Drilling Deep into MSNBC's Hydrofracking Ad Revenue
Praise aside, I've held a long running theory that Maddow's bosses at MSNBC limit her. If MSNBC takes money from the natural gas industry, airing pro-fracking commercials during Maddow's own show, every single night for years, it begs the question whether the reporting on hydrofracking is being neutralized. It surely is stunted or absent on most other networks.
An awkward moment occurred on The Bill Maher show in June 2012 as "The Hulk" star Mark Ruffalo noted that the American Gas Association's current propaganda is authored by Hill & Knowlton, the very same PR firm that persuaded Americans to smoke cigarettes long after scientific studies described the health dangers.
That same panel marks the only mention I could find of Rachel Maddow questioning genetically modified foods on TV - prior to last week (on HBO as opposed to MSNBC).
The High Cost of Raking in Walmart Money
Another super-nefarious advertiser on Maddow's show is Walmart, America's largest "welfare queen". Last year whistleblower accounts alleged Walmart's current and former CEOs covered up bribes made to fast-track growth in Mexico. Despite compelling evidence plastered on the front page of the NY Times, Obama invited Walmart's CEO to a White House business summit as if the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act didn't exist.
Like other networks, The Maddow Show did not see fit to cover this bribery scandal on TV (that I could find). Maddow did cover it on her blog, and took aim at Walmart on her Facebook page, but not her MSNBC show - I couldn't find a Maddow TV segment on Walmart's excesses since this 2011 piece, long before the "get to know the real Walmart" media spending spree.
The Adverse Side Effects of Pharmaceutical Ads
Also causing nausea the heavy rotation of pharmaceutical ads on all of MSNBC's shows. Besides the notoriety of that industry's parade of record-shattering liability settlements, sitting through their ads is frankly depressing. A daily listener of Maddow (who cannot skip commercials) has to hear a barrage of ads about chronic erectile difficulty, tumorous growths, paralysis, or uncontrollable urges to simultaneously projectile vomit and urinate - you get the idea.
I wonder if those ads, repeated all day long on MSNBC are intentional brain pollution, grossing viewers out to the point where they can't stand watching anymore.
But it also turns the stomach to see the beaming moms in commercials, happy to feed their kids the goodness of high-fructose corn syrup - or the guys in hard hats monitoring mile-long gas wells on computer screens, knowing they are shooting carcinogens into the ground and don't even measure the greenhouse gases that invisibly escape.
I consider Maddow a brave, articulate fighter of corporate malfeasance, but I wonder how she negotiates the internal culture at MSNBC/NBC, as they sell airtime to these sponsors, benefiting from access and favor with powerful political interests. We know how all the other networks deal with the conflict...whitewash.
As for Maddow's possible muzzle, we'll see if this GMO mention was a blink or a breach in future reports as other states pursue labeling initiatives. To date, only Connecticut has passed a GMO labeling law, but it won't take effect unless states with combined populations totaling 20 million pass similar laws. Tiny Vermont seems to be the next state moving a law through, but the industry is poised to spend and sue, ready with plenty of cash to smother the idea wherever it pops up next. Will Maddow cover this?
UPDATE: In order to win the debate once and for all, the fracking industry has begun funding a new type of "covert" ad, with the biggest names in center-left media lining up for the cash, including MSNBC, Huffington Post, The NY Times, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed and the AP.
Reporting in Counterpunch, environmental watchdog Steve Horn unpacks the new trend in "native ads", or new media content created specifically for paying advertisers that look and seem like articles but are manufactured for hire.
The NY Times prefers to call it "branded content", with the business division all for it and top editorial staff openly questioning the practice. Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post are also playing this sneaky new game, but the pact between the hydrofracking industry and the so-called liberal media is a shocking rubber-hits-the-road development that proves MSNBC is not at all neutral, despite Rachel Maddow's quaint reporting against the risky practice.
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