rssNot Content With Ads, U.S. Chamber Investing in Making the News Too
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 3:39 pm
- 5 Comments
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce isn’t just using its cash to flood the airwaves, reports the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard this afternoon; it’s also been investing in its own publishing platform, running both a national site and a network of local publications that focus on legal issues (like tort reform) in areas where the business community has decried the decisions of local courts. It’s part of a growing trend of nonprofit groups getting involved in publishing, the only difference being — you guessed it — the Chamber doesn’t actively disclose its involvement in the funding and promotion of these news sites:
“We’re beginning to see advocacy groups, nonprofit groups, mission-directed groups, not always evil by any means, having a particular truth that they see and a particular lens through which they look at news and they want to report news through that lens,” Jan Schaffer told me. She’s executive director of J-Lab at American University, and she pointed to Kaiser Health News, owned by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Foreign Affairs, owned by the Council on Foreign Relations, as examples.
But there’s a big difference between the sites Schaffer mentioned — which happily promote their nonprofit parents — and the Chamber’s sites, which are published by a subsidiary called the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. Nowhere on the main pages of the Chamber sites is the Institute or Chamber mentioned. In 2008, the most recent year available, the Institute spent $41 million (pdf) on various activities pushing for the cause of tort reform. At the same time, the Institute’s reporters are covering civil cases with large settlements and other tort reform-related news — and working for news outlets set up in some of the nation’s most tort-friendly jurisdictions.
Reached for comment, the publisher of the sites, Brian Timpone, said the Chamber is no different from any other media parent company — maintaining a hands-off approach to editorial operations. But the Chamber is pinpointing its news coverage in areas its own U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform’s annual State Liability Systems Ranking Study has highlighted as among the worst in the country for doing business.
Especially in an online context, the Nieman Lab notes, when other news sources are beginning to routinely link to the Chamber-sponsored coverage without knowledge of its involvement, the issue of groups like the Chamber getting into the creation of news becomes more fraught.
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Comment posted October 23, 2010 @ 7:26 pm
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VERY FRIGHTENING THAT THIS KARL ROVE CABAL THINKS little voting Americans HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO ACCEPT THEIR ELITE CABAL'S FINANCIAL ATTACK AGAINST HONEST ELECTIONS IN AMERICA ???
KARL ROVE ELITE'S NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL CORPORATIONS HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED HUNDREDS OF BILLION$ OF BUSH JR ~ KARL ROVE WALL STREEET ~ BANKERS TARP BAILOUT $$ AND THEY HAVE BEING ALLOWED TO RE~ENTER HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF IT INTO OUR CURRENT & FUTURE ELCETIONS.
THE PEOPLES U.S.CONGRESS HAS BEEN UNABLE TO ENACT CURRENT OR FUTURE CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION PREVENTING TARP BAILOUT FUNDING FROM BEING OPENLY OR SECRETLY USED IN OUR CURRENT OR FUTURE USA ELECTIONS BECAUSE EVERY U.S. REPUBLICAN SENATOR VOTED AGAINST THIS LEGISLATION WHEN IT WAS PROPOSED LAST MONTH !!!
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LAWYERS FOR POOR AMERICANS LIKE MANY OTHERS FROM AROUND OUR GREAT COUNTRY ARE NOW ALL COMING TO THE OBVIOUS CONCLUSION THAT KARL ROVE & HIS ELITE BILLIONAIRE CABAL HAVE DECIDED TO PUT THEIR OWN POLITICAL MOTIVES & LUST FOR CONTROL AHEAD OF THEIR FELLOW little Americans INTEREST IN BEING ABLE TO VOTE FOR POLITICAL CANDIDATES FROM POLITICAL PARTY's THAT HAVE REAL HONEST INTENTIONS OF LEADING OUR COUNTRY INTO FUTURE GREATNESS.
NOT HAVing TO DEAL WITH THESE NEW AMERICAN KARL ROVE ELECTION$ OF MA$$ DE$TRUCTION USING SECRET ELITE'S FINANCING WILL CONTINUE BEING LAWYERS FOR POOR AMERICANS MAIN FOCUS UNTIL THE PROPER CHANGE OCCURS IN THE PEOPLES U.S.CONGRESS PREVENTING AMERICANS FROM BEING INCAPABLE OF DISCERNING SECRET KARL ROVE CAMPAIGN POLITICAL $$ FROM LEGIT POLITICAL $$…
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Behind the attack ads
The DISCLOSE Act would be a remedy in the face of a slew of anonymously funded campaign ads.
October 19, 2010
Whatever the outcome of the November congressional elections, the voters are already the losers. They are being inundated by attack ads paid for by organizations with benign-sounding names that refuse to identify their donors. Democracy 21, a campaign-spending watchdog group, estimates that as much as $300 million will be spent anonymously in this election cycle; voters will never know where the money came from.
Consider this (misleading) attack on Sen. Barbara Boxer:
“California seniors are worried. Barbara Boxer voted to cut spending on Medicare benefits by $500 billion, cuts so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. Boxer's cuts would sharply reduce benefits for some and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, and millions of Americans won't be able to keep the plan or doctor they already have. Check the facts and take action. Call Boxer. Stop the Medicare cuts.”
The ad is sponsored by Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a group advised by master Republican strategist Karl Rove. Established as a “nonprofit social action organization,” Crossroads GPS has not disclosed its donors. Campaign reform advocates are asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the group to determine whether it's in violation of a requirement that it not be “primarily engaged” in supporting or opposing candidates.
One remedy for the avalanche of anonymous attack ads is the DISCLOSE Act, which would require nonprofits like Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which is covered by a different provision of the tax code) to disclose the names of the companies, organizations and individuals who fund them. The legislation has been approved by the House but was blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster; it could, and should, be revived in a postelection session. The DISCLOSE Act also would require the chief officers of corporations — and nonprofits such as Crossroads GPS — to appear in ads and take responsibility for them, just as candidates do for advertising sponsored by their campaigns.
There is no cogent argument against maximum disclosure. (The notion that disclosure would lead to the harassment of donors is laughable.) Nor is there any 1st Amendment argument for secrecy. Even as it ruled this year that corporations had the right to engage in political spending, the Supreme Court upheld disclosure requirements, noting a previous holding that “disclosure could be justified based on a governmental interest in 'provid[ing] the electorate with information' about the sources of election-related spending.”
That is what the DISCLOSE Act would do. If those who seek to influence elections don't have the courage of their convictions, Congress must act to identify them.
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Comment posted October 24, 2010 @ 1:53 pm
This election will demonstrate how a large number of uninformed voters can be bamboozled into electing a group of crazies, merely by the injection of immense amounts of money into a campaign, financed by a group of billionaires that wants this country to be turned into a corporatocracy. Money and, having propaganda outlets like Fox News and the take-over of the AM radio band by a corporation like Citadel Broadcasting, have been pounding the hate and fear message for years now. It appears it is bearing fruit for the right-wing reactionary forces this election. With extremists like the Koch Brothers and Rupert Murdoch in virtual control of this country we will be set-back at least a century in the progress we have made. Say good-by to Social Security, Medicare, public schools, the EPA, FDA, SEC, and every other government agency that protects Americans from unleashed deregulated corporate greed. Lead in children's toys from China will be an accepted hazard under this sea change in the former American Republic. Every public service will be privatized including police and fire protection. Our armed forces will become a mercenary force dispatched by the neo-cons to foreign shores to grab commodities such as oil and gold. This country will indeed become the world's menace because if this trend follows through we will see a Palin or equivalent insane person elected to occupy the White House in 2012. The threat of world-wide nuclear incineration will be in the hands of one of these religious fanatics wanting to exasperate Armageddon as soon as possible to achieve their rapture. We are all toast, and that is speaking in the literal sense, if informed voters of this country allow this tragedy to occur.
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