“Branded” content, advertiser written stories that look like regular editorial matter, is getting lots of media attention, most of it good but some of it negative.

New York Times article: How Sponsored Content is Becoming King in a Facebook WorldOne booster is The New York Times, which headlined July 25, “In Media Company Advertising, Sponsored Content Is becoming King.”

NYT may be whistling in the dark since it posted July 28 a loss of $211,000 for Q2 vs. a profit of $16.4 million a year earlier. Stock is at $12.75 when it used to be in the $50’s. Digital ads were down 6.8% and total ads off 11.7%.

Facebook, meanwhile, which allows virtually any opinion to be posted, said sales in Q2 grew 59% to $6.44 billion while profits were up nearly a third to $2.06B.

NYT said publications large and small “have invested in teams to make sponsored content—written stories, videos or podcasts that look and feel like journalistic content—hoping to make up for declines in conventional ads.”

It notes The Atlantic says it gets three-quarters of its ad revenues that way. Slate, the web publisher, gets half of its ad revenue from branded. Hearst says it is “rolling out its native digital ad product to all 84 of its markets, buoyed by the success it has had in the U.S. with its ‘shared spaces’ product that lets advertisers inhabit the same area as editorial content.”

Oliver Rips Practice as Suicidal

Comedian John Oliver, on his Aug. 3, 2014 HBO show, said the practice is a threat to the editorial independence of newsrooms, tends to mislead readers, and erodes trust. Surveys show that about half the time readers don't realize that an ad has been "camouflaged" as editorial, he said.

“Ads are baked into content like chocolate chips into a cookie,” he said in an 11-minute segment, adding, “Except it’s more like raisins into a cookie—because nobody f---ing wants them there.”

He compared the mingling of news and ads as akin to dipping Twizzlers in guacamole, calling it “really gross,” and compared the results to botched heart surgery. Highlighted was the Scientology sponsored article that appeared on The Atlantic’s website in January 2013. The magazine pulled the article, which lauded the church and claimed a huge growth rate, “after an outcry.” An NYT executive is quoted as saying the paper was merely "sharing story-telling tools with advertisers."

Oliver likened the need for separation of ads and editorial to the need for separation of church and state demanded by the Constitution. As of July 31, 2016, the show had 7,356,372 views and had drawn 2,631 comments.

Mag Dissects Media but Skips Branded

New York mag’s July 25-Aug. 7 issue has a cover story on “The Case Against the Media by the Media."

New York magazineThe 14-page article quotes 30 journalists on journalism’s problems but there is no mention of branded advertising as one of the reasons for the decline in the credibility of media.

The mag quotes Gallup as finding in 1974 that 69% of Americans trusted the media. That was the year that President Nixon resigned after an expose by The Washington Post’s Carl Woodward and Bob Bernstein.

A Gallup poll last year found that “the only institutions Americans have less faith in than TV news (21%) and newspapers (20%) are Congress and ‘big business.’”

That is “humiliatingly low, especially for a group of people who fancy themselves members of ‘the Fourth Estate’” which is supposed to “balance” the other three—clergy, aristocracy and well-to-do, says the mag.

It faults its own self for not publishing last October Steven Brill’s investigation into Trump University, which was then picked up by Time. “We thought, wrongly, that Trump was fading and that the story had been told,” says the mag.

Social Media Rules, Says Frank Rich

“Social Media Rules Everything Now,” headlines a segment in the article by Frank Rich, ex-NYT and now at New York mag.

“The Power of Facebook to adjudicate what is news and what is not is extraordinary and, I think, unprecedented in the history of modern media,” he writes. “No media titan or institution has ever had this kind of reach and power.”

Frank RichRich is looking for “an antidote of stronger competition” to keep Facebook “honest” although he does not called Facebook dishonest.

A New York mag poll of 113 journalists found the “No. 1 reason people distrust the media now” is because “Our public discourse is more politically polarized,” which was agreed to by 50% of respondents.

Respondents agreed, by a 53% margin, that media have become “a broken business model that leaves journalists insufficiently funded to do good work.” Media “pander to audiences,” said 50% of them.

Facebook Fills in Holes Left by Media

This website has found that Facebook fills in holes left by mainstream media which are often governed by what is “politically correct” and which avoid important subjects because advertisers might be offended.

Google Project LoonOne such topic is the health threat of pulsed microwave radiation from numerous sources from cellphones, computers dependent on wireless access and cordless phones, to industrial-grade routers in schools, libraries, business and government offices, the 5,000+ cellphone towers that are a danger to anyone nearby, and Google’s Project Loon that would blanket the earth with high-flying Wi-Fi emitting balloons.

It is a scandal that almost all media dodge this issue, says Jerry Flynn, retired Canadian Army captain who supervised Canada’s pulsed radiation war unit for many years.

Our postings on the dangers of radiation have been picked up and circulated by numerous participants on Facebook. Many have lambasted the failure of governments and media to examine this issue and participants have sent us many leads on the issue that have proved to be valuable.

It’s no mystery to those on Facebook why NYT and other media ignore the health threats of pulsed radiation—three of the five biggest advertisers are telecom companies—AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Major advertisers include Apple, Samsung and other internet hardware and software companies.

NYT is not only promoting its own “T Brand Studio” branded ad function but is touting its own “virtual reality” product that requires a box to be fitted on the head of the user which then bombards the brain with electrical impulses.

Caution Needed with Cellphones, Computers

The telecom and computer industries do not want computer and cellphone users to be afraid of these instruments. But many cautionary practices are not only advisable but essential. Dr. Martha Herbert of Mass. General Hospital and Cindy Sage, Ph.D., have a basic list which should be posted in schools, libraries, offices and public places and publicized in media.

• No cellphones in pants pocket or on the belt
• No cellphone use during pregnancy
• No wireless laptops
• No iPads at school, no wireless anything
• No cellphones, particularly iPhones
• No cordless phones
• No baby monitors or wireless surveillance monitoring
• No compact fluorescent bulbs
• Keep cellphone on the desk or away from body
• Mothers use corded phones
• Have wired computers and laptops
• Wire classrooms for internet
• Use cable modem instead of wireless
• Use corded landline phones
• Use your ears and eyes instead of baby monitors
• Use regular incandescent bulbs

Eruvim Avoided by NYT

Another topic avoided by NYT is the Orthodox Jewish religious boundary called eruvim. The concept has been battled for at least eight years with Southampton, Westhampton Beach and Quogue recently agreeing to allow the boundary. NYT has done two articles on the subject in the past three and a half years, the latest May 30 by Matt Chaban, a real estate reporter.

Millions of dollars in legal fees have been expended on the issue and court filings have totaled in the billions of words. No official of WHB signed the agreement which may invalidate it.

Attempts to create an eruv in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, have resulted in markers for the eruv being “repeatedly vandalized,” reported dnainfo, a blog covering New York neighborhoods.

The Lubavitch Hasidic community, longtime residents of the neighborhood, “for the large part do not use or condone the symbolic enclosures,” said dnainfo.