Month: June 2024

From an article in The Guardian 2/30/24 By Eric Berger:

Headline: “Deluge of ‘pink slime’ websites threaten to drown out truth with fake news in US election”

Sub-head: “News sites pushing misinformation are proliferating, aiming to look like reliable sources as local newspapers close down”

“Political groups on the right and left are using fake news websites designed to look like reliable sources of information to fill the void left by the demise of local newspapers, raising fears of the impact that they might have during the United States’ bitterly fought 2024 election.

“Some media experts are concerned that the so-called pink slime websites, often funded domestically, could prove at least as harmful to political discourse and voters’ faith in media and democracy as foreign disinformation efforts in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20240716221159/https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/20/fake-news-websites-us-election

Drought monitor from US.Gov

From The Guardian 6/7/24 by Dharna Noor  – Beware of “advertorials” disguised as “news”.

http://web.archive.org/web/20240610215520/https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/07/united-nations-fossil-fuel-ads-news-tech-media

Headline: “News and tech media mostly quiet after UN chief calls for ban on ads for oil and gas”

For example, “‘Geoffrey Supran, an associate professor and scholar of fossil-fuel industry messaging at the University of Miami, said ‘there is also potentially a concern about the outlet’s editorial staff being exposed to the ads’ claims’. In a 1980s internal public relations assessment, ‘oil giant Mobil indicated that it believed its advertorials in the New York Times had shifted the outlet’s position in its favor,’ he said.

“‘The fossil-fuel industry’s advertising campaigns are state-of-the-art propaganda developed in partnership with public relations experts, executed via media outlets, and based on almost a century of collaborative experience,’ said Supran.”

According to The Nation quoted in The Guardian article, “Many outlets are not only accepting fossil-fuel advertisements, but also have arms that are producing them. Reuters, the New York Times, Bloomberg, Politico, and The Washington Post all count oil majors as clients of their in-house production studios, events businesses and other branded content . . .”