Mr. Fusion says:

#14, Serious,

I don’t consider our local weekly, free, “paper”, a real news outlet.

Yes, I know that PR usually sends copy to their favorite reporter / editor for consideration. Too many editors have either been burned in the past or know another editor that has taken a fall when the PR copy turned out wrong.

Often, if a company knows a magazine is doing a review on their product, they will place their ad or even several. That is well understood. But again NO self respecting news outlet will allow marketing to dictate their stories.

In this case the blog editor is claiming the review and ads were done in collusion. A company the size of NBC can’t take the chance of being caught selling their editorial space. No more than the NY Times, Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, Bloomberg, AP, Reuters, CBS and others would dare risk their credibility. All these outlets, and many more, will not simply reprint a press release although that may be the basis for a story.

Yes, most market research is paid for by concerned interests. Any decent reporter will sift through the bullshit or make a disclaimer as to the source.

*

I’m glad you noticed and referenced FOX news and gold. FOX does have a credibility problem. Even if 95% of FOX stories are good, we never know when they will present that 5%.

I also commend you on well presented arguments, something I don’t always see here.

Serious says:

#21 Mr.Fusion – Indeed a company the size of NBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, Bloomberg, Ap etc.. commit to it. I gave an example i saw 5 minutes earlier on CNN before posting. The Fox example was to appease you and get your attention, because by now i know your political agenda (same with Obamaforever and Bobba), and nothing thrills you more than to see Fox go down. My opinion and knowledge however is that this is not limited to free papers or news sources such as Fox.. even paid liberal, democratic papers/tv channels do so. I know because my clients have paid for it.. it is the reason why i take all outlets of news with a dose of reality, because i have been on the inside and i know how it works.

Hopenhagen.com – driven by International Advertising Association, backed by the likes of Coca Cola, Siemens, SAP, BMW, The Climate Group, Huffington Post just to name a few of the hundreds now this association is a HUGE lobbying group for any news agency and represents billions of dollars in advertising revenue, there is a reason why The Financial Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal sign up… worse off, what is supposed to be un-biased, non political reporting (that is the purpose of reporting) have now turned into a politically aimed and motivated reporting. When reporting becomes politically biased it is by definition propaganda. And both sides (liberal/conservative) do this all the time.

So yes, newspaper/website/channel is for purchase when it comes to advertising and placement of news. CNN does this all the time – what looks like a documentary is sometimes a cleverly placed PR message and yet they don’t have to disclose this. Research PSA as a PR tool.. (public service announcement). Example would be a toy company, creating a PSA about the danger of kids swallowing toys and asking people to look for their specifically created Toy Safety Standard 5 Star program that is only available on their products.

As an IT professional I also know that advertising can indeed be teamed up with specific articles; a system that does not permit this for large news outlets is a financially stupid investment as you can cash in twice as much.

Other examples are polls – what a fantastic jump in support.. then read until the last paragraph: “The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican.” Does that seems like a fair sample size of democrats and republicans? On another note, where are they from? what is their age group? is it a representative sample of the U.S public? What is the chi-square? The sample does not match their sample error. None of that information is available.

The poll above is done by “CNN/Opinion Research Corporation” – it isn’t a CNN poll it is a partner company who did the work, but is branded as CNN, giving it the authoritarian view of independent news polling; the partner company is Opinion Research which is a part of InfoGroup which represents 85% of Fortune 100 Companies, their data powers the top 5 internet search engines and their points of interest are used in 90% of in-car navigation systems in North America. Did you know this? I didn’t.. Hardly as independent and CNN based as you would think, but it is made to look that way. One marketing research company can serve two competing clients, fair enough. Gerard Miodus the president, has as indicated by Huffington Post donated 1,000 usd to Clinton’s campaign. He can indeed work independently of his political opinion, fair enough. Did you know all of this though when you looked at the poll?

On the note where you assumed they just print the press release: They don’t re-print the press release, they paraphrase and re-write it, but fit the same message – that way the source does not have to be attributed and they don’t have to pay a reporter to investigate; it lets the news outlet save money. It was just newly discovered that some 56 news outlets had printed the exact same copy about global warming, based on pushing the AGW agenda worldwide on their front pages, and bolstering about it.

As far as market research – “a decent reporter would sift through the b.s or make a disclaimer” – next time you see a poll on TV or in a newspaper check the source and check if the data is statistically sound. You’d be surprised. Of course a newspaper can’t print complete utter b.s, because that would make people stop buying it – that is why PR companies make sure the articles sent are of high deceiving quality; Exxon even went to the extent of creating a fake polling company for one of their PR releases.

As the news headlines have been saying.. newspapers, tv channels and websites have a tough time finding advertising dollars and several newspapers now require bail-outs, they are desperate for money and if you refuse to follow the paper/money trail on both sides Mr.Fusion, I am sorry to say you will live in ignorance. The money go all the way to the top.. hopenhagen is sponsored by the Danish government and the city of Copenhagen – why would they? Look at the amount of money and attention it has brought them? The result is the same as hosting the Olympics + world’s no.1 alternative wind company is Danish; their incentive? GDP growth as denmark hardly has any natural resources. Similarly the opposing side stands to lose billions.

Please, note that I do not say that every poll and article out there is written by PR and MR agencies, I am telling you that it occurs and that you need to look at things critically and take it with a pinch of salt. In the image that started this debate… it could indeed be by accident or it could indeed be strategically placed there. I wouldn’t know, neither would you (unless you work on it)… but shooting it down as an impossibility would be ignorance. I at least know that I have indeed created such as system and have paid for such placement in what most people would term ‘credible’ news outlets both conservative and liberal.

TTHor says:

Serious #23 – way to go. That pretty much concludes that debate I guess. Extremely well presented arguments as the opponent Fusion #21 points out. Good to see intelligent arguments as that is the whole idea around exchange of opinion. Many of us should pay attention to that… myself included.

Mr. Fusion says:

#23, Serious,

Now you are being silly.

“The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican.” Does that seems like a fair sample size of democrats and republicans?

From your link,

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted just before and just after the president’s speech, with 427 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s sampling error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.

The sample of speech-watchers in this poll was 45 percent Democratic and 18 percent Republican. Our best estimate of the number of Democrats in the voting age population as a whole indicates that the sample is about 8-10 points more Democratic than the population as a whole.

Sounds like CNN showed their integrity by posting the skew bias. NOTE, the number of admitted Republicans is very low at the moment.

The poll above is done by “CNN/Opinion Research Corporation” …

So what does who owned the company that dialed the telephones and asked the questions matter. If you have any evidence of conspiracy or wrong doing then bring it on. I seldom watch CNN but do trust them. And no, you didn’t show any bias in their reporting.

Gerard Miodus the president, … donated 1,000 usd to Clinton’s campaign.

So good for him. It is great to see people get involved in the political process. Again, can you show any bias on his or the pollster’s part? Do you have anything other than innuendo to smear them with? Are you suggesting the CEO of (name your own corp) can’t make a decision because he donated money to a political party?

It was just newly discovered that some 56 news outlets had printed the exact same copy about global warming, based on pushing the AGW agenda worldwide on their front pages, and bolstering about it.

Uummm, no, they didn’t. They reprinted an editorial piece as an editorial. To the best of my knowledge every paper also printed they were one of the 56 reprinting the comments. Some were on the front page, some were on their regular Editorial Page.

OK, enough. You have yet to show anything that any major news outlet are bought and paid for by advertisers. Every example is either wrong or innuendo.