Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

White supremacy is terrorism.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The willow is too close to the house.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Second rate reporter says what?

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You are here: Home / The future, Mr. Gittes

The future, Mr. Gittes

by | 42 Comments

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This story’s a twofer for me, a chilling look into where the “news” industry is headed and an excuse to watch some YouTube clips of my favorite movie about California water rights:

Readers who type “Central Basin Municipal Water District” into Google News get a series of upbeat articles.

One story hails the benefits of Central Basin’s new recycled water system. Another piece praises the agency’s legal battle over groundwater rights. Others catalog the successes of its conservation programs.

What the average reader doesn’t know is that Central Basin is paying nearly $200,000 in taxpayer money for the glowing coverage. In a highly unusual move, the water district hired a consultant to produce promotional stories “written in the image of real news,” according to agreements reviewed by The Times.

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    jeffreyw

    Fuckin news has been there for a good while already. The pentagon friendly reporting from the last administration? Not that the media lost any sleep over that revelation.

  2. 2.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    What do you mean “where it’s headed”? Fuck, it’s there.

    The news of today; bought and paid for to promote anything but fact to the many in the furtherance of accumulating wealth for the few.

    Who needs facts when you can buy the news?

  3. 3.

    cleek

    “written in the image of real news”

    I Can’t Believe It’s Not News!

    Central Basin News Substitute is a good source of words and sentences, for people who cannot digest real news. Now with extra adjectives!

    NewsBeaters Artificial News Product is designed to provide real News flavor, but with 75% less facts! If you’ve been wanting to read news, but have trouble with facts, NewsBeaters Artificial News Product is for you!

    My family loves News, but the negativity sometimes upsets our minds. Thanks to Central Basin News Substitute, we can still enjoy real News flavor, but our minds are left clean and light afterwards. Central Basin News Substitute: for people who need a break!

  7. 7.

    Zifnab

    What the average reader doesn’t know is that Central Basin is paying nearly $200,000 in taxpayer money for the glowing coverage.

    The average taxpayer doesn’t know shit. That said, if the Central Basin was operated by GE or DOW Chemical, you’d be seeing “taxpayer money” go towards a dozen hours of commercial a month on the FOX Business Channel and wouldn’t even bat an eye. Meanwhile, if some Republican ever wants to privatize or shut down the project, I can guarantee a few grand will get sunk into “Central Basin is run by ACORN and pays for secret atheist abortions” ad hosted by the Andrew Breitbart Media Group.

    I’d love if we could do the responsible thing – like purifying our drinking water – without getting spoon-fed media spin telling us this is a good idea. But whatchagonnado?

  8. 8.

    Loneoak

    You can earn $200K for that bullshit? I’m in the wrong biz. Apparently I should be writing propaganda for water districts.

  9. 9.

    Earl Butz

    News, now with electrolytes.

    I’m really not in any way shocked. People have been paying for preferential media treatment for as long as I’ve been alive. When was the last time you saw a news report slamming the wealthy for purchasing legislation that suits their interests?

    Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:
    This has been going on for a long time, just as you say. It saves effort for those purporting to present the news to the public, when they can present to an unwitting public media releases already dressed up as news — no need to edit, no need to rewrite, and with TV news no need to reshoot. The corporation/government agency gets its story to go out without some pesky journalist asking pesky questions that might derail the whole thing. The mouthpiece “media consultancy” that puts out the faux story on its behalf has a perfectly happy customer. The “news org” that just whored itself out like this has one advertiser less likely to pull its business. (And always remember: the way the news biz works, we the public are the audience, not the actual customers.) John Q Public is none the wiser, and all the less likely to raise inconvenient questions himself.

    Corporations and agencies do have a right to get their message out. But it’s unethical to do it this way: dressing up press releases as news stories to be presented to the public without proper journalistic examination. And news orgs that play their part in this charade are corrupt.

    Be outraged, but don’t be surprised. This kind of thing is almost as old as journalism itself, certainly as old as the news business.

  13. 13.

    me

    “‘Cause when you reach over and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friend’s face, you’ll know what to do! Forget it, Marge, it’s Chinatown,” — Homer Simpson

  15. 15.

    James Gary

    an excuse to watch some YouTube clips of my favorite movie about California water rights

    Well, “Chinatown” is the beyond-obvious choice in the category. What I want to know, DougJ, is: what’s your second-favorite movie about California water rights?

    ;)

  17. 17.

    piratedan

    and let us not forget our interwebs search engines who were paid to promote pro BP links to the top of the list when people were trying to find out about the oil spill in the gulf.

  19. 19.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    hehe, I wonder if this is Ayn Rand libertarian paradise of the future she dreamed off were the statist propaganda is handled by the invisible hand of the freemarket.

    It really is something to rub into the glibertarians – how can the Central Basin Municipal Water District be anything but the jewel in the eye of Freemarket Jesus since they pay for such good news?

  22. 22.

    elmo

    @trollhattan:

    I lived in the Eastern Sierra for eight years, and you’re absolutely right about the Owens Dry Lake. Inyo County used to have an agriculture industry; now it’s a desert, with the communities in Keeler and Olancha having constant health problems from the ever-present dust.

    My buddy Stan Eller made his bones as the Mono County DA fighting to get water back into the Owens River, which is now again a fishing and tubing paradise. He’s the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court there now.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    As others have pointed out, this is an old phenomenon. It’s no coincidence that J-schools produce not only journalists, but PR specialists. The two are virtually interchangeable nowadays.

    Corporations have been putting out video “news releases” that are barely more than advertisements for some time now that local TV news uses to fill space when they’re not blaring on about the latest police activity.

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    @elmo:

    My buddy Stan Eller made his bones as the Mono County DA fighting to get water back into the Owens River, which is now again a fishing and tubing paradise. He’s the Presiding Judge of the Superior Court there now.

    Then he’s on the side of the angels. Please extend an “attaboy” from me, the next time you see him.

    Somewhat related, federal district court judge Wanger will be retiring from the bench in Fresno. He’s had a huge role in water and fisheries decisions over the last decade.

  25. 25.

    harlana

    weeelll, the Iraq invasion was marketed and sold to the public like a product (“New & Improved Misdirected Vengeance”)

  27. 27.

    LarsThorwald

    So there’s this guy Walsh, do you understand? He’s tired of screwin’ his wife… So his friend says to him, “Hey, why don’t you do it like the Tea Partiers do?” So he says, “How do the Tea Partiers do it?”

    And the guy says, “Well, the Tea Partiers, first they screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Ayn Rand, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit… then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the debt or something like that. Makes it more exciting.”

    So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin’ his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads The Fountainhead. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin’ again. He says, “Excuse me for a minute, honey.” He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin’ sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin’ again. He gets up to start to leave again to go contemplate the debt.

    She looks at him and says, “Hey, what’s the matter with ya? You’re screwin’ just like a Tea Partier!”

    A Tea Partier! Hahahahaha!

  29. 29.

    fuckwit

    Network was indeed an instruction manual, not a satire.
    Dr. Strangelove was, apparently, a documentary, not a satire.
    Oftentimes, the Onion is a damn real newspaper.

    As someone on the internets said some time ago: “Their reality has lapped our satire”.

  31. 31.

    Arm The Homeless

    @trollhattan: The sad part is that in my lifetime the East will be joining-in on the fun. The areas that need the most help with water in-security, are the same places that cannot fund new infrastructure. Efficiency is the name of the game this century, unless we find an unlimited source of energy to desalinate with.

  32. 32.

    Calouste

    Terry Pratchet was working as a press officer for British Nuclear Power before he became successfull writing the Discworld novels. He wanted to do something more tied to reality.

  33. 33.

    Southern Beale

    In a highly unusual move, the water district hired a consultant to produce promotional stories “written in the image of real news,” according to agreements reviewed by The Times.

    Well remember Armstrong Williams? Maggie Gallagher?

    Remember “Karen Ryan reporting…”? Those video news releases from Ketchum Public Relations (or was Edelman? Or Fleischmann Hilliard?) promoting the Bush Administration’s Medicare bill (the unfunded one) and No Child Left Behind, and they were broadcast on TV stations all around the country without so much as an identifier saying they weren’t real news.

    Of course.

    There was just a story in the New York Times about one of these PR companies trying to dupe food bloggers into praising some Cargill crap, Marie Callender’s lasagne I think, and it backfired on them big-time.

    Everything is all PR now.

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Can someone get my comment at 23 out of moderation hell? I used a naughty word (not the actual spelling of soshulist, but another naughty word with a forbidden boner pill string in it) and it’s been there for, like, a long time.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    @Arm The Homeless:

    It’s a fair question whether peak oil or peak water hits first, and peak water will cause far more war and death. IIUC the primary reason India and Packistan have nukes aimed at one another is Kashmir, the reason being control over the Indus River headwaters.

    Throw in global warming reducing the glaciers while raising sea levels and flooding Bangladesh and we might have tens of millions of displaced people with nowhere to go. Jolly good fun!

    I confess I don’t know much about eastern U.S. water issues, other than chronic shortages in the southern portion and the specter of regionwide hydrofracking poisoning numerous aquifers. That last bit is at least avoidable, if somebody can face down the gas industry.

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