For high-rolling special interests looking to make an impression at the presidential conventions next month, one option is to pay a lot of money to a media outlet. Lobbyists for the oil industry, for instance, are picking up the tab for leading Beltway publications to host energy policy discussions at the convention, including The Atlantic and Politico.
And for the right price, some political media outlets are even offering special interviews with editorial staffers and promotional coverage at the convention.
The Hill newspaper, which is sponsoring events at both the RNC and DNC, offers sponsors “a turnkey and custom experience,” including a “Thought-Leader Luncheon” moderated by The Hill’s editorial staff and the luncheon sponsor, who also gets to “curate a list of participants from politics, government, media and industry.”
Sponsors who pay $200,000 are promised convention interviews with The Hill’s editorial staff for “up to three named executives or organization representatives of your choice,” according to a brochure obtained by The Intercept. “These interviews are pieces of earned media,” the brochure says, “and will be hosted on a dedicated page on thehill.com and promoted across The Hill’s digital and social media channels.” Our inquiries to The Hill went unanswered.
The Economist, along with its subsidiary CQ Roll Call, similarly offers convention sponsorship packages. Sponsors can share lunches or dinners “with top policy experts from CQ Roll Call and The Economist” that are livestreamed “so your reach extends beyond the room.” According to the website advertising the packages, sponsoring a meal is also good for “getting your CEO publicity — we’ll film an interview segment after event concludes.” The Economist/CQ Roll Call did not respond to our inquiries.
“My impression is that paying for journalistically greased access to bigwigs is now routine,” says Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. “Journalists should be covering conventions. Selling access to their leadership strikes me as an invitation to corruption.”
“There are a lot of ethical red flags here,” says Jim Naureckas, editor of the journalism watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Naureckas notes that for The Hill to refer “to the interviews as ‘earned media’ — that is, as opposed to advertising — raises the question of whether these advertorials will even be distinguished from news coverage in the fine print. If so, The Hill is operating as a straight-up PR agency.”
Politico’s nearly nonstop programming during the conventions is led by the outlet’s “award-winning team of reporters and editors.” In both Cleveland and Philadelphia, Politico plans to hold a “Caucus Energy Conversation” sponsored by Vote4Energy.org, an election effort of the American Petroleum Institute, which is the lobbying arm of Chevron, ExxonMobil, and other major oil and gas companies.
Politico is also hosting a discussion of the economy with the Peter G. Peterson Institute, an advocacy group that pushes for cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Other Politico convention event sponsors include Microsoft, Diageo, Google, and Bank of America.
Vote4Energy is also listed as the underwriter for The Atlantic’s “cocktail caucus during the Democratic convention” to explore “the nation’s energy and environment landscape.”
The Intercept asked both Politico and The Atlantic if such sponsorship deals might make it difficult to ask adversarial questions to sponsors at these events. “We do not defer any of that control to event underwriters. Our events are produced by an Atlantic editorial team, which has full control over speakers selected and panels produced, and events are moderated by journalists — both from The Atlantic and outside of it — who have complete editorial independence over each conversation,” Anna C. Bross, senior director of communications with The Atlantic, said in a statement. Politico did not respond.
Political consultants and interest groups routinely use political conventions to peddle influence and improve their image. Google and FedEx were among the many companies that helped to sponsor lavish parties for attendees of the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. These events attract policymakers, members of Congress, journalists, and delegates, many of whom are elected officials. Members of the transportation industry are planning events in Philadelphia, advertising the chance for executives to mingle with legislators, mayors, and governors.
But the role of media outlets in embracing the same strategies is the latest sign that the ethical boundaries of journalism are changing.
As traditional advertising revenue has collapsed over the last two decades, many newspapers and magazines have turned to sponsored events for income. In 2009, the Washington Post planned to offer off-the-record salons with lawmakers, business leaders, and Obama administration officials, selling seats at the table for as much as $25,000. After rival Politico broke the news, the Post reversed course and canceled them.
Many media outlets have embraced native advertising, an industry term for advertisements that looks like editorial content, except for a small disclosure to identify the content as sponsored. In 2013, The Atlantic briefly hosted an “advertorial” from the Church of Scientology that promoted controversial leader David Miscavige.
Im kindve new at this, however it seems to me its six of one, half dozen of the other . Conglomerations need pr , the public needs transparency, how much transparency depends i guess on the issue . Its networking and big business, Sounds as if its Politics and not journalism though.
If people have a huge problem with links between corporations and media organizations then maybe they should start a campaign to get readers to pony up for the content that they’re reading. News isn’t free and doesn’t write itself. The old media economic model is broken and no one has figured out how to make the online one work well. In other words, if you aren’t paying for a subscription to the Atlantic, NYT etc, or you use an adblocker, you’ve got no right to complain.
Of Americans have every right to complain. Where are the interests of the American people?
What?!!! How could journalists agree to be put on an auction block like this?
Are the gloves coming off in this arena, too? Time to admit that almost any writers still able to live off the trade are slaves to some Massa?
America: a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy, actively disinformed by PR flacks masquerading as journalists.
When you start selling access to lawmakers, presidents and presidential candidates, etc, even if you think up a euphemism for it like “campaign contribution” or “speaking fee”, you are already far down a slippery slope to everything being for sale.
We have obviously long since passed that point, and are heading for whatever is below that.
Resident gadfly and weirdo, General Hercules, gets silly yet again:
This so typical of how GH rolls: he thinks what Fang documents constitutes “an honest living.”
The 4 th estate has become a 5th column against fair and accurate debate within our Democracy as they too sell access just like the pols.
“Just like the pols”, who it surprises nobody are selling access hand over fist. Telling, sad, and very true. “Journalists” have fallen to the level of politicians.
@ galactus:
“We have to stop calling these entities News Agencies. They are clearly advertisers or Media Agents with services for sale”
Absolutely! In fact, the “mainstream media” are all infotainment outlets of AP Corp as demonstrated by the resounding infotainment media echo of its declaring Clinton the DNC’s presidential candidate the DAY BEFORE 5 states ( including California and D.C.) voted using “a secret survey of delegates who will not vote until the DNC convention” as a statistical, reality-defying proclamation that even the corrupt DNC officials have refused “to confirm or deny” to this day.
Many media organizations are just corporate PR departments for their Owners up the vertically integrated food chain/ladder. All it takes is a phone call from say a GE or Viacom upper management to shut a reporter down. Clinton got a book deal from Simon Shuster which is a subsidiary of Viacom. One has to wonder when someone like the Intercept will break this story of media corruption wide open.
From Sunday, 3 July 2016 New York Times:
Democratic Delegates
Clinton 2,220
Sanders 1,831
2,383 needed to win
Democratic delegates only include pledged delegates.
You would think with recent developments like the 3 1/2 hour “interview” at FBI headquarters, last week’s Bill & AG Lynch’s secret meeting, State Department stonewalling on releasing Hillary Aides emails until 2018, the many communications from Aides to the tune of 700 emails a month to Teneo and CGI while employed at the State Department and Teneo/Clinton Global Initiatve — with all of that you would think that Delegates would be abandoning the fatally flawed Hillary in droves, right ?
Bernie is the only other alternative that actually has run a campaign and energized the youth – why go with a Biden or other candidate ?
What? Other countries don’t run two candidates for president against each other, both of which are under investigation for felony crimes by top law enforcement agencies?
The Western media is in a very sad state of decline. It’s traditional business model is kaput. The British/Huffington Post model is flirting with using soft-core porn and celebrities as click bait: So and so really rocks a bikini, so and so takes her children to the beach etc.
The Facebook/Google model uses personal information to target people. So it is selling information about its users to pretty much anybody who will pay. This shapes the news as they try to lure in profitable demographics. I really dislike that model. I want to know what is going on in the world not what is going on in my personal world as defined by some AI algorithm.
Bloomberg new articles are often merely advertisements.
The TV news model is also collapsing. When the news became a profit center rather than an obligation, maximizing profits became the name of the game. So the news people are putting the minimum amount of effort into news for the maximum profit i.e. reduced staff and reduced coverage.
Even CSPAN is now hiding behind a pay wall.
the only difference between this and hillary selling her ass to goldman sacks is that in hillary’s case, she only had one pimp.
Personally, I would recommend the ‘Custom Experiences’ option. You have to negotiate the price, but the results are so much better than the one size fits all packages. Let’s say you want to start a discussion about some small country possessing weapons of mass destruction. Six month later you have a war. That’s what I call value for money.
Sounds like the “girlfriend experience” other businesses sell.
Oh.
When I read that Custom Experiences option I had visions like the “unnatural act” involving Tonto and a horse, referred to in Lenny Bruce’s “Thank you Mask Man” Lone Ranger cartoon, and maybe some condensed milk.
But I’m dating myself. These are 2lst century American “journalists”. They are way beyond that kind of pornography, into the real thing: selling government, journalism, plutocracy to the highest bidders.
why organize for someone who has endorsed hillary Clinton?
Enough is enough. We need to organize and ensure Bernie Sanders is on the ballot as an independent candidate in November, for the leadership required in order to reverse this trend towards complete Oligarchic rule.
Amen brother/sister!
Media are a bigger joke than trump.
sorry guys for top posting. I don’t want to use javascript enabled while visiting this site …
many of us have mentioned those kinds of issues, more often lately
CEK as Galactus suggested everybody on the Internet (visiting TI or not) should use tor (except when you use your private email (say, google, would notice a connection to your account from the Ukraine …)).
They have versions for the most common OS and almost all languages
https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en
Now as Galactus sarcastically implied, anyone just reading (not even posting) stuff off TI should know that their TPIs (terroristic potential index) would go up at least a color level, but they are “watching”/”monitoring” everybody anyway, so being purposefully watched by the watchers gives you some “reproductive advantages” (to put it in Darwinian ways ;-)) or even romantic currency with individuals who matter, since they will notice you have a spine and a functioning brain.
Also, don’t take any “happenings” at face value, they always use proxies and fronts (many of whom don’t even know they are being played into it)
In my case I don’t use tor for various reasons (among them that I prefer to learn from, choose to be annoyed by them ;-) and at some point you will deal with them Russian style “do you want to watch me? pleeze do! Here you have it …”) All I do I do in the open. For example, they didn’t seem to have liked that post:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/26/friends-forever-xi-talks-up-chinas-ties-with-russia-during-putin-trade-trip#comment-77408266
I do use Linux based live-DVDs (which they can’t physically mess with) so when they start giving me too much sh!t I just:
a) physically disconnect my machine and router from the Internet
b) reset and restart router
c) reset box’ BIOS
d) restart (say knoppix) from the DVD
e) clear the directory where I install it and reinstall it using the “tohd=/dev/sdX” option
f) reconnect my box to the Internet
In total it takes you like 5 minutes doing it and they have to start all over again.
You would not hear the end of it if I start talking about all the sh!t they constantly do to me of all types from hacking into my bank account, to messing with my computer, to sleep depriving, torturing me, to not that veiled threats to explicit “we will kill you, good for nothing niggah …” (at some point you start believing you should be dead already anyway ;-))
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/01/targeted-individuals-us-01-must-avoid-arrests-obvious-crimes-centering-war-money-lies.html
truth and peace and love,
RCL
Great advise as always RCL,however I generally post from my BlackBerry phone. As with CEK, Govt is fully aware of my identity and movements.
I’m under the utmost scrutiny without actually have an FBI agent sitting outside my home watching me. :(
Although I haven’t received any veiled threats as CEK claims, i, and my spouse, are generally interrogated when entering the US.
Sickening.
“Thought Leader.” Now that’s funny.
“There are a lot of ethical red flags here,”
How ’bout a nice steaming cup of understatement? Thanks Lee, and I echo Aaron’s comment. The system is rotten to the core.
Good reporting and I am glad someone is there to do it. But you have to understand where the public is at to move that needle.
I am not one to say “the public is dumb” or “the public are sheep” etc. I think these statements are made by people who don’t get out much or don’t think much of other people.
But the public is busy, and engaged in a job and a hobby and school, and this and that. There are no pressing concerns for many people and the biggest pressing concern for the rest is money, which is a concern typically solved by trading time for dollars.
The public is, in my opinion, massively underinformed, and it is largely thanks to the news media that things have become so lopsided. For the first time I am beginning to sense that even upper-middle-income people – folks with a good job, a house, kids – are tuning out altogether, and it has more to do with priorities and expectations and apathy than disgust.
If you ƒollow “the news” it is nothing but a stream of alarming and unrelated developments interspersed with commercials. You get the sense that there are a lot of bad things happening and no sense of how important they are.
With the rise of pundits you have a doomsday guy or gal on every show, left or right, to give you bad information about the worst possible scenario happening tomorow.
So it is still cheap to be apathetic and still possible to skate through life under what i call the “wife’s” bargain – women have this view a lot more than men – that the system is what it is, and no matter what you say, you know the consequences and you deal with the results.
In other words, I feel people think it is hard to really back a cause and easier to drop out “on principle.”
This has to change.
In order to have a functioning democracy (or a republic if you want to get technical), the public has to be informed. The corporate media certainly bear a lot of blame for being propaganda machines for corporate America, but the public has to take some blame too. If you want the benefits of living in a “free” country, whatever that means, you have to accept at least enough responsibility to inform yourself and act accordingly (democracy goes well beyond just voting). Uninformed idiots should not be allowed to participate, but on the other hand, they’d get really screwed if they didn’t have a vote. Very thorny problem, I’ve never seen a solution.
Well said!
There is no way I would have learned this anywhere else. Thanks for being real journalists.
“don’t begrudge other folks trying to eke out an [dis]honest living.”
There’s the art of the deal, and then there’s the art of the scam.
Internet ethics.
How capitalism and government converge into fascism, and corporate media becomes nothing more than its propaganda arm.
Interesting that mega millions will be spent for what basically amounts to big prep rallies. They’ll whoop and holler, raise some hell, make worthless promises, and take the USA along for more myth and merriment as they spread “democracy” around with the “most powerful military” borrowed money can buy. Fucking wonderful!
Perfect summary. Thanks!
The system is so broken and corrupted that it can’t be fixed. Overpopulation is the overriding issue here, as it prevents anything resembling a democracy (i.e., the more people, the easier to manipulate them with PR & BS). We really need major media news channels that actually report and comment on news instead of censoring it and otherwise propagandizing like commercial media does, but where that would come from and how it would be done is the challenge.
Manufacturing Consent… Propaganda with a price.
“Welcome back ladies and gentleman to the news at 10. This month we have been low on revenues here at News 10, so here is our special FALSE FLAG ATTACK LIST with prices listed. We will help spew propaganda, verbally attack oppositions (true or not), and create a false flag of your choice. We accept all major credit cards, cash, checks, and money orders.”
Sad the so called “Press/media” has come to this. Paid prostitutes. ALL POLITICIANS AND GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ARE PAID PROSTITUTES AND THIEVES as well. Now we know why them and the “MSM” have such close ties.
The quotes above are basically a mockery of what is taking place. Great reporting Lee Fang writing this article. To expose this, exposes the bond between the MSM and lobbyist. Lobbying should be abolished. Basically it’s a “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine,” which involves corporations, and hurts the American people. This is why GE pays no tax while small businesses, which employee the majority of workers, are taxed at 50% and above. They even are taxed on equipment they have paid for. Extortion and theft!!!!!
They wouldn’t know what to do with free markets with no bullsh*t regulations. My guess is Huge Corporations will start dying along with the lobbying money. This is why they want to keep this from happening.
Lee Fang prints the unprintable. But to most Americans this is a big yawn, little more than a prime example of American Exceptionalism, aka the worse kind of corruption, a slimy parasite that has entered into every orifice sucking away the people’s access to power.
The stenography msm already avoids double-checking whatever the U.S. Govt declares fact, so prostituting for them too – is probably no big deal.
This is what passes as mainstream journalism. Got some propaganda you want to spread? For a price we will spread it for you and call it News.
Too bad Diogenes of Sinope or Socrates aren’t still alive. It would be a ‘hoot’ to see them at either or both of the conventions, fielding any and all questions. The body might be evolving, but the collective mind is doing the opposite.
Hey, Lee, this is July 1, not April 1. Clearly, you got mixed up on the date and published your April Fools piece today. Am I right?
s is July 1, not April 1. Clearly, you gott mixed up on the date and published your April Fools piece today. Am I right? ffer34
hi good
The term “earned media” is a trade term in digital marketing (as opposed to owned or acquired media). The implication is that are selling editorial links that won’t be tagged as “nofollow” to indicate to search engines that this is paid content.. also known as link fraud or a link scheme designed to fraudulently manipulate search engine rankings.
What in the ever-loving f***?
When you have bills to pay, no purpose to your existence, and no ethical compass, why not sell whatever’s not nailed down?
Our political process for sale to the highest bidder. This is why the RNC wanted to remove Lebron James’ banner so they could put up a banner by Exxon or some other corporation. Dems are not different they just sell to the same corporations also. Unless we get money out of politics for good this is going to continue to get worse. We can’t leave it up to the politicians to do this since they will screw it up with more loopholes that will only make it worse.
You are never going to get money out of politics without first removing money itself. Simply because the people who have money will be able to use that money to stop any such law from ever passing. As long as money holds power they can control the laws.
That’s why we need a revolution. This system is unfixable.
A revolution…how…quaint. Do we take the cannoli and leave the musket?
Journalists selling ads and influence peddling is the equivalent or worse than snake oil salesmen, televangelist preachers telling their audiences to dig down deep God is watching you so give, give, give, used car salesmen selling you an auto with a bad transmission and swearing it is like new, casting agents that cannot get anybody an acting job convincing their actors they now need to pay them for acting classes even though they never played a part, are not even capable of even memorizing lines let alone delivering characters, and can only offer imbecilic advice to the acting students like you need to give me more soul.
M$M has taken the plunge , the influence of money in the newsroom has always been the greatest threat to independent reporting, now the cake is baked and journalism loses its role as the guardian of truth. We’re all sunk!
Ya, but they’re all for LGBTQI so it’s OK.
Keep me on your mail list. WJD
Anyone else have their email compromised posting here? This is the only place I use this name. I got a very strange email using this name.
nope.
how strange?
You mean the email addressed you as CEK?
I’m under NSA/CIA surveillance 24/7. I find nothing strange or coincidental.
Do you really think this site and its commented aren’t investigated? Really? This is the site releasing the Snowden documents. I would expect anyone interacting with this site to be investigated as a potential leaker by the US Govt.
I’ve received suspicious text messages.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2387232/Revealed-How-NSA-spy-you-just-word-Osama-email-text-message-Facebook-chat.html
I would speculate that someone wants to link your real identity to your user name here at TI.
Are you using TOR?
I should use TOR and haven’t gotten to it. I know which comment it was, and the email was a veiled threat to me personally not to do that again (I didn’t open it; it was in the tag), and UK connected. It isn’t a surprise that these comments are watched. I probably won’t be back. They already know my identity. They were into a different computer and my email I had a few years ago. Be careful.
I suspect the comment you made may have hit too close to some truth. There are ways of making your points using public documents. Ie….breadcrumbs
It goes much deeper than Snowden documents, and that is all I am going to say. It’s the kind of thing that most people don’ t encounter or have a clue about. That’s it.
Agreed. If you use a Motorola droid 1st or 2nd series, you can kick them out for 2 full days by resetting the phone to factory settings. This somehow wipes their program from your phone until they can Repush it to your device.
and why not? Everything in America is for sale, everything; resources, jobs, rights, votes, offices, immunity, policies, laws, everything.
e pluribu unumshow me the money
Just what I was thinking. If politicians are for sale, why not journalists? Journalism is practically dead anyway; this will kill it off for sure.
Embedded advertising apepars to be taking over from the online ad space as major revenue source for online news content – a good example is recent McDonald’s PR campaigns run through the Guardian.
Never mind that living off of McDonald’s food is a recipe for diabetes & heart disease. Slipping in “organically” is a nice PR touch; and the article also avoids any mention of how McDonalds buys beef from Brazil that was raised on denuded rainforest where the indigenous peoples had been driven off by corporate agribusiness. Did the Guardian run that story in exchange for a lump sum from McDonalds?
I never did like mickie d’s. Whoopers, tacos, anything Jacks, were always in my stomach, for decades. Recently i had to wait about while a friend was doing the doctor routine. It was lunchtime & there was a mickie D next door and i had about an hour wait. I know what hamburger tastes like and feels like. So i decided to see what maybe i was missing on possible improvments to the world’s burger – i bought the big mac…
IT WAS LIKE CHEWING ON CARDBOARD. (as i imagine what chewing cardboard to be like, hard, tasteless, dry)
I recall your detail on what the corpos did to the mexican farmers. Several years ago the gov of Japan initiated an exploratory challenge on what to do about their farming situation. Apparently the youngers were moving to cities and rejecting farming. The concern for Japan was to decide whether to promote family farming or go big agribusiness. I dont yet know their decision.
So we’re cutting down rainforests (a serious weather assault felony), murdering the inhabitants and protesters, monopolising the world’s food supply, using the media to propound how wonderful they are, and cultivating a news sense of taste in those too young to know the difference?
If that big mac is any indication of where our food supply is headed, i believe we are in serious trouble.
I got a solicitation from the Guardian begging for contributions so they don’t go broke
If they submit one single receipt for reimbursement from the government then they’re on the government dime and it should be illegal for them to charge or collect money for themselves or anyone else. They’re being paid by the taxpayers, they’re civil servants and no one should have to pay more for their presence.
But aren’t the major party conventions paid for by the parties rather than the federal government? Thus it’s not a matter of charging taxpayers. – – Of course, this whole conduct is a new, miserable low.
Perhaps their theory is that if they can sell ads in their newspapers/shows to political campaigns, why not charge for simulated talk shows? However, readers/viewers normally know what ads look like…is there full disclosure that these events are paid advertisements? The “earned media” concept sounds bogus.
When Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller started their syndicated talk shows on radio, the funding was directly arranged by the Democratic Party
Not everybody in this world can survive without selling something that is in their control or ownership. TI folks are lucky to have a billionaire benefactor, please but don’t begrudge other folks trying to eke out an honest living.
Nobody has a problem with advertising and public relations that is clearly labeled as such; but if an outlet claims to be doing journalism but is instead publishing PR releases disguised as ‘news stories’ then that is a problem.
It’s unprofessional and displays a lack of integrity; much like the doctor who claims that the patient’s health is issue #1 yet whose real focus is prescribing drugs that earn him kickbacks from the pharmaceutical industry, even if the drug are unnecessary, or there are cheaper generic versions.
In neither case, you can’t call either an example of someone “trying to eke out an honest living.” It’s a dishonest living; not really much different from specializing in smash-and-grab auto burglary on the ethical scale. But enough moralizing, people need to eat, right?
Um, sorry, but I have a BIG PROBLEM with advertising. It should be completely banned. Second only to overpopulation, overconsumption is the biggest problem on Earth. Modern humans are destroying the natural world and everything that lives there by, in addition to overpopulating, consuming things they shouldn’t be like coal & oil, and consuming too much of other things.
We usually agree photo, but not on this one.
I bet there are forms of advertising you find acceptable – say, for a concert? For a political rally? For a museum? But then there’s other ads that are pretty twisted, tobacco ads aimed at teenagers, etc. Maybe what you really mean is that it should be regulated speech, to some extent? Wonder what the free speech advocates say to that?
At best, you could argue that all advertising must be labeled as advertising, otherwise its blatantly deceptive (as opposed to subliminally deceptive).
I find it hard to believe that overconsumption behavior would end if advertising was banned, either. That would require major changes in energy production, food consumption, transportation, customs & habits, etc.
Huge rich companies spend huge amounts on advertising because it works. If advertising were banned, there is no doubt that consumption levels would drop substantially. Eliminating advertising would not fix the overconsumption problem — only mass mental and spiritual evolution would do that — but it would help a lot. Of course there should be exceptions, but they should be just that, not the rule.
And BTW, this has nothing to do with deceptive advertising, that’s an entirely different issue.
I agree with you and photo.
Everyone has to pay their bills.
My problem with this sort of thing is that America has devolved from news as events to news as meaning.
Given our current predicament of complicated hierarchal interdependent relationships of competitive power structures, we traded in 1 king in 1776 for many kings today. Got bills? Choose a side, or a king.
this makes me sick. I am glad that Lee made this report.
I have heard that the convention in Philly is being hosted by Republicans, so clearly this is some sort of circus of coorruption.
This is how the people of our Country are brainwashed, we get a distorted one sided view acting as “facts” . The truth can’t pay enough to get coverage.
“Journalists should be covering conventions. Selling access to their leadership strikes me as an invitation to corruption.”
One who is not a journalism professor at Columbia might state that a bit more succinctly and forcefully.
“strikes me”strikes me ok but “invitation to corruption” is weeniesque
The Atlantic’s excuse that their journalists have full editorial control is misleading because first off, the folks in charge are choosing the journalists doing the work, and secondly, they’re not putting other experts with opposing viewpoints on the same stage to get a real back and forth.
Must share this with my journalism education colleagues…and with my students.
Holy Sh*t! Where can I get in on this action? This is just what America needs, more money in politics to steer the votes of the sheeple.
If this doesn’t help illustrate the problem we have in America then I don’t know what does.
BTW. I want to congratulate Lee on doing actual journalism–unlike those shills at other publications. This is just the reason why I LOVE the Intercept. Keep it going!
Hear, Hear!
Thank you, Lee! Keep on raking that muck – so few are doing it anymore!
We have to stop calling these entities News Agencies. They are clearly advertisers or Media Agents with services for sale.
This is not journalism. This is campaign advertising.