Dollarocracy (62 page)

93
. Pete Kasperowicz, “Issa Warns Taxpayers' Loss on Solyndra Loan May Near $850 Million,”
The Hill
, October 22, 2012; Neela Banerjee, “Darrell Issa to Probe Government Loan Programs After Solyndra Collapse,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 20, 2011. Far rarer were stories such as Brad Plumer “Five Myths About the Solyndra Collapse,”
Washington Post
, September 14, 2011. Note that Plumer's
story discrediting the Solyndra scandal appeared a year before the Issa hearing. The facts did not seem to matter.

94
. FAIR and Media Matters for America both have done rigorous work fact-checking and analyzing conservative news media, and their mountain of resultant work is fire-tested for credibility. The picture is not pretty. FAIR also applies the exact same standard to mainstream news media and finds much that is flawed there as well.

95
. Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind Poll, “Some News Leaves People Knowing Less,” press release, November 21, 2011.

96
. “Jon Stewart Says Those Who Watch Fox News Are the ‘Most Consistently Misinformed Media Viewers,'”
PolitiFact.com
, June 20, 2011,
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/
.

97
. Mark Howard, “Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid,” AlterNet, December 15, 2010,
http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/study_confirms_that_fox_news_makes_you_stupid/
.

98
. Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson,
The Tea Party and the Remaking of American Conservatism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 201.

99
. McPherson,
The Conservative Resurgence
, xiii.

100
. Robert McChesney conversation with Rick Kaplan, March 2002.

101
. See Eric Boehlert,
Lap Dogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush
(New York: Free Press, 2006).

102
. Noah Rothman, “Chris Matthews' Panel Eviscerates Obama's Debate Performance,”
Mediaite
, October 7, 2012.

103
. Erik Wemple, “Dick Morris ‘Landslide' Prediction Too Early to Call,”
Washington Post
, November 6, 2012.

104
. Simon Maloy, “Sean Hannity: Media Matters' 2008 Misinformer of the Year,”
mediamatters.org
, December 17, 2008.

105
. Terry Krepel, “O'Reilly Is Right: Fox's Hannity Is a ‘Republican Show,'”
mediamatters.org
, September 20, 2011.

106
. Solange Uwimana, “Fox News Redefines Unbalanced by Giving Romney 366 Percent More Airtime,”
mediamatters.org
, November 3, 2012.

107
. Skocpol and Williamson,
The Tea Party
, 201.

108
. Frank,
Pity the Billionaire
, 75.

109
. Skocpol and Williamson,
The Tea Party
, 132, 202.

110
. Quoted in Jeff Zeleny, “The Up-Close-and-Personal Candidate? A Thing of the Past,”
New York Times
, December 1, 2011.

111
. For a detailed examination of the 2000
Bush v. Gore
fight, which includes a chapter on the Fox intervention on election night, see John Nichols,
Jews for Buchanan
(New York: New Press, 2001). See also Melinda Wittstock, “Cousin John's Calls Tipped Election Tally: As US News Networks Raced to Declare the Winner, Fox Enjoyed a Natural Advantage,”
The Observer
, November 18, 2000.

112
. Meredith Blake, “Karl Rove Melts Down After Fox News Calls Ohio for Obama,”
Los Angeles Times
, November 7, 2012.

113
. Howell Raines, “Why Don't Honest Journalists Take on Roger Ailes and Fox News?,”
Washington Post
, March 14, 2010. See also Robert Greenwald,
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
,
http://www.outfoxed.org/
.

114
. Eric Boehlert, “30 Reasons Why Fox News Is Not Legit,”
mediamatters.org
, October 27, 2009.

115
. Quoted in Dylan Byers, “Rush Limbaugh: ‘Conservatism Did Not Lose,” Politico, November 7, 2012.

116
. Nader, “US Media.”

117
. Glenn Greenwald, “Election 2012 and the Media: A Vast Rightwing Conspiracy of Stupid,”
The Guardian
, August 30, 2012.

118
. Glenn Greenwald, “The Journalistic Mind,”
salon.com
, August 8, 2012.

119
. Todd Phillips, “It's the Need for Campaign Contributions That's the Problem,” Huffington Post, August 23, 2012.

120
. Walter Lippmann,
Liberty and the News
(Rpt., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010), 1, 2, 18, 35.

1
. Daily Download, “Obama Spent 10 Times as Much on Social Media as Romney,”
PBS NewsHour
, November 16, 2012.

2
. “10 Bold Ideas for the Future of Consulting,”
Campaigns & Elections
, September/October 2012.

3
. Ibid.

4
. Ibid.

5
. Ibid.

6
. See Jason Gainous and Kevin M. Wagner,
Rebooting American Politics: The Internet Revolution
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), chap. 1.

7
. William Grimes, “Clive Barnes, Who Raised Stakes in Dance and Theater Criticism, Dies at 81,”
New York Times
, November 19, 2008. The original quote appeared in a December 30, 1969,
New York Times
article. We like that Barnes added this proviso: “The most terrifying thing is what people do want.” But his core point regarding the democratic nature of television echoed popular thinking in the 1950s and 1960s.

8
. Satwant Kaur, “How Technology Turned the Tide in the Election,” Huffington Post, November 12, 2012.

9
. Quoted in
Inc.com
staff, “Who's Winning the 2012 Social Media Election? Take a Look at How the Obama and Romney Social Media Campaigns Measured Up This Summer,”
Inc.
, September 8, 2012.

10
. Paul Springer and Mel Carson, “2012: The First Digital Election,”
forbes.com
, November 5, 2012.

11
. Quoted in Paul Sloan, “Mark 2012 as History's Last ‘Social Media' Election,”
cnet.com
, November 6, 2012.

12
. T. W. Farnam, “Obama Has Aggressive Internet Strategy to Woo Supporters,”
Washington Post
, April 6, 2012.

13
. John Hudson, “The Most Expensive Election in History by the Numbers,”
theatlanticwire.com
, November 6, 2012,
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/11/most-expensive-election-history-numbers/58745/
.

14
. Fredreka Schouten and Christopher Schnaars, “Casino CEO Spends $39.6 Million in Late Election Effort,”
USA Today
, December 7, 2012.

15
. Quoted in Tony Gara, “Election Ads Boom in 2012, but the Online Shift Still Isn't Happening,”
wsj.com
, November 5, 2012.

16
. Quoted in Scott Bomboy, “Analysis: Internet Marketing Was Breakout Star of 2012 Campaign,”
constitutioncenter.org
, November 14, 2012.

17
. Quoted in Ned Martel, “Could the Campaign Ads Benefit from the Mad Men Touch?,”
washingtonpost.com
, October 24, 2012.

18
.
Campaigns & Elections
, July/August 2012; September/October 2012; November/December 2012. We've read
Campaign & Elections
for years and reviewed it closely throughout the 2012 election season to watch the development of digital campaigning.

19
. As we discuss in
Chapter 2
, the estimates for campaign spending vary dramatically, and that applies to Internet ad spending as well.
The Economist
placed it just north of $300 billion, but that was before the late surge in October and before the full extent of the spending levels became clear postelection. Some campaign insiders we consulted said online ad spending was around 10 percent of total ad spending. So we put the range well below 10 percent of total political advertising spending to play it safe. The actual total may well be closer to $500 million, and we hope in time a harder number will be determined. See “Of Mud and Money,”
The Economist
, September 8, 2012,
http://www.economist.com/node/21562211
.

20
. Pew Research Center, “Low Marks for the 2012 Election,”
people-press.org
, November 15, 2012.

21
. Cited in Aaron Smith, “Online Political Videos and Campaign 2012,”
pewinternet.org
, November 2, 2012.

22
. Aaron Smith and Maeve Duggan, “The State of the 2012 Election–Mobile Politics,”
pewinternet.org
, October 9, 2012.

23
. Tim Karr, “The Internet as Political Lie Detector,” Huffington Post, October 12, 2012.

24
. “Facebook, Tweets Key to Victory in US Presidential Elections,”
economictimes.indiatimes.com
, October 14, 2012.

25
. Allison Brennan, “Microtargeting: How Campaigns Know You Better Than You Know Yourself,”
cnn.com
, November 5, 2012.

26
. Robinson Meyer, “9 Concrete, Specific Things We Actually Know About How Social Media Shape Elections,”
theatlantic.com
, August 22, 2012.

27
. Quoted in Rob Lever, “2012 Election Campaign a Digital Battleground,” thepresidency.us, October 13, 2012.

28
. For a fascinating perspective on this technological utopianism (with useful historical context), consider Howard P. Segal,
Technological Utopianism in American Culture
, 20th anniversary ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005).

29
. This issue and many other related Internet issues are developed in Robert W. McChesney,
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Away from Democracy
(New York: New Press, 2013).

30
. For a recent discussion of this point, see Evgeny Morozov,
To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2013).

31
.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
, 130 S.Ct. 876.

32
. Quoted in Rick Cohen, “How Nonprofits Inadvertently Provide Cover for Political Donor Laundering,”
campaignlegalcenter.org
, September 6, 2012.

33
. “Survival of the Biggest,”
The Economist
, December 1, 2012, 11.

34
. See McChesney,
Digital Disconnect
, chap. 4.

35
. Shira Ovide and Evelyn M. Rusli, “How Facebook, Twitter Court Political Campaigns,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 2, 2012.

36
. Quoted in Craig Timberg, “Web Sites Lose to Google, AOL in Race for Obama, Romney Campaign Ads,”
Washington Post
, October 4, 2012.

37
. Joseph Turow,
The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 40–41.

38
. Quoted in Eli Pariser,
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
(New York: Penguin, 2011), 31.

39
. See, for example, Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Facebook Sells More Access to Members,”
Wall Street Journal
, October 1, 2012.

40
. Material for this paragraph is from Jeffrey Rosen, “Who Do They Think You Are?,”
New York Times Sunday Magazine
, December 2, 2012, 42–45. For an extensive development of these points, see McChesney,
Digital Disconnect
, chap. 5.

41
. Quoted in Turow,
The Daily You
, 158.

42
. Pariser,
The Filter Bubble.

43
. Rosen, “Who Do They Think You Are?,” 45.

44
. Sloan, “Mark 2012.”

45
. Rosen, “Who Do They Think You Are?,” 45.

46
. “Deus ex machine,”
The Economist
, November 3, 2012, 32.

47
. Alexis Madrigal, “I'm Being Followed: How Google—and 104 Other Companies—Are Tracking Me on the Web,”
The Atlantic
, February 2012,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/im-being-followed-how-google-151-and-104-other-companies-151-are-tracking-me-on-the-web/253758/
.

48
. Pariser,
The Filter Bubble
, 49.

49
. “Websites Lose Out on Election Advertisements,”
advertisementjournal.com
, October 10, 2012.

50
. All quoted in Timberg, “Web Sites Lose to Google.”

51
. Jamie Court, “Political Bloggers Should Reveal Funding,”
sfgate.com
, November 13, 2012.