Arianna Huffington had an announcement (1/19/12) about a new section in her Huffington Post:

I'm delighted to announce the launch of Global Motherhood, a new section within HuffPost Impact dedicated to the health and well being of mothers and babies around the world, and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.

It goes without saying that it's a bad idea in general to have a corporation in the health industry sponsoring health coverage; the potential for conflict of interest is obvious. But given that these kinds of special sections are typically created to meet an advertiser's need--an impression strengthened by the fact that the second paragraph of Huffington's announcement focuses on Johnson & Johnson's efforts to "use technology to improve the lives of mothers and babies"--one has to ask, why this section for this advertiser?

You don't have to dig very far back into the Huffington Post archives to get a clue. On November 1, HuffPost Parents posted this AP report:

The piece described a boycott launched against the Johnson & Johnson by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which "has unsuccessfully been urging the world's largest healthcare company for 2 1/2 years to remove the trace amounts of potentially cancer-causing chemicals--dioxane and a substance called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde--from Johnson's Baby Shampoo, one of its signature products."

After Johnson & Johnson reached an agreement with the campaign to phase out the chemicals in the U.S. market, HuffPost Healthy Living (12/28/11) ran this post by Samuel Epstein, an expert on cancer at the University of Illinois School of Public Health:

Epstein's post pointed out the geographically limited nature of the company's agreement and the fact that its shampoo contains a third chemical, nitrosamine, that is also a potential cancer risk.

To be sure, as Jezebel (1/20/12) pointed out, there are numerous health concerns with Johnson & Johnson products--from birth control patches to insulin pumps, from the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal to Tylenol and Motrin. But if your news outlet reveals that a product might be giving kids' cancer and then the makers of that product offer you a sponsorship deal, it's a good bet that they aren't doing so because they're grateful to you for keeping them on their toes.

The national hardware chain Lowe's pulled its advertising from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim--explaining that the question of whether Muslims can be presented as regular human beings is a "hotly contested debate."

All-American Muslim is a reality show described by TLC, the cable channel that airs it, as "a look at life in Dearborn, Michigan--home to the largest mosque in the United States--through the lens of five Muslim American families...an intimate look at the customs and celebrations, misconceptions and conflicts these families face outside and within their own community."

But the Florida Family Association, a right-wing group leading the charge against the program, saw it as part of a sinister plot:

The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law. The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.

Note the parallel between this argument and a complaint that Jersey Shore doesn't depict any of its Italian-American cast members as members of the Mafia.

Mobilizing its members to send emails calling on advertisers to boycott the show, FFA scored a victory. The company responded to the group (Hollywood Reporter, 12/9/11), "While we continue to advertise on various cable networks, including TLC, there are certain programs that do not meet Lowe's advertising guidelines, including the show you brought to our attention. Lowe's will no longer be advertising on that program."

Lowe's decision prompted an outraged response--one activist wrote, "Will you next consider KKK's demands to pull ads from BET?" (Hollywood Reporter, 12/9/11)--leading to an explanation of sorts posted on the company's Facebook page:

It appears that we managed to step into a hotly contested debate with strong views from virtually every angle and perspective--social, political and otherwise--and we’ve managed to make some people very unhappy. We are sincerely sorry. We have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion, across our workforce and our customers, and we’re proud of that longstanding commitment.

Lowe's has received a significant amount of communication on this program, from every perspective possible. Individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic, and this program became a lighting rod for many of those views. As a result we did pull our advertising on this program. We believe it is best to respectfully defer to communities, individuals and groups to discuss and consider such issues of importance.

Unfortunately, pulling your ads from a television show because it depicts a group of people as normal Americans is not a way to "respectfully defer"--it's taking the side of bigots who believe that that group must always be portrayed as frightening and dangerous.

Lowe's concluded its message:  "We strongly support and respect the right of our customers, the community at large, and our employees to have different views. If we have made anyone question that commitment, we apologize." One might well question the commitment of Lowe's to the right of people to express the viewpoint that Muslims are human beings when it withholds its advertising from programs that make that point.  The calculation that it's safer not to associate oneself with groups that are hated by a vocal minority highlights the danger of relying on corporate sponsorship to support a media system that one hopes would actually embody the values that Lowe's pretends to have.

PBS has a website called MediaShift, billed as "Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution." Based on an alarming post this week headlined "Tear Down the Wall Between Business and Editorial!" (12/7/11), the revolution looks rather revolting.

The piece is written by Dorian Benkoil, who "handles marketing and sales strategies for MediaShift, and is the business columnist for the site"--a job description that suggests that PBS has already torn down the wall between business and editorial, since those responsibilities would seem to put you in a constant position of conflict of interest. (He earlier worked as "a liaison between the sales and editorial sides" at ABCNews.com.)

The piece is a primer on "how to blur the lines in an intelligent and ethical way," in the words of MediaShift managing editor Courtney Lowery Cowgill. It offers such tips as "If Sales Influences Editorial, It's OK," and insights like:

It's easy to demean "link bait" such as "Top 10" or "How To" lists, but if your users like and share them, and they generate profitable page views, is there really harm? If there's sponsor interest, all the better.

To be sure, the piece includes caveats, like: "You do need core principles that can't be bent--even if that means the business doesn't meet payroll." But it seems completely oblivious to the dangers of basing your business model on giving the sponsors what they want. It's hard to maintain a line in the sand when you've started out with the intention of blurring that line--ethically, intelligently or otherwise.

The most striking thing about the column is its celebration of profit-making as a liberating force:

Profit is what lets you not only continue another day, but also gives you the freedom to determine your own mission.... The more profit your company makes, the more leeway it has to do its work, to remain independent of government or other interference, and the more freedom to do good work.

Well, no. The point of a for-profit business is to make money, not "to do good work"; the more profit your company makes, the more it will strive to make in the future, so it can show stockholders an ever-expanding return on their investment. The pressure this puts on journalists to warp their copy is why the wall between business and editorial was made one of journalism's "core principles that can't be bent."

And the difficulty of maintaining such principles in the face of the profit imperative is why PBS was set up in the first place, to provide a home for journalism free from the obligation to please sponsors. But when PBS has sales and marketing directors who also double as business columnists, I guess that kind of journalism needs to find a new home.

Huffington Post reporter Jon Ward did what reporters should do when covering political campaign ads. He told readers, at the top of his story, that the new Mitt Romney ad was based on a lie:

The 60-second Romney ad quoted Obama as saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

It sounds like Obama is talking about his own chances in 2012. But it's actually a clip of Obama mocking his 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), for not wanting to talk about the economy in the final stretch of that election. McCain's response to the collapse of the financial sector in the fall of 2008 is widely cited as a contributing factor to his loss.

That's a pretty astounding bit of deception. It's good that Ward is doing this, because when I read about the Romney ad in this morning's New York Times, I saw a headline that read, "Romney Heats Up Campaign in New Hampshire With an Ad Attacking Obama."

The Times' Ashley Parker wrote that the Romney campaign was heading into "a more combative phase," and that the commercial represented "a step up in the intensity of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination."

The ad actually projects strength, according to the paper:

By focusing his message on the president, Mr. Romney is trying to show Republicans that he can take on Mr. Obama aggressively, an attribute that conservatives are seeking in a nominee.

To be fair, Parker does have a piece on the Times website today that discusses the ad's inaccuracy. We'll see if there's something in the paper tomorrow.

But for some reporters the inaccuracy of the ad doesn't amount to much. At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake's piece explains the context of the quote, but then seems determined to argue that it's not going to matter:

And how many of Romney’s supporters or other Republicans are going to be truly offended by the use of an out-of-context quote in an ad? We're wagering not many. In fact, Romney's willingness to take Obama on so directly--no matter the means of doing so--will likely accrue to his benefit among GOP primary voters who want a fighter next fall.

It's also worth noting that a lack of context in a campaign ad is nothing new. Just last week, in fact, GOP candidates including Romney mischaracterized Obama’s quote about how America had been "lazy" about attracting foreign investment, by suggesting that Obama was calling all Americans "lazy." (Texas Gov. Rick Perry even ran an ad based on this premise.) And the furor over that lasted all of two seconds.

Going from a political press that doesn't care about factchecking candidates to one that believes factchecking doesn't really matter is not exactly progress. Or is this just the rule that's applied to Republican presidential candidates?

UPDATE: It's worth noting that ABC's Jake Tapper slammed the ad on Twitter, and did a report on World News saying that the ad is "so out of context it's false."

The public TV show Nightly Business Report has gone through some serious changes over the past year or so--sold by the public station that had produced it for years to a somewhat mysterious private company run by an entrepreneur whose been the subject of various controversies and lawsuits.

The show's been sold once again, and the new owner of public television's premier business newscast is... an investment firm called Atalaya Capital Management. And why not, really.

In the L.A. Times today (9/21/11), media reporter James Rainey asks a very important question:

In a week that saw the number of people in poverty hit a half-century high and President Obama propose a tax increase on those with million-dollar incomes, will America and the American media finally dig in for a serious conversation about class?

And his evaluation of the media's performance on wealth-and-poverty issues accords with what FAIR has found when we've looked at the coverage (Extra!, 9-10/07, 6/10). Here's Rainey's take:

Even though economists say the gap between haves and have-nots has been building for three decades, the growing income disparity and its causes have come up for discussion mostly as a sidebar--removed from the front page, rarely the lead story on the evening news.

But when it comes to explaining why the media fail to cover "arguably the central story of our times," I can't help but feel there's something missing. Rainey offers several possibilities:

The media excel at stories that are instantaneous, visual and that produce clear winners and losers.... Despite the struggles of our own industry, most journalists still live more cheek by jowl with the people who are getting by.... In the years since the late 1970s, journalists have been focused elsewhere...aimed at other great socioeconomic collisions.... The working class has no obvious lobbying group or advocate to bring its interests to the fore.... A majority of the public hold an almost mystic faith in the upward mobility ideal.... They hesitate to speak out, lest they sound as though they are whining.... There's plenty of fodder for those who want to create a counter, not-so-bad narrative.... "Americans have been uncomfortable for a long time talking about class.... The idea that there is a strong class system undercuts the claims we cherish most."

There may be some truth to each of these explanations. But the most obvious explanation for why U.S. media avoid talking about growing inequality is that they are almost entirely owned by, and dependent for the bulk of their income on, large corporations that have greatly benefited from that inequality. Why should we be surprised that the institutions that control our national conversation use that power to protect their own interests?

Certainly they're not going to quit doing that as long as there's a taboo against pointing out that that's what they're doing.

NPR ombud Alicia Shepard has a piece (5/25/11) about internal discomfort with a recent $1.8 million grant from the George Soros-connected Open Society Foundation.

Shepard writes:

The money is for a worthy purpose.

NPR is using the two-year grant as seed money to start a local-national initiative, known as the Impact on Government project. Eventually, the plan is to have two public radio reporters in every state keeping tabs on state government issues that are woefully under-reported by the media. This is to be a multi-media project for radio, the Web and social media.

It's hard to argue against the need for more vigorous coverage of statehouse issues. Corporate-owned media are not likely to do this, so local public radio would seem like a good fit.

Shepard writes that some NPR journalists are uncomfortable with taking money from a foundation tied to someone with well-known political views. Shepard cites one:

"I do have problems with it precisely because he is so left wing and were he on the other side I would still have problems with it," said a long-time NPR producer. "I don't have a problem with people supporting particular causes but I do have a problem when obvious partisanship spills over into your support of those causes."

Shepard seems to share the unease, writing that having other funders for the project would help alleviate perception problems:

Diversification of funders would go a long way toward diluting any suspicions about a Soros connection. The sooner NPR can provide a varied list of funders for this project, the quicker valid concerns about perceptions and reality will diminish--if not go away.

If the goal is to quiet the critics on the right, who have made a lot of noise about the Soros money, then having a few other funders is not likely to matter.

But it's worth pointing out the fact NPR gets a lot of money from major (and not so major) corporations. If the problem with Soros funding is that his politics might affect the journalistic product, are similar worries expressed about NPR's connections to this (very partial) list of corporate donors listed in NPR's 2009 annual report?  If not, why not? Many of them have political agendas they pursue in Washington and elsewhere.

American Express Company

America's Natural Gas Alliance

Anheuser-Busch

Bank of America

BP

Caterpillar

Citibank

Constellation Energy Group

Dow Chemical Company

General Motors Company

Georgia-Pacific

IBM Corporation

MasterCard Worldwide

Microsoft Corporation

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

Toyota Motor Corporation

University of Phoenix

Wells Fargo Advisors

The public broadcasting newspaper Current (5/18/11) reports that public television--you know, the non-commercial outlet--will start airing more commercials:

The move could be controversial for the network, which has traditionally prided itself on offering uninterrupted programming over its 40-year history.

PBS will begin breaking into programs with underwriting and promo spots four times per hour on an experimental basis beginning this fall, it told station members at the PBS National Meeting here.

PBS corporate communications official Anne Bentley issued a response that actually begins, "We are always looking at ways to improve the viewer experience." It goes on to say that "It is all about the viewer," and--perhaps most bizarrely--claims, "Initial testing showed that viewers didn't really notice the change." Really? People didn't notice a commercial in the middle of a PBS show?

In other PBS news, some stations are apparently considering leaving PBS altogether, according to a report in the New York Times (5/22/11). The main complaint seems to be about money--the stations think they're paying too much to air the national programming.

There is, of course, a possible silver lining in all of this. One could imagine public TV stations breaking free from PBS and seeking out more independent programming to fill out their schedules. (Democracy Now! instead of the NewsHour-- how does that sound?). It's a long shot, perhaps, but one can at least imagine a brighter future for public television stations that doesn't necessarily involve airing the conventional PBS programming.

Keith Olbermann popped up on the David Letterman show and gave one reason--perhaps one big reason--why he left MSNBC. As transcribed by MediaBistro's TVNewser (where you can also watch the video):

At some point in the last few years that I have been doing the news in the way that I do, it has occurred to me that the best place to continue doing the news in that way would be to do it at a place that is just in the news business and nothing else. It doesn't also own an amusement park in Orlando, it doesn't have outdoor advertising, or beet plantations in the Azores.

Labor journalist Mike Elk (In These Times, 5/16/11) made an excellent point after watching NBC host David Gregory interview Newt Gingrich on Sunday's Meet the Press (5/15/11). Elk wrote:

Speaking yesterday on Meet the Press, Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that "the Obama system of the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] is basically breaking the law to try to punish Boeing and to threaten every right-to-work state."

While Meet the Press host David Gregory vigorously challenged Newt Gingrich on details of his personal life, he failed to challenge Gingrich on his false assertion that the NLRB was breaking the law by finding that Boeing punished workers for striking in Washington state by moving a planned new production line there to nonunion South Carolina. Despite the NLRB complaint against Boeing being one of the most high-profile NLRB cases in decades and entirely consistent with past legal precedent, Gregory failed to say anything.

His decision not to challenge Gingrich on the Boeing case is especially troubling since the main sponsor of Meet the Press is none other than Boeing. The top of Meet the Press' website proudly boasts that the show is "sponsored by Boeing."  No other corporation is listed so prominently as a sponsor on the website. In addition, Boeing is the exclusive sponsor of Meet the Press'  iPhone app.

This reminded me of Gregory's response last year when ABC's This Week started posting factchecks (courtesy of Politifact) of their guests on their website:

An "interesting idea," Gregory allows, but not one the NBC show will be emulating. "People can factcheck Meet the Press every week on their own terms."

I guess that's especially true when the subject is a sponsor.

A condensed version of an AP story (3/23/11) about USA Today's new business plan:

The nation's second-largest newspaper is expanding its coverage of advertising-friendly topics, designing content for smartphones and tablet computers and refreshing the look of its print edition, whose circulation has fallen by 20 percent over the past three years....

For readers, it means lots of travel tips, gadget reviews, sports features, financial advice and lifestyle recommendations. Top editors say investigative journalism will also be emphasized....

Even as it publishes more stories aimed at attracting advertisers, USA Today is promising to produce more hard-hitting coverage from an expanded team of investigative reporters. The investigative unit now consists of nine reporters and editors compared with more than 30 people devoted to entertainment coverage.

For more on the reality of ad-friendly journalism, read Janine  Jackson's "Fear and Favor" report in the March issue of Extra!.

The L.A. Times has an interesting piece (10/22/10) about KCET, the local PBS affiliate that is bolting from PBS because it says it can't afford to pay the fees PBS wants to charge them. What happened is that KCET, for a little while at least, was very good at raising corporate money; the PBS fee formula required them to pay more as a result, even though that corporate underwriting was supposed to be used for producing programming.

Who did the money come from? Oil giant BP. So much money that, as the Times noted, "in gratitude KCET bosses renamed their historic Sunset Boulevard soundstage BP Studios." But that funding dried up (BP has other, bigger problems to deal with), and the station is stuck with a rather unfortunate association with a reviled multinational corporation:

Meanwhile, the BP Studios sign became an embarrassment on the KCET lot. "Several of our TV show guests began to ask about that sign and it was becoming a real problem for us from a PR standpoint," said Neal Kendall, executive producer of Tavis Smiley, the talkshow taped on the KCET lot that airs on 200 PBS stations nationwide.

Earlier this year, KCET officials discreetly covered up the sign. Station management says the move is only temporary.

Los Angeles Times columnist James Rainey (9/15/10) takes a look at "experts" appearing on local newscasts who are actually paid spokespeople for commercial interests--without viewers being made aware of this fact.

He focuses on "toy expert" Elizabeth Werner, who makes appearances on local stations to talk up new products--on behalf of a company paid by toy manufactures to do so. Her employer, DWJ Television, says it tells TV stations that companies are footing the bill for her promotional appearances. If that's true, then the burden is clearly on the stations to tell viewers about this connection. Rainey argues that it's the law, too:

Federal law requires disclosure, too, "when a broadcast station transmits any matter for which money, service or other valuable consideration is either directly or indirectly paid." That would include noting that advocates giving an opinion about a product have been paid to do so.

Station operators must "exercise reasonable diligence" in trying to discern whether promotional payments have been made, FCC regulations say. Stations that fail to disclose, with either a spoken or on-screen disclaimer, can be fined up to $37,500 per violation. But you don't hear about a flood of penalties coming out of Washington, do you?

Rainey looked at three of Werner's recent appearances--in Detroit, Atlanta and Phoenix--and reports:

A spokesperson for the two Fox stations and the news director at the Phoenix outlet told me they had been told absolutely nothing about Werner being paid to tout products, which ranged from a Play-Doh press to a new Toy Story video game to the Paper Jamz electronic guitar.

Assuming they really didn't get any notice of Werner's pay arrangement (and the Phoenix station offered one e-mail that didn't disclose the sponsorship), that would put the stations in the clear, right?

Wrong. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a newsroom knows that when someone comes through the door offering their expertise, you start asking questions.

One would hope so, at least.

Washington Post ombud Andy Alexander devoted his August 22 piece to lauding how the paper handles stories about its parent company and its various business entanglements--which, as he explains, are rather extensive. The Washington Post Co. owns Newsweek, several television stations, and the Kaplan company, which runs the for-profit Kaplan University, the subject of recent critical media reports.

As Alexander put it:

The list of Washington Post Co. holdings and interests is extensive, and the relationships are complex. Whenever a news story discusses investment giant Berkshire Hathaway or its chief executive, Warren E. Buffett, it must note that he is a Post Co. board member. Likewise, stories about Facebook must mention that its board includes Post Co. chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham. Any story about LivingSocial, the consumer-oriented social networking site run by Tim O'Shaughnessy, must disclose that he is Graham's son-in-law.

How have the Post's editors and reporters been able to keep track of these conflicts? Alexander explained that

The Post's newsroom intranet added a list of holdings by the parent Washington Post Co., along with the names and primary business affiliations of its directors. The instructions are clear: "When we write about something that could impact, positively or negatively, one of those interests, we should be as transparent as possible about disclosing those relationships."

At the start of the piece,  Alexander wrote, "I regularly hear from readers deeply suspicious that The Post has concealed a self-interest." Given the array of Post conflicts, that is understandable. So in the interest of disclosure, why not make the Post's newsroom list of holdings and board affiliations public?

Unlike a lot of critiques of Amazon from the publishers' point of view, Colin Robertson's article in the latest issue of the Nation (8/2-9/10) does describe actual bad behavior on the part of the online bookseller:

Dennis Loy Johnson, co-publisher of the Brooklyn-based independent Melville House, is one of the few publishers who have dared to speak openly about Amazon's bullying. His story is far from atypical. In 2004 a representative of the retailer contacted Melville's distributor demanding an additional discount. Such payments are illegal under antitrust law, which precludes selling at different prices to different customers. Large retailers circumvent this restriction by disguising the extra discount under the rubric of "co-op," money paid to the bookseller for promotional services, often notional. In this case the distributor did not bother with such niceties, describing what Amazon was after as "kickback."

Johnson resisted Amazon's pressure and complained to Publishers Weekly about what he saw as the retailer's capo-like tactics. What happened next evidently still rankles. "I was at the Book Expo in New York and two guys from Amazon came to see me. They said that the company was watching what we were doing and that they strongly advised us to get in line. I was shocked at how blatant the pressure was." Within a couple of days Johnson noticed that the buy buttons for his books had been taken off Amazon's site, making Melville's titles unavailable.

If Amazon is violating anti-trust laws, the Justice Department should take action; certainly, putting an embargo on one's critics is creepy. But when Robertson suggests that the treatment Johnson describes is akin to Amazon's interaction with Macmillan chief John Sargent, "another man who recently lost his Amazon buy buttons," he seems to be seeking underdog sympathy for the publishing giant that is not really deserved.

The dispute between Macmillan and Amazon had to do with the pricing of ebooks; Amazon wanted them at 10 bucks, Macmillan at $13 or $15. The $10 price, Robertson writes, "was a concern throughout an industry worried that low prices of electronic versions would undermine profits from printed books and generally lower the perceived value of the product."

But as the New York Times' Motoko Rich has pointed out--and a more publisher-friendly reporter you could not hope for--publishers make about as much profit per-unit on a $10 ebook as they do on a $26 hardcover, and would get considerably higher profits on a $12 or $15 ebook. What Macmillan and other big publishers are trying to do is use a technological change to get windfall profits--just as the record labels did when they moved from vinyl to CDs (which even back then cost less to make), and just as the movie studios are doing right now with 3-D films. This is understandable behavior on the part of for-profit entities, but it's not particularly noble.

If Tower Records, say, had had the market clout to tell the labels that they should pass CDs' manufacturing savings along to the consumer, would it have been accused of trying to destroy music? If Loews told the studios that their 3-D markups had to come down, would people say the theater chain was going to be the doom of cinema? Corporate publishers are engaged in the same profit-maximizing behavior at the expense of consumers.