The Inside Truth Behind "Journalistic Integrity"

A large chunk of my career (16 years) was spent in the world of advertising. I worked for various advertising agencies planning and negotiating and recommending the placement of media for many top advertisers.  Basically I spent money, but since it was other people's money I had to make sure the money was being spent in the right places and my clients were getting the best possible deal.  That "best possible deal" involved more than getting the best costs, but also getting the best editorial coverage.

Magazine editors and TV news people who talk about journalistic or editorial integrity always make me laugh. In most cases there is no such thing. One of my first projects in advertising was working for a pet food company. We negotiated with CNN to run pet care segments just to put adjacent to our advertising.  Years later working for a major toy advertiser, I negotiated with magazines to run stories on toys from said advertiser, though their readers expected a different editorial selection. When Bayer Aspirin started its campaign about aspirin and heart attacks, to get our ads, magazines ran stories about heart care to run opposite our advertising. News magazines such as Time and Newsweek would run special food sections just to accommodate my food advertisers, Forbes created an FYI section (which eventually became a stand-alone magazine) solely to be able to entice electronics advertisers.

Those giant Coke cups you see the American Idol judges with are simply another type of advertising paid for by Coke.  Product placement in movies and TV shows were a frequent strategy I also employed.  If you like game shows, well, sometimes the prizes used are actually paid placements by advertisers, even the famous "life time supply of Rice-a-roni."

It works the other way around also.  Trade publications are notorious for  reminding advertisers that the best way to receive positive press is to throw them a few ads. Clients of mine have run trade ads precisely for that reason.

And it still goes on, take a look at an entertainment magazine, count the movie ads from each movie studio and compare it to the coverage that studio's movies receive.  While I have never worked on a cosmetics or fashion account, I have sat next to people who have and seen them issue reports to major fashion magazines such as Vogue detailing the coverage their products have received and threatening to pull all advertising if that coverage wasn't increased. You better believe that the editors threw away "journalistic integrity" to maintain multi-million dollar accounts.

After leaving the ad agency side of the business I switched to the magazine side and was able to see the process from this other side. There is supposed to be a wall of separation between the advertising and editorial staff of the business, but that wall does not exist. For example, as marketing director for a magazine group, I would once a year take the projected ad schedule for the following year and sit down with the editor's to negotiate what kind of editorial we would need to make those advertisers happy the next year.  As publisher of a different magazine, I directed my marketing staff to write articles about advertisers and we would run them in the book next to their ads, with a little slug at the top saying advertisement (in the ad business it they are called advertorials). The trick was to make the advertorials look just like the regular articles in the magazine.

There are two reasons why this is important information in today's political world.

First, if the advertising sales part of a media company, even with its traditional strict separation from the editorial side, can influence the stories a magazine will publish, just imagine what the influence of a bias that originates from the editorial department.  Editors who toss off their "journalistic integrity" so a different department can make money, will easily toss it off to accommodate their own political bias.

The other reason behind this stories importance has to do with some of the criticism against conservative stances.  In many cases when a study is published which refutes a liberal stance, the liberal counter attack is never about the facts or the methodology of the study, its usually some big evil corporate group gave grants to the organization who commissioned the study.  Sometimes they even point to studies/articles in magazines that agree with the liberal stances as support for their position.

What they don't tell you is that those same magazines they used as support may be running advertising from sponsors who are demanding those stories be published, just as I did as a media director -- or those same "evil corporations" who provided the grants for conservative study may be running advertising in the news sources that oppose the study.  In other words, the corporations that the progressives deem as evil, are actually supporting both sides of the argument.

I ran across this on the Heartland site in an article called, Media Matters Lies About The Heartland Institute — Again:

....Wrote Shauna Theel for Media Matters:

The Heartland Institute is a libertarian think tank that hosts regular conferences disputing mainstream climate science and received $676,500 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2006, including $90,000 specifically for ”General Operating Support — Climate Change.”

Media Matters, and other critics of Heartland, have been beating the dead horse named ”they get money from ExxonMobil” for years. Indeed, it’s the same tired “argument” the left uses against any group that questions anthropogenic global warming. But consider this: You can’t read the science journal Nature without being bombarded by ads by from oil companies. Is Nature bought and paid for by “Big Oil”? Is Media Matters tracking gifts from wind and solar companies to environmental advocacy groups? Why not? (That’s a rhetorical question. We all know the answer.)

....Doesn’t journalistic ethics require that these facts be acknowledged whenever the charge of undue corporate influence is made? Of course, journalistic ethics and Media Matters aren’t exactly frequent dance partners.

Truth be told, journalist ethics is an oxymoron not just for media matters but for most of the sources we approach for information. Whether it is AARP articles supporting Obamacare because they stand to make millions of dollars from sales of its licensed insurance products with the bill's passage or Al Gore's potential billions from his "green" investments should people actually believe what he pushes in his movie An"Inconvenient Truth." The only thing you should trust implicitly is the advice given during each episode of the "X-Files" Trust No One and make your own decisions.

Media Matters Eric Boehlert; Propaganda Minister For a Jew-Bashing Machine

A funny thing happened while I was taking my Shabbos nap the other day, Mr. Media Matters himself, Eric Boehlert read one of my posts. Exciting right? I mean it's not as cool as when Andrew Breitbart takes one of my posts from one of the "Bigs"  and puts it on his refrigerator, but it’s still pretty cool.

I was a bit surprised though when he said I wrote a"Jew-bashing"post. Particularly when one realizes my nickname "Yid With Lid" is slang for Jew wearing a yarmulke. The nickname stems from the fact that I am relatively observant of Jewish customs and religious ritual.

The Media Matters big-shot was talking specifically about a post called, Obama Forming an "I Really Love Israel" PR Squad To Try and Rescue Jewish Vote, an article where I criticized:

"…some low-level Jewish players have decided to seal their place in the progressive movement rather than act for the best interests of both the United States and its valuable Mid-East ally,  Israel."

After giving it some thought I realized that Eric Boehlert may be correct, maybe I am a Jew-basher.  I don't bash all Jews, only  ones who allow themselves to be used as tools of people who want to hurt other Jews (and some of the Jews on my wife's side but I don't write about them).  Interestingly most of the Jews I bash are associated with Eric Boehlert or his Jewish sugar-daddy George Soros.

Take for example, M.J. Rosenberg. Rosenberg employs anti-Semitic buzz words that seem to come right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He writes about the "pro-Israel lobby," controlling government decisions, a nice way to say that the Jews control the government; he complains that you can’t write anti-Israel pieces in the media, a nice way to say the Jews control the media; and uses the word "neocon" as a nice way to say "those dammed Jews."

Who pays Rosenberg to spew his hate?  Eric Boehlert and Media Matters for America pay Mr. Rosenberg (with the help of George Soros and the U.S. Government).

Maybe I am a serial Jew basher, after all via my blog The Lid, I’ve been bashing Boehlert's sugar-daddy George Soros for years, ever since his anti-Israel article in the NY Review of Books in 2007. That’s  when he spewed the anti-Semitic meme that the powerful Israel Lobby, those damned Jooooze, were preventing peace in the Middle East.

 In fact years before Glenn Beck talked about it, this site was explaining about how Soros helped the Nazi's as a teenager and called it the best time of his life. At the same time we talked about how Soros was pushing the new Barak Obama to stay on his anti-Israel path.

Now that I think about it, there are times when my bashing was directed against big groups of Jews, like the George Soros funded J-Street.

Until the election of Barack Obama J-Street was generally ignored by mainstream Israel advocates because its views generally did not take into consideration the safety of Israel. Indeed many (including me) have called the group anti-Israel. Obama tried to raise the profile of J-Street because they shared his negative perception of the Jewish State.

During the conflict with Hamas at the end of 2008, which was a response to thousands of missiles sent into Israeli civilian areas, J Street called Israel's "escalation in Gaza counterproductive" saying it was "disproportionate." The Soros-funded group also made a moral equivalency argument between the policies of Israel and Hamas, stating they found difficulty in distinguishing "between who is right and who is wrong" and "picking a side." Of course, they were ignoring the years of Gaza terrorism and the fact that Israel left the territory years before.

The group has felt my wrath because they advocated that the US negotiate with the terrorist group intent on destroying Israel, Hamas.

I bashed the entire J-Street group as they advocated for Hamas and fought the Congressional move to place additional sanctions on Iran.

My Jew-bashing even was directed toward the George Soros funded, Jewish Funds For Justice when they made false charges of Antisemitism against Glenn Beck and then two weeks later when they rounded up 400 Left-Wing Rabbis and published an anti-Beck letter in the Wall Street Journal.

The Rabbinical letter broke the Jewish laws against loshen hora (evil speech). Using Jewish Law, something the 400 progressive Rabbis should have been practicing, I explained how before they could make charges against Beck as they did in the letter, the Rabbis had to   among other things, research the veracity of the accusations and examine the motivation of the accuser. Jews are taught that even if charges are true (which was not the case this time) in the vast majority of cases there is a command to keep   that kind of talk to themselves. Because of ignoring the rules they were supposed to be teaching, the 400 “teachers” brought shame upon themselves, their holy profession, the entire Jewish people, and even worse, have committed a Chillul Hashem (desecration of God's name).

Put it all together and you realize that Eric Boehlert is right (sort of). I am a Jew-basher.  I bash Jews who use their Jewishness as an excuse to abandon Jewish law, to slander the Jewish people with anti-Semitic memes, or to de-legitimize the Jewish State.

A day after his original charge Eric Boehlert asked a follow-up question

Boehlert is referring to this line the original post:

I am at a loss at how these how these modern day Kapos-in training will be able to convince people of the President is really a buddy of the Jewish State.

The answer is no, I am not embarrassed.  I do wonder if Boehlert is embarrassed by the fact that he needs some remedial reading and history classes.  My use of the word these means I was not talking about all of Obama's Jewish supporters, just the four mentioned in the piece. As far as the use of the word kapo, all not all concentration camp inmates were kapos. A kapo was a prisoner who worked inside German Nazi concentration camps in lower administrative positions.  The reason for the disparagement of the kapo is many of them were very brutal to their fellow camp inmates. So Boehlert's comparison of kapos to concentration camp victims is an insult to those victims.

What is an even bigger insult to the memory of the Holocaust is that Boehlert, who works for someone who spreads anti-Semitic stereotypes ,and employs someone who spreads anti-Semitic stereotypes has the nerve to even mention the Holocaust.

Boehlert has the nerve to imply that I am misusing the memory of the Holocaust when his puppet-master George Soros uses the term Nazi as often as he changes his shorts.

As he does here comparing George Bush to the Nazis




Or here as he says Fox News uses Nazi  propaganda tactics:



The truth is, Eric Boehlert is part of the propaganda arm of a Jew-bashing machine.  Most of these Jew-slandering, Israel-bashing Jews described above are connected to Media Matters and/or with their sugar-daddy  George Soros.  Others like the Jews involved with "David Axelrod's Jewish PR Squad" are connected to the most anti-Israel President in American history, who has almost singlehandedly destroyed the economy of the United States. Both the Soros connected Jewish pawns and the pawns of the Obama campaign are willing to put their status in the progressive world before the good of their people, Israel, and most importantly the needs of the United States.  And for that reason those Jews earned their bashing.

As a senior member of the Soros Jew-bashing machine, Eric Boehlert's disingenuous actions as some sort of Holocaust police is quite frankly disgusting, and it is he should be ashamed of himself. Sadly if his work with Media Matters for America has proven anything, Boehlert will never be ashamed of himself because Boehlert like most of the Soros-run hit squad,  has no shame.