Showing posts with label ad revenue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ad revenue. Show all posts

Friday, March 18, 2011

My Thanks to Bill O'Reilly

In the wake of the earthquake-induced crisis in Japan, O'Reilly let Ann Coulter demonstrate her willingness to talk about radiation and nuclear fallout - she has no apparent understanding of the risks inherent in either - thus further clarifying for his audience that Ms. Coulter is more interested in sensationalism for the sake of ratings and readers than she is in reality. (At least, reality as most people understand it.)
“There is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says is actually good for you and actually reduces cancer,” she told a very skeptical O’Reilly, citing her latest column on her website as filled with evidence of this being true.
Parts of the plume of radioactive ash may hit parts of the U.S. west coast very soon, and naturally enough concern and interest are running high. O'Reilly, who is not averse to taking provocative stands for the sake of exploring an issue himself, was earnest in trying to get her to back off, making references to sunbathing, and yet Ms. Coulter remained firm and basically said "it's the media's fault" (evidently she's not part of the media despite how she earns her living) for not covering the positive health benefits of radiation.

I'd love to see her sources if it didn't mean giving her even more time to mislead the public. I admit I understand that anybody who worries about the impact of energy production on climate has to at least give a nod to the nuclear industry in terms of greenhouse gas production -- but the argument against it has always been the risks from radiation, both at the plant and wherever the waste is stored. I'm a proponent of lower-risk solutions, which largely means wind, solar, geo-thermal, and so on, so I suppose you should consider my take on this might be less-than-perfectly objective.

Still, I'm up front about where I stand; unlike Ms. Coulter I'm admitting my personal ideology may temper my view. No pundit or journalist can be utterly objective, but when their income clearly benefits from sensationalism you have to be very, very careful to examine and think critically to sort what's truthful versus what's possibly self-serving, ratings-chasing nonsense.
“There is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says is actually good for you and actually reduces cancer...”
Ann Coulter On "The O’Reilly Factor"
Bill O'Reilly has just exposed a flagrant example of the ratings-chasing behavior that undermines access to reliable, trusted information. Unfortunately, it's hard to point such behaviors out without shedding even more attention on the culprit(s).

Thomas Hayes is a Irish-American Entrepreneur-Journalist, and former Congressional Campaign Manager; he's a follow-the-money communications strategist-consultant, photo-videographer, over-hyphenated union-supporter, and computer-geek (recovering) who writes on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.
You can follow Tom as @kabiu on twitter.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The media stopped following the money: CONFLICT of INTEREST

Was it big oil money pouring into the "McCain Victory '08 Fund," as the sudden change in McCain’s stand on drilling in environmentally sensitive areas suggests? How will we ever know? There’s no benefit to a commercial news outlet in uncovering the source of the RNC PAC/527 money...

It got interesting in April, but almost nobody reported it...


Once Senator John McCain and the RNC began circumventing the McCain/Feingold limits via the creation of the "McCain Victory '08 Fund" with its $70,000 per individual donations Fake campaign reformers of the Republican partythey really left presumptive Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama with no reason to keep extending his offer to limit campaign spending by accepting public financing. They sprang into faux outrage, of course, ready to accuse him of a flip-flop despite the fact they'd not accepted Obama's conditional offer. Follow the money, not the spin, and you discover that this has gone virtually unreported. The commercial media outlets have a conflict of interest; reporting on the McCain fund undermines their profits.

Here's the simple truth:

The more money McCain (or Obama) has to spend, the more the media stands to earn on selling commercials. Selling not only to the two campaigns, but to PACs and 527s and anybody else who will buy air-time. The media clearly have a vested interest in not just ratings, but more so in the demand for commercials, and so the closer the race - and the more money the candidates (or parties, or 527s, etc.) raise - the more money the media outlets make by selling. Why report on McCain's funding success? Much better business to take advantage of all that cash, not cut off the former campaign reformer now laying golden eggs. It's their bottom line at stake, same as it ever was.


Talk about a conflict of interest.Was it big oil money pouring in, as the sudden change in McCain's stand on drilling in environmentally sensitive areas suggests? How will we ever know? There's no benefit to a commercial news outlet in uncovering the source of the money - they are just trying to get their piece of it.