DC Station Rewrites Gas Exposé After a Word From Its Sponsor
An editor’s note said: “This story…has been updated to include additional research.” A more honest note might have read: “We changed this story to keep a sponsor happy.”
60 Minutes’ Weight-Loss Tip: Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You
CBS’s segment on a weight-loss drug featured two doctors paid by the drug maker—which happened to be a sponsor of the broadcast.
Pushing Consumers to Amazon Is Baked In to NYT’s Business Model
Anodyne Wirecutter articles that instruct New York Times readers how best to shop at Amazon serve to blunt any impact from critical coverage.
Jaisal Noor on Worker Co-Ops, Duncan Meisel on Fossil Fuel Greenwashing
In the way they balance worker health and company success, worker co-ops complicate corporate media’s economic storyline.
Jeff Bezos’ Fake News in the Newspaper He Really Owns
A front-page, “truthy-looking” Washington Post ad about Amazon’s corporate benevolence is designed to deflect from troubling realities.
‘Museums Like the Whitney Are Accountable to the Communities They Claim to Serve’
“What we’ve tried to say, both as artists and as people living in the city, to the Whitney, is that, ‘No, Kanders can’t be on a board of the Whitney Museum that claims to be a progressive institution, that claims to serve a public interest.’”
Can’t Afford a Vacation? Get Another Credit Card!
Under greater time pressure than ever, media resort to rewriting or copying and pasting press releases, then branding them as news. At the same time, advertorials—paid advertisements presented as news—are becoming an increasingly common way for media to increase their income.
CNN’s Industry Spin Shows Need for Independent Debates
Election Focus 2020: The second round of debates may not have enlightened the public much about the candidates, but they made one thing clear: We desperately need serious, independently run debates, not over-the-top industry-friendly spectacles of the like put on by CNN.
At Vox Media, Workers Win a Voice Beyond Wages
The collective bargaining agreement between Vox Media and the Writers Guild of America East puts an end to one of the more contentious unionization battles that have gone on in US digital media. Vox management took longer to voluntarily recognize the union than other outlets, and workers recently staged a walk-out to protest Vox’s […]
Elon Musk’s Latest Brainstorm Takes Aim at Meddlesome Media
Tesla’s CEO has taken aim at the very press that has lauded his vision and business acumen in the past, and provided him the initial platform for converting readers and viewers into True Musk Believers.
ACTION ALERT: WaPo’s Post Live Series Is a Love Letter to Corporate Conflicts of Interest
Please contact the Washington Post and urge it to stop allowing corporations to sponsor events when they have a direct financial interest in the subject.
Separating Super PACs From ‘Campaign Spending,’ Media Embrace Core Myth of Citizens United
Journalists are unwittingly helping to make overturning Citizens United that much more difficult by humoring the pretense that Super PACs aren’t part of political campaigns.
Vox’s Puff Piece on Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Reveal Goldman Sponsors Vox
Vox’s Matthew Yglesias (4/25/16) gave a generous write-up to Goldman Sachs’ new commercial banking subsidiary, GS Bank, without noting that Goldman Sachs is a sponsor of Vox.
The Trump Campaign: Bad for America, but Good for CBS
A broadcaster cheers on the electoral “circus” (“bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going”) that he acknowledges “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,”
CNN’s ‘Courageous’ Advertorial Mill
CNN has announced the formation of a new unit that will take money from corporations to produce “news-like content” that is actually PR designed to burnish its clients’ images. The name CNN gives to this mercenary enterprise? “Courageous.”
Ira Glass Clarifies That Public Radio Is Ready for the GOOD Kind of Capitalism
“My hope is that we can move away from a model of asking listeners for money and join the free market,” host of public radio’s This American Life Ira Glass declared last month: “Public radio is ready for capitalism.”
FAIR TV: Media in War Mode, Calling for Civilian Deaths and PBS Hits Harper’s
On this week’s show: The ways corporate media cover war, a Fox News pundit wants to see more civilian deaths in Syria, and PBS uses its ad dollars to punish a magazine. All of that on this week’s show:
PBS Uses Advertising to Retaliate Against Critical Coverage
PBS was set up in part because of an understanding that advertising exerts pressure on media outlets. And now it’s using its own advertising to signal its disapproval of critical coverage.
New NPR Boss: ‘We’re Going to Be Talking About Brands That Matter a Little Bit More’
The new boss at NPR says you should expect to hear more corporate advertising– no wait, that’s not it. You’ll hear more about “brands that matter.”
Finally, Corporate America Will Have a Voice
Former CNBC host Maria Bartiromo will be debuting a new show on the Fox News Channel soon, and she’s sharing one idea about what will make her show different: Corporations will finally get a chance to tell their story.
