ProPublica spotlighted in our Free The Files coverage. So far the new rule only covers the top 50 markets, and it's impossible to search these files by candidate or political group—meaning it’s impossible to get a full picture of the spending.
We’re rebooting Free the Files with a new tool to help detail campaign ad filings in 33 swing markets. Every day, we’ll be pulling fresh files from the FCC website, and asking for your help extracting key data points that will help uncover outside spending in the final days of the campaign.
Every file you help free will be added to our page, so we’ll all be able to get a better picture of the outside groups’ spending.
What do we expect to find in the FCC filings? A range of information – from identifying which outside groups are buying ads and where, to finding new groups that enter the fray late in the game, to details on who is behind opaque nonprofits that are playing a larger role in the election. That’s how ProPublica’s Justin Elliott found the players behind the Government Integrity Fund, a little-known nonprofit that has spent big money to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio. https://projects.propublica.org/free-the-files/
Mainstream media takes money from foreign dictators to run flattering propaganda.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the American media act as presstitutes for rich and powerful Americans.
But it turns out that the American media will turn “tricks” for foreign johns as well …
Specifically, three time Emmy award winning reporter Amber Lyon was until very recently a respected CNN reporter.
Lyon was fired from CNN after she refused to stop reporting on her first-hand experience of the systematic torture and murder of peaceful protesters by the government of Bahrain.
Lyon’s special report on Bahrain was scheduled to run on both CNN’s U.S. and international networks, but was pulled after only a limited showing due to pressure from the Bahrainis and their lobbyists.
At the same time that Lyon was risking her life to do on-the-ground reporting in Bahrain, another CNN journalist was filming a paid propaganda piece on how the Bahraini leaders are a bunch of friendly pro-democracy reformers.
That’s right … the Bahraini government paid CNN to do what was literally an infomercial for that brutal regime and pretend it was real journalism.
Lyon says that China and many other foreign, authoritarian regimes also pay CNN and other mainstream networks to run flattering propaganda pieces.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/3-time-emmy-award-winning-cnn-journalist-mainstream-media-takes-money-from-foreign-dictators-to-run-flattering-propaganda.html
Mainstream media admits loss of credibility.
On Fox’s America Live with Megyn Kelly, the headline was “Americans losing faith in mainstream media?” According to a new Gallup Poll, 60% of those asked had little or no trust in the mainstream media and 40% had a great deal to a fair amount of trust. Only a sleazy propagandist could take the fact that they have been found out to be a sleazy propagandist, and twist it like Megyn Kelly and her guests did.
The poll consisted of 1017 adults. What I would like to know is where they found 1017 people who still actually take the mainstream media seriously in any manner. Why didn’t they just tell the truth and say they had polled their entire listening audience and that they all work for the networks?
Literally everything coming out of the mainstream is a lie or distortion, including the fraudulent opinion polls. Of course Kelly and company, being the propagandists they are, blamed the low opinion of themselves and the other so called journalists on the leftist liberals, who they say are refusing to report anything bad about Obama.
http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/mainstream-media-admits-loss-of-credibility/22649/#more-22649
The Ad Wars: From every source, a different number.
Tracking campaign ads in the 2012 elections is no easy feat. Between the flurry of spots from the Obama and Romney campaigns as the presidential race enters its home stretch, and the massive expenditures by outside groups such as super PACs, it is hard to get a handle on who is spending what to influence the nation’s biggest political decision.
The confusion is being aggravated by another basic obstacle: that each major source of data on campaign ad spending provides widely different figures.
Last week, we reported that two of the key sources of hard numbers on ad spending, the Federal Election Commission and the private research group Kantar Media, provided vastly divergent numbers and had broad differences in their methodologies. Today, we look at another leading source of campaign spending data—Smart Media Group, an ad-buying firm whose statistics on presidential ad expenditures are cited by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal—and find that their statistics deviate drastically from both Kantar and the FEC.
The graphic below shows the three sources’ respective totals for several outside organizations buying broadcast ads in the presidential campaign. (We examined buys between March 19 and September 9 in order to cover the same time period for all of the groups.) The discrepancies are staggering: for example, Smart Media Group’s ad tracking service SMG Delta finds that the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA spent $48.1 million over this period while Kantar found that they spent only $8.1 million, less than a fifth of SMG Delta’s total.
The result is that candidates and deep-pocketed influence groups continue to run ads amid a haze of uncertainty—and avoid the scrutiny that comes with a clear accounting of their activities.
Paul Winn, the political director of Smart Media Group, said its approach includes local cable stations and reflects the increase in ad rates that occurs shortly before an election. But he declined to offer further explanation of how SMG Delta gets its statistics. “We don’t really discuss our methodology, other than that we stand by the numbers we produce,” Winn said.
According to Elizabeth Wilner, Vice President of Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, SMG Delta obtains its statistics by leveraging its position as an ad-buying firm for Republican candidates. Broadcasters offer regular updates to ad buyers on the activities of other ad placement firms, which cumulatively offer a national picture of political spending.
“It’s a longstanding courtesy that stations provide to media buyers,” Wilner said. “He [Smart Media Group director Kyle Roberts] is turning around and selling that information to NBC News and anyone else who is paying him for it.”
According to an NBC News article, SMG Delta’s data includes radio ads in addition to television ads. Winn, Smart Media Group’s political director, did not return follow-up phone calls or an email seeking to confirm these differences in the two groups’ methodologies.
The vastly differing statistics from each of the leading sources on spending in the ad wars raises a basic question: What should reporters do to provide the best information to their audience?
One answer is to be precise and accurate in describing their sources of data. For example, Kantar statistics are estimates rather than exact totals, a difference that should be reflected in descriptions of them. There is also an important distinction between ad reservations and ads that have already aired, and this should be noted rather than simply referring to “TV ad spending.”
A second takeaway is that ad spending takes place in a volatile marketplace, in which rates rapidly change, many ads can be preempted and then must be refunded, and candidates and outside groups pull ads on short notice as they reallocate resources. Robin Kolodny, a political science professor at Temple University who studies campaign advertising, said a precise picture of TV ad spending will not emerge until early December when broadcasters disclose invoices that, unlike order forms, provide the costs and details of which political ads actually aired. “It’s much easier to do it after the fact then it is in real time,” Kolodny said. “That’s the real lesson.”
Finally, there is far more to be learned about campaign ad spending than simply overall expenditure totals. Unlike SMG Delta or the FEC, Kantar provides spot counts, which The New York Times yesterday described as a better measure of the ad wars than spending because it reflects an organization’s reach rather than the disparate prices that campaigns and outside groups pay for airtime. Kantar also offers a breakdown of the content of ads, which provides insight into campaign strategy and messaging. “Advertising isn’t just about the money,” said Wilner of Kantar’s campaign analysis team.
http://www.cjr.org/swing_states_project/the_ad_wars_from_every_source.php