The absolute state of journalism in 2018

White House reporter pushes Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and then Press Secretary Jen Psaki to back down on raising corporate taxes -- using statistics from a think tank funded by corporations.

 
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I don't think that story ever went anywhere but saw no retractions:
it honestly attempts to conflate several security breaches over decades. I dunno if it intentionally mudding the water for the FBI to run counterintelligence or it's a political/corporate hitjob via media outelt(s)

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-supermicro/

Bloomberg Businessweek first reported on China’s meddling with Supermicro products in October 2018, in an article that focused on accounts of added malicious chips found on server motherboards in 2015. That story said Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. had discovered the chips on equipment they’d purchased. Supermicro, Apple and Amazon publicly called for a retraction. U.S. government officials also disputed the article.

In its written response to questions, Supermicro said that no customer or government agency has ever informed the company about the discovery of malicious chips in its equipment. It also said it has “never found any malicious chips, even after engaging a third-party security firm to conduct an independent investigation on our products.” The company didn’t respond to a question about who chose the samples that were investigated.

After Bloomberg reported on the added-chip threat in October 2018, officials for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA made public statements either discounting the report’s validity or saying they had no knowledge of the attack as described. The NSA said at the time it was “befuddled” by Bloomberg’s report and was unable to corroborate it; the agency said last month that it stands by those comments.
 
43% of local media revenue is from sponsored content placed in your local newscast...


John Oliver sets up fake company, tricks local news stations into airing ridiculous product
https://mashable.com/video/john-oliver-tricks-local-tv-stations/

The Last Week Tonight budget must be going up. Not only did Sunday's episode see an entertaining cameo from none other than George Clooney, but John Oliver's team also splashed out on some sponsored TV spots for their brand new health product, Venus Veil.

The reason? To prove that you can get pretty much any old nonsense product onto local TV, minimal questions asked, if you're willing to pay just a small amount amount of money for it to be featured (in this case the Last Week Tonight team paid $2,800, $2,650, and $1,750 for three TV spots to advertise "an absurd medical product based on technology that absolutely doesn't exist").

The stunt concluded a deep dive into "sponsored content" segments on U.S. TV, with Oliver citing several examples of questionable medical products that have been presented uncritically on local news stations.

"The truth is, none of this was nearly difficult enough to get onto TV, and it wasn't even that expensive," Oliver concludes.

"It was all shockingly affordable and sadly, on some stations, didn't even look that out of place — and that is not good."
 
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