Labor Department spends stimulus funds for ads during Olbermann, Maddow shows

Washington Times
Jim McElhatton

Contract shows no new jobs were created

The Labor Department paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal stimulus funds to a public relations firm to run more than 100 commercials touting the Obama administration’s “green training” job efforts on two MSNBC cable shows, records show.

The commercials ran on MSNBC on shows hosted by Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann in 2009, but the contract didn’t report any jobs created, according to records reviewed recently by The Washington Times.

Spending reports under the federal Recovery Act show $495,000 paid to McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC, which the Labor Department hired to raise awareness “among employers and influencers about the [Job Corps] program’s existing and new training initiatives in high growth and environmentally friendly career areas” as well as spreading the word to prospective Job Corps enrollees.

The firm ultimately negotiated ad buys for “two approved spots” airing 14 times per week for two months on “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” and “The Rachel Maddow Show,” according to a project report, which listed the number zero under a section of the report asking how many jobs had been created through the stimulus contract.

David Williams, president of the nonprofit watchdog Taxpayers Protection Alliance, called the contract “questionable” because it created no jobs and because of the placement of the ads on shows viewed as friendly to the administration’s policies.

“Hiring a PR firm does not create jobs, and this was obviously meant for selling a particular political agenda,” Mr. Williams said. “The placement really reeks of a political ad rather than a job ad, and taxpayers see through this.

“Taxpayers would be a lot happier at the end of the day to see a completed road rather than a bunch of ads on cable television,” he said.

The public relations firm did not respond to inquiries from The Times about who directed the ads to appear on MSNBC, but Labor Department officials defended the expenditures, saying the decision to place the ads on the network — now NBC News — had nothing to do with politics.

In a joint email statement to The Times from two Labor Department spokesmen, David Roberts and Michael Volpe, officials said the money was used for outreach efforts to raise awareness among potential employers about the Job Corps’ green training in career areas, including automotive, advanced manufacturing and solar-panel installation.

Mr. Roberts and Mr. Volpe also said Labor Department research showed that advertisements would reach the target demographic of business owners and managers interested in hiring “green-trained” employees through a programming list that initially also included shows hosted by CNN’s Larry King and public television’s Jim Lehrer as well as the two MSNBC programs where the ads eventually appeared.

Public television was eliminated because advertising rates were too high, Labor officials said, and Larry King was dropped because MSNBC held the potential to reach more viewers, officials said. Officials gave no indication whether their research indicated if Fox News, ESPN or other cable outlets were considered for the Job Corps ads.

The Labor Department said that as measured in “gross impressions per spot,” the two MSNBC shows — Mr. Olbermann is no longer with the network — were twice as effective compared with running ads on Mr. King’s show, which also is no longer on the air.

Mr. Obama signed the $829 billion stimulus into law in February 2009 with the promise it would sustain 3.5 million jobs. But at its peak it likely was responsible for far fewer, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

The president has since said the economy was in a deeper slump than he had predicted coming into office, and the White House says the stimulus’s combination of spending and tax cuts helped bolster state and local governments and keep the downturn from becoming a depression.

Republicans, though, argue that the price tag was too large and say much of the spending went to fund Mr. Obama’s political agenda, such as green energy programs, rather than to shovel-ready roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.

REPORT: ABC, NBC Evening News Shows Ignore Massive Banking Scandal For More Than A Month

Media Matters

American television news outlets continue to devote sparse time to one of largest banking scandals in history. The controversy over whether major banks have been manipulating the LIBOR, a crucial interest rate that banks use to borrow money from one another, has been gathering steam for more than a month since U.S. and U.K. regulators fined British bank Barclays $450 million for its role in trying to rig the rate. 

CNN's Erin Burnett has explained that LIBOR is "an interest rate at the core of our entire economy," adding, "It's really not wrong to say that if you can't trust LIBOR, you can't trust anything in banking." According to The Economist, the LIBOR is used "as a benchmark to set payments on about $800 trillion worth of financial instruments." Baltimore City filed a lawsuit against major banks in the first of what may be a wave of such actions, alleging that the LIBOR manipulation potentially cost it millions of dollars in investment returns.

Despite the enormous implications of the scandal, ABC's World News and NBC's Nightly News both ignored the story in the 16 days after news of the Barclays fine broke, as we documented earlier this month. In the 16 days following the period of our original study, the LIBOR blackout has continued on ABC and NBC's flagship evening news programs. Those programs have gone more than a month without mentioning the controversy. 

CBS Evening News devoted more than five and a half minutes to the story in the first 16 days following the Barclays fine, but has not returned to the scandal in the subsequent 16 day period despite a host of new developments.

After spending roughly six and a half minutes combined covering the scandal on their evening newscasts and opinion programming between June 27 and July 12, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News devoted less than 32 minutes to stories related to the controversy from July 13 to July 28, with more than two-thirds of that coverage coming from CNN. 

These same news outlets spent significantly more time on trivialities like shark sightings and the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes divorce than on the banking scandal. For context, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN spent 44 minutes combined on the LIBOR scandal during their evening programming from June 27 to July 28. By contrast, these same outlets devoted nearly 65 minutes to stories about sharks for only the first sixteen days of that period.

Far from being a dormant story, fallout from allegations that the LIBOR has been manipulated has been steady.

Jeremy Scahill Hands Ann-Marie Slaughter Her Ass

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maine Caucus results – a vote of ‘No Confidence’

The Examiner
Mark Watchler

Ron Paul insists the cancelled Maine
caucus sites are in his voter strongholds.

February 12, 2012. Augusta, Maine. For the third time in this young primary election season, there are cries of vote fraud concerning the way the Republican Party is handling its caucuses and primaries. This time, the setting was the Maine Caucus. With each County free to schedule their vote any time over a month-long period, some local caucuses were held last week, while the majority were held yesterday. More than 16 percent of Maine’s precincts will hold their caucuses in the coming days and weeks.

Or will they?

Those election watchers who closely followed the events of yesterday’s Maine Caucus have some serious and legitimate questions. With the types of answers emanating from Maine GOP officials this morning, those questions are now turning into allegations – allegations of election fraud.

The cries of foul play aren’t only coming from one campaign this time, as they did from the Santorum campaign in Iowa, the Gingrich campaign in South Carolina or the Paul campaign in Nevada. Instead, cries of fraud and outrage are surfacing from anyone who values free and fair elections and America’s system of democracy itself.

Here is how the events of the Maine Caucus unfolded:

• In the days preceding the Saturday caucuses, a small handful of precincts held their votes early. The state GOP announced that the results of those precincts would be kept secret, so as not to influence the remaining precincts. Individual precinct results were leaked by various Precinct Captains and campaign representatives from multiple candidates. According to the leaks, Ron Paul had an impressive and early lead. Politico even quoted John Grooms, Newt Gingrich’s Maine campaign director saying, “I think Ron Paul is going to take it.”

• Saturday, caucus day for most of Maine, national media outlets declare Mitt Romney the winner of the Maine Caucus only seconds after polls close and the instant the first results are reported. As more and more precinct results were released, reported or otherwise made available, they actually showed a neck and neck race between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Slowly moving from 15 percent of precincts reporting to 50 percent, the race appeared to be a dead heat.

• By late evening Saturday night, it appeared that all votes had been counted and reported, except for the precincts whose caucuses are schedule in the coming days and the one that was postponed due to snow. Mitt Romney was declared the official winner, with Party officials claiming that the remaining votes aren’t enough to have any effect on the final results.

The results as of midnight Saturday:

83.7% reporting (502 of 600 precincts)

Mitt Romney – 2,190 (39.2%)

Ron Paul – 1,996 (35.7%)

Rick Santorum – 989 (17.7%)

Newt Gingrich – 349 (6.2%)

Other – 61 (1.1%)

• Ron Paul supporters are frustrated and outraged yet again by the blatant electioneering being perpetrated by the nation’s media. Not only did they declare Mitt Romney the winner in the first minutes, they’re now calling the election over with a virtual tie and 16 percent of precincts yet to report. Paul backers remind us that it shouldn’t be any surprise. Take NBC and its empire of media outlets for example. The network is owned by General Electric – one of the largest Defense Dept contractors in the world. Their profits will be affected by tens of billions of dollars depending on which candidate, Romney or Paul, would become the next US President.

• From midnight to dawn, Ron Paul supporters do the math on their own to arrive at the conclusion that not only is the caucus not over, but Ron Paul has a very good chance of actually winning. They explain:

83.7 percent of the vote cast is 5,585 votes. Mitt Romney leads Ron Paul by 194 votes. 16.3 percent of precincts outstanding amounts to 894 voters in 98 precincts still yet to vote. Ron Paul would only need to win by less than 2 votes per precinct to win, hardly an impossible feat for a candidate with the best ground game in the state and a week or more to motivate his troops.

• Sunday morning, Maine voters wake up to the unofficial news that the Republican Party of Maine has announced it is cancelling all remaining caucuses. Almost immediately, news outlets begin changing their vote tracking and headlines. Instead of Mitt Romney being the winner of the Maine Caucus with 16 percent of the vote yet to report, he is now the winner with 100 percent reporting. Those 98 precincts, and the voters who make up their caucuses, will not be allowed to vote.

Nevada Caucus

News of the election irregularities in Maine comes right on the heels of a questionable Republican Nevada Caucus. In that race, the first half of the state was counted and reported within an hour. The second half of the state, having been completely turned over to state party officials, was suddenly taking 2 days to count. Precinct captains claimed their totals didn’t match the state party’s numbers, just like in Iowa. CNN live unofficial exit polls and live vote counting all showed Ron Paul the overwhelming winner, but results announced by the state party showed the exact opposite. It didn’t help when the State Chair of the Nevada Republican Party – the one person in charge of certifying the results – resigned in the middle of the chaos rather than play a part in what was going on behind closed doors.

Read the article, ‘Paul Camp cries Fraud over Nevada Caucus Results’ for further details.

Iowa Caucus

For skeptics who find it too painful to admit to themselves that there are serious election irregularities occurring this election season and who insist these are nothing more than conspiracy theories, this author need only remind readers that the Iowa Republican Party had to publicly and officially reverse its results two weeks after they proclaimed Mitt Romney the winner last month. That was no fairy tale or conspiracy theory. And just as in Nevada, the Chair of the Iowa Republican Party promptly resigned as a result.

Now in Maine, it’s again no fairy tale or conspiracy theory to say the Maine Caucus was stolen. Regardless of which candidate had a probable victory taken from him is debatable. What’s not debatable is the fact that more than 16 percent of the Republican voters in Maine are going to be denied the right to vote, simply because the establishment elites don’t like the results so far. According to Texas Congressman Ron Paul on today’s Sunday morning news circuit, the precincts in Maine being denied the right to vote are located in Ron Paul strongholds where the campaign expected to win overwhelmingly.
If there’s one bright spot in this dilemma, it’s that unlike the previous states, it may not be too late to fight the injustice. Proving party officials changed vote totals without witnesses or evidence is one thing. Demanding that 98 precincts in Maine be allowed their Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote is another. If enough pressure and outrage is thrust upon officials in Maine, they may be persuaded to let the remaining caucuses take place as previously planned. Then, rightfully angry Ron Paul supporters might get what they believe was stolen from them – a win in the Maine Caucus.
For more information on illegitimate tactics taken by both the Republican Party leadership, as well as the nation media, read any of the following articles:

Paul Camp cries Fraud over Nevada Caucus Results

Mainstream Media not so Mainstream

CNN Changing Election Outcome

Journalists with High Ratings Punished by MSNBC for Opposing the Wars

DemocracyNow



After giving a nearly six-month tryout for the internet talk show host Cenk Uygur, the cable news channel MSNBC is preparing to instead award its 6:00 p.m. prime-time slot to the Reverend Al Sharpton. MSNBC President Phil Griffin offered Uygur a well-paid but lower-profile on-air slot, but Uygur rejected the offer, saying the decision to demote him was politically motivated. Uygur is known for aggressively interrogating leading Washington figures and challenging the political establishment, which he alleges made some MSNBC executives uneasy. He said Griffin had called him into his office in April and told him he had been talking to people in Washington and that they did not like Uygur’s tone. We speak with Uygur, who also blogs at several liberal websites and hosts a popular internet and radio show, "The Young Turks." "It is corporate media... It’s not just MSNBC. You think that the CNN hosts can aggressively challenge government officials? I don’t think so,” says Uygur.

Media falsifiers: censorship by mainstream liberal media

Redress

Paul J. Balles argues that the media lie of the moment reverberates through liberal TV channels pretending to report the news from all angles and from all points of view but in reality exercising censorship through omission and emphasis.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit. (Thucydides)

Day after day, TV anchor after anchor has been boasting "News from all angles, from all points of view".

There's never been such an open campaign to convince television viewers they aren't being brainwashed by the media's restricted point of view.

In what appears to be an attempt to outfox the Fox News Network, which has never admitted the truth about their own political bias, the more liberal networks of NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and CNN now propagandize their viewers with outright lies.

Dozens of liberal commentators, from MSNBC's Chris Matthews to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, have been making a mantra out of "News from all angles, from all points of view".

“Facebook, Twitter, blogs and websites with alternative news and commentary are slowly making mainstream media obsolete.”

When a media spokesperson makes a claim like that, he or she should make sure of its truth or refuse to repeat the falsehood.

Those who have been misinforming their audiences are intelligent enough to know that they are deceiving their viewers. Is it possible, for example, that any news reporter would not know of the media’s anti-Islamic brainwashing?

How can they continue to report on events like the Quran burning or the objections to the planned Islamic centre in New York without exposing the Islamaphobia? Where has the Muslim angle or point of view in the news been?

The internet is full of examples of under-reported news. One source of such stories is Project Censored, which lists the top censored stories of 2011:

1. Global plans to replace the dollar
2. US Department of Defence is the worst polluter on the planet
3. Internet privacy and personal access at risk
4. ICE operates secret detention and courts
5. Blackwater (Xe): the secret US war in Pakistan
6. Health care restrictions cost thousands of lives in US
7. External capitalist forces wreak havoc in Africa
8. Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over US Free Trade Agreement
9. Human rights abuses continue in Palestine
10. US Funds and supports the Taliban

Harvard Professor Stephen Walt reports that as early as 2005, 78 per cent of the news media, 72 per cent of military leaders and 69 per cent of foreign affairs specialists believed that backing Israel seriously damages America's image around the world.

That factual revelation isn’t something you hear on TV. If 78 per cent of the news media hold that belief, they are not reporting it.

Ex-Israeli author and jazz musician Gilad Atzmon writes regular internet columns on the Middle East. He has zero respect for the mainstream media, commenting:

Our independent websites and blogs are far more informative than the mainstream media. Collectively, we provide a source of information that people can trust, and we are rapidly becoming the main source of information.

Facebook, Twitter, blogs and websites with alternative news and commentary are slowly making mainstream media obsolete.

Major stories have been censored by the mainstream media. Often the censorship raises questions about why an important story has been censored.

The media has kept the fact that Obama has cut domestic spending while increasing military spending under wraps. Much military spending is unjustifiable and wasted.

Apart from any conspiracy theories about 9/11, serious questions about discrepancies in the official reports have been totally ignored by leading commentators.

Also censored by the networks are health risks in personal products like cosmetics and suntan lotion with nanotech particles.

Not satisfied with manufacturing cover-ups, the networks have now resorted to brainwashing viewers with lies about reporting the news from all angles and all points of view.

Olbermann Departs, as Media Consolidate Further

Informed Comment
Professor Juan Cole

People are blaming the abrupt departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC on that company’s merger with Comcast and Olbermann’s loss of the protection and patronage of Jeff Zucker, the former head of NBC programming. MSNBC says that the issue has nothing to do with Comcast.

It seems Olbermann is too extreme for US television. But Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, now they are mainstream. What universe could that proposition be true in? That of cranky old white billionaires. And television news is owned by them. Not by you.

Whether Comcast is the villain of the piece directly, things like the Comcast merger with MSNBC are responsible for there being very few voices on American television (and despite the proliferation of channels) like Olbermann’s. And for there being relatively little news on the “news” programs. Time Warner, General Electric and Comcast (partners in NBC), Viacom, Disney, and Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp own almost all television news. In other words, six big corporations determine what you will hear about the world if you get your news from television. There are fewer and fewer t.v. news outlets that do not belong to one of these six, a process called media consolidation.

For reasons of profit-seeking, when Disney acquired ABC, it looted the company’s news divisions. Profits are not to be had in hard news, but rather in tabloid news. It used to be that human interest stories would be ‘desert,’ but they have become the main meal.

Ironically,former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw was one of Olbermann’s biggest critics, afraid that the latter’s flamboyant and polarizing style would tarnish the reputation of regular NBC newsmen for objectivity.

What Brokaw seems not to have noticed is that NBC and MSNBC did, like most television news, a miserable job of covering the Iraq issue in 2002-2003–mainly buying White House propaganda. The powerful bias toward the point of view of the rich and powerful and well-connected in Washington demonstrated by all the major tv news outlets in 2002-2003 makes Olbermann look like a staid centrist.
Senator Al Franken, a former NBC employee, fulminated against the Comcast/ MSNBC merger:


But the FCC has passed it.

We’ll miss Keith. But it isn’t about him. It is about the ever-narrowing character of public comment in the US, about the few having most of everything. It is about media consolidation.