Hillarysworld

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CA-Gov: Now The News...With Meg Whitman!

by Steve Singiser, Wed Apr 14, 2010 at 05:40:05 PM PDT

If California's TV news directors are lazy enough, and the Whitman for Governor campaign is industrious enough, expect to see a lot of MegTV on your local newcasts in the Golden State:

One of the richest candidates in California history has found a new way to spend money. Gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman has reached into her deep pockets and pulled out tailored sound bites.

Whitman, who has poured almost $60 million of her own money into the campaign just for the Republican nomination, is offering TV stations video and sound bites of her campaign events. It's a way reporters can cover her from far away.

Whitman's campaign said in a statement, "We are starting something brand new at the Whitman campaign...so you can more easily provide your viewers with breaking news from California's gubernatorial campaign."

My goodness, how charitable of them.

There is precedent, of course, for giving news channels pre-packaged video news releases for consumption as actual news. Corporations (and the Bush administration) have used this practice in the past, leading to some unwanted attention from the FCC, who worried that such video news releases were often undisclosed by the news stations that ran them.

The Whitman campaign is claiming that they are trying to provide the state's media outlets with a service, one that will release them from the burden of sending reporters scrambling across the state.

This is, of course, bull****. And transparent bull****, at that.

The primary concern of Team Whitman is that their candidate is quite clearly deathly afraid of unscripted environments, particularly with the media.

So afraid is she of being confronted, on any topic, by reporters, that she is now offering the production services of her campaign staff as a substitute for having them even show up. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad.

Continues @ DailyKos.com

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I particularly do not like when those with aspiration of rising to political office take on news media channels in guise. If they want, they should spend their money and make it advertisement.  To make them 'news' or stories or talk shows anchored/hosted by a political-hopeful or worse a candidate is just plain wrong.

We have to worry about this whether it is self-funded or sponsored.  It creates lopsided 'news' that other media will be forced to cover simply because they are candidates/hopefuls. In other words, their "show" becomes news and that is not a good thing for the electorate.

If they want exposure, let them face the UNSCRIPTED forums where they are interviewed by journalists.