The Big Winner in 2014 Elections: MSM Brings in Windfall Profits from Political Ads & "mud-slinging"
With record outside spending, stations bringing in windfall profits from political ads and "mud-slinging"
by
Sarah Lazare, staff writer
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/04/big-winner-2014-elections-corporate-television
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In an election marked by record outside spending, including "dark money" sources, a clear winner has already emerged: the corporate television stations making windfall profits from political advertising.
Cable news stations have nearly doubled their sales in political ads since the last midterm elections in 2010, according to figures from Kanta Media ad tracking firm, which were provided to Reuters. TV stations across the U.S. will bring in approximately $2.4 billion from local, state, and federal elections ads, they report. These numbers are just slightly behind the 2012 presidential election, which saw $2.9 billion spent on TV ads.
A recent Pew Research poll finds that, for local TV stations—which remain one of the sources people in the U.S. depend on most for their political news—the 2014 elections could turn out to be one of the most profitable ever.
According to Cecilia Kang and Matea Gold writing for the Washington Post: "This year’s deluge of political ads is being driven largely by super PACs and other independent groups seeking to shape the hard-fought battle over control of the U.S. Senate."
An estimated 908,000 TV ads regarding the U.S. Senate elections aired through late October, the Center for Public Integrity reports. In seven key Senate races, dark money groups are behind 20 percent of all TV ads. A new analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project finds that only 26 percent of these Senate ads are positive.
Michael Beckel, reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, told Common Dreams that the 2010 Citizens United ruling was a "game changer" for political campaign spending. "That ruling has enabled non-party groups to become ever more prominent and we have seen a proliferation of super PACs and politically active nonprofits that endorse candidates and sling mud in attack ads. This election is on pace to be most expensive midterm in history."
TV stations are mandated to offer candidates their lowest rates, but the same rule does not apply for outside organizations. Therefore, the proliferation of super PACs is boosting profits, because TV stations can charge them more for their ads. "Some news stations have been airing additional news programs in order sell more ads," said Beckel. "Selling political ads has been very lucrative."
Ahead of the 2014 elections, media companies bought up local stations, anticipating these windfall profits. This resulted in "massive" media consolidation, contributing to the national trend of growing conglomerates and a "narrowing" news perspective, argues Reed Richardson in the Nation.
"To elect our nation’s leaders, wealthy 1-percenters and mega-corporations have been given carte blanche to secretly fund organizations that spend obscene amounts of money advertising on TV stations owned by other mega-corporations and wealthy 1-percenters," writes Richardson. "In short, our political finance system has become little more than an income redistribution model for the ultra-rich and a no-lose proposition for big media corporations."
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Political systems, as with all man's inventions, have built-in limitations. In this case, it is a system built by flawed individuals, making compromises with themselves and others in order to achieve some kind of consensus. Compromises of which, the compromisers themselves hope to avoid ever having to actually deal with or experience personally, and if so to mute the effects as much as possible for their own benefit.
Thus, the inherent flaws in the system are also inherent in the design -- as the flaws are actually just a reflection of the makers themselves. Glaringly so. We avert our eyes and ears constantly to avoid these flaws. And yet they persist, as do we in committing them over and over again.
Further, the truth is that all political systems are little more than a collection of popular notions of governance at any given time, which often quite inexplicably can become ever-so impossible to remove once vetted, owing in-part to ''tradition and founding-father-myopia.'' As well as the entrenchment and control of the system's levers and buttons by the beneficiaries of keeping things the same. The 1%.
Once any political system reaches its apex it can only do it's adherents and citizenry more harm as it devolves and begins to consume itself. Expansion-contraction. It's a natural phenomenon and it applies to all things that exist within this 3-dimensional reality of ours.
- Its a torsion wave and its effects are unavoidable, if not predictable.....
K&R
