Deception Watch: AstroTurf, Lobbying, and Dirty Politics
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-01 13:42:51 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-01 13:42:51 UTC
Media Bias
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The BBC has been accused of yielding to political pressure since the last election and allowing a right-wing bias to emerge in its journalism.
The serious criticism by a distinguished media professor suggests that the BBC has compromised its impartiality by depending too heavily on sources from business, the media, law and order and politics.
Covert Marketing
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Two-time "Worst Company In America" winner Electronic Arts isn't doing its publicity department any favors. The company's new freemium game Dungeon Keeper tricks frustrated players into leaving bad reviews on its own site, instead of on the Google Play Store, Gamasutra reports.
Politics
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Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., is defending his actions after he physically threatened a reporter at the Capitol after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
The confrontation began Tuesday when Michael Scotto, a reporter for New York cable news station NY1, asked Grimm about a Justice Department investigation into his campaign finances.
After cutting the interview short, Grimm told Scotto, "You ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this (expletive) balcony." He also threatened to "break (Scotto) in half."
NY1 posted video of the incident on its website.
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The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity (through its Wisconsin Reporter and Watchdog.org websites) has aggressively attacked the "John Doe" probe into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Its outlets have also published new information about the apparent targets of the investigation, but they have omitted an important detail: Franklin Center has close ties to individuals and groups that may be caught up in the John Doe.
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Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.
Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference) and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.
South Korea
Revisionism
Consumerism and Distraction
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This ad strongly promotes the values of consumerism, and implies that consumerism leads directly to happiness. In the ad, the girls bought these shoes, are wearing them, and are now fashionable, popular, and happy. This message encourages the belief that spending money and obtaining material goods is the only path to happiness for girls. This big lie will lower girls’ self-esteem and perhaps cause them to purchase unnecessary goods in their quest to appear cool and likeable.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Techrights Does Not Compete With LLM Slop, It Exposes the Bastards, Plagiarists and Scammers Who Do That
- People like Scam Altman, still facing a lawsuit from his own sister for sexual abuse against her
- Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu Became LLM Slop and Some People Fail to See the Immorality of Plagiarism
- it lessens the incentive for people to publish real articles
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- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 30, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, May 30, 2025
- The "AI" (Slop) Bubble Already Popped, But It's Not an Overnight Collapse
- where Microsoft put its money
- No More Steven Astorino at IBM, Chatter About Weekly/Nonstop Layoffs at IBM
- What happened? Good luck guessing.
- Looking at Corruption in Europe, Going Beyond the EPO
- Expect a new series to kick off very soon
- Slopwatch: Security SPAM and LLM Slop for SEO and FUD Purposes, Perpetually Tarnishing the Perception of Linux and (Open)SSH Security
- A lot of this Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) comes from Microsoft and its LLMs
- Links 30/05/2025: Google's LLM Slop Pushers Are Killing Journalism and Shira Perlmutter Fails to Stop Bribed Regime From Legalising Plagiarism (in "AI" Clothing)
- Links for the day
- Links 30/05/2025: Offline Arts and "Threshold of Patience"
- Links for the day
- Signing Off Serious Lies With a Statement of Truth is No Joking Matter
- It's not hard to see what's happening here
- Links 30/05/2025: LLM Slop Already Ingests and Vomits Its Own Garbage, Facebook Exec Admits Copyrights a Concern Too
- Links for the day
- Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Result in More Whistleblowers From Microsoft
- Microsoft's predatory pricing is further
- EPO Poll: 68% Dissatisfied With Quality of Slop (Wrongly Framed as "AI") for Patent Classification
- Slop does not work, it's just falsely advertised with extra hype (funded by slop pushers that sponsor the major media)
- Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
- "It was a great success"
- Microsoft Layoffs Again in Bay Area
- Microsoft relies on people's false belief that being "in LinkedIn" will get you a job; well, seems like even working inside LinkedIn really sucks and you lose the job
- Gemini Links 30/05/2025: Fighting Against the Bad News, and Slop is Dehumanisation Disguised as "Intelligence"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 29, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, May 29, 2025
- Links 29/05/2025: Chinese Cracking Against EU Institutions (Prague), More Assaults on Media and Its Funding Sources
- Links for the day
- EPO Workers Caution That the Officials Are Still Illegally Trying to Replace Staff With Slop (to Lower Quality and Validity of European Patents)
- Nobody in Europe voted for any of this
- Links 29/05/2025: US Health Deficit and Malware Disguised as Slop Generator
- Links for the day
- Links 29/05/2025: Turtle Roadkill, Modern 'Tech' as a Sting
- Links for the day
- Thanks for All the Fish, Linux Format
- people who once wrote for it (or for other magazines) comment on the importance of this news
- People's Understanding of the History of GNU/Linux is Changing
- RMS is not a radical, he's just clever enough to see and foresee what's going on
- Microsofters Were Scheming to Take Over This Entire Web Site (in Their Own Words!)
- Money gets spent censoring/deplatforming people who speak about real issues; no money gets spent actually tackling those underlying issues
- Bicycles for the Minds and the Story Harrison Bergeron
- "The goal of having people in charge of the tools they use and that the tools should amplify ability" has long been abandoned
- Links 29/05/2025: YouTube Problem and Giant Privacy Hole in Microsoft OneDrive
- Links for the day
- [Video] Cory Doctorow Explains DMCA: DRM in the Browser (or Webapp) Will "Make It a Felony to Protect Your Privacy While You Use It."
- Pycon US Keynote Speaker Cory Doctorow
- United States Courts With Sworn Testimonies Are on Our Side, We'll Present the Same Here
- Chronicling what happened is a moral imperative
- Serial Sloppers Ruin and Lessen the Incentive to Cover "Linux"
- The Serial Sloppers (SSs) ought to be named and shamed, but almost nobody does this
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, May 28, 2025