How the Local News Cooks Up Those Crazy Technology Stories
Farhad Manjoo continues to excerpt his upcoming book, "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society," and like all well-executed enticements I keep finding interesting bits. Here, Manjoo explains how a woman used a think-of-the-children story to shill for electronics companies on local news:
Late in the holiday shopping season of 2005, Robin Raskin began to worry about a hidden danger posed by the world's most popular gadget: Pornography was popping up on the iPod. Raskin, a pert middle-aged woman with short brown hair and a deep, authoritative voice, considered herself an expert on how kids use technology (she'd once written a magazine column called "Internet Mom"). She approached local TV news broadcasts across the country with her iPod worries. They bit....
But something here was amiss. In addition to panning the iPod, Raskin used her time on TV to push "safer" holiday tech gifts, including products made by Panasonic, Namco and Techno Source. These weren't unbiased reviews. The local stations that featured Raskin were fully aware that the three companies had hired her to pimp their products during news appearances.
How local TV embraced fake news [Machinist.Salon.com]
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Sounds a bit like what we heared earlier about Boingboing having sponsored content. I think there was a discussion here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/13/hamsters-lunch-at-co.html
Nice burn, Michiel! Unfortunately, I don't think putting up publicly disclaimed sponsored widgets and being paid to trash a competitor's products are anywhere near the same. But you knew that.
So, sponsored content vs. sponsored content, but one of them is disclaimed by the content creator.
Sorry, I still haven't gotten over the shock and let down since then. My fault, won't spam again. (promiss)
Weaksauce, mikey.. Putting up an ad versus surreptitiously trashing a product with lies are very different.
"many times, CMD has found, the only edits that a station will make to a paid clip is to cut off the disclosure noting that the video was sponsored by a corporation."
wow...