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The Atlantic's Scientology Advertorial
magic maverick writes "The Atlantic recently ran an 'advertorial' for the 'Church of Scientology'. During this time, they filtered comments and removed negative comments. While they have since apologized, incisive.nu has an interesting run down of what they did wrong, from both a moral and business perspective."
It turns out these sponsored stories are commonplace, and a serious source of revenue: "Native ads are critical to The Atlantic’s livelihood. They are one element of digital advertising revenue, which in 2012 accounted for a striking 59 percent of the brand’s overall advertising revenue haul. Unclear just how much of the digital advertising revenue stems from sponsor content. We’re working on that."
The only question here is "Which one is the dog?"
Is it the Church of Scientology--whose batshit-crazy cult bullshit, strongarm tactics, litigious bullying, etc. are quite well-known by now? Is it these poor souls, who have fallen so far out of favor in recent years that they're losing members even in their traditional gullible himbo/bimbo bastion of Hollywood?
Or is it the Atlantic, who gave up any pretense of integrity long ago, and whore themselves out like a $5 hooker to any advertiser still dumb enough to think that anyone under the age of ancient still reads The Atlantic? Is it these poor souls, who still bother to publish a magazine that hasn't been relevant since The Great War?
I think a better analogy might be two dying dogs, lying down together in a last feeble attempt to fend off the cold.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
High Brow Magazine abandons principals in pursuit of the almighty dollar, news at 11.
This article is something, coming from a tech site that has blatantly posted advertisements disguised as stories, intentionally or not.
The only reason the atlantic caught shit was that it was that CoS is easy an hated target, product placement articles are nothing new or interesting.
The Onion skewered the "sponsored content" concept nicely yesterday. Even sponsored content needs to meet editorial standards, maybe even more so since you are accepting compensation for allowing them to use your brand name to promote theirs.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
This was recently mocked by both the Onion and Boing Boing. I think this is one of the first times that I'm less afraid of Cthulhu than the alternative. Actually, Cthulhu looks pretty damn reasonable when he wears a suit and a tie.
You know what the most serious source of revenue for a publication is? Readership.
Piss off your readers, they'll go somewhere else for news.
If your readers go somewhere else, so will your advertisers.
If The Atlantic takes a major fiscal hit over this (which I certainly hope they do), they've got no one to blame but themselves.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Our media is constantly showing their biases. I would not be surprised if someone at the Atlantic was a devote Scientologist. Just this week CBS told CNET that they could not give a best in show to Dish's SlingBox. It is up to you the consumer of media to decide what is accurate or not. Fox News sometimes reports on things that other media chooses not to cover. They also choose to give a voice to some people that other media chooses to ignore. I read a large variety of sources and then use my own judgement as to what is believable or not.
This happens all the time, why do you think we don't have any serious discussion about money in politics. Because the media gets paid because of all the money in politics via ad time etc. Why would the media want to have a discussion about money in politics? They profit from it like crazy.
Foreign Policy, which was bought by the Washington Post a few years ago, started running these type of things around the time (shortly before or after, don't recall) of the change in ownership. Now that I think about it, it was probably shortly after, because the Post itself began running a bunch of "Chinawatch" segments on its site, which were basically advertorials from China Daily, one of China's state-run newspapers. At any rate, around the time I noticed that FP started to be over half full of ads by volume, and that easily 3/4 of that was some marketing drivel about how awesome China is, or how Dubai is doing such wonderful things in the world, is when I dropped my subscription. I'm not paying for a bimonthly travel brochure, and I'm sure as hell not reading a magazine about international relations that sells ad space to propagandists.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
I cam across this very long, very interesting story about Scientology last night which details how with diminishing membership, it is trying to squeeze the very last dime out of those remaining and accelerating its die-off.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexklein/is-scientology-self-destructing
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
This is a really stupid rhetorical question, but it's a pretty good actual question. In case someone comes along who is interested in answers:
* Coercing members to have abortions so they won't waste money raising kids; instead, the money can go to the organization.
* Complete ban on mental health care.
* Major and sustained efforts to undermine health care for other people too, as part of their general war on anything related to psychiatry.
* Systematic destruction of family relationships and friendships which in any way endanger someone's loyalty to the organization.
* Systematic attacks on critics, including anyone who says anything just a bit negative.
* Various lawsuits, legal hassles, and so on; they use these to get things like preferential tax treatment (they get better tax breaks than any religion does).
* According to their founder, they are in fact not a religion at all, and are in no way religious; they adopted the "religion" thing only for legal benefits, while not actually being a religious organization in any way.
* Paulette Cooper and "operation Freakout", in which they forged bomb threats from someone who'd said things they didn't like.
* Lisa McPherson, who was tied to a bed and denied any sort of care until she was nearly-dead, then dropped off at a hospital (where she died because she was already too far gone), on the grounds that she had been thinking about seeking medical care. Anything where your autopsy reveals "cockroach feeding sites" should not be considered a viable medical treatment.
Christians can be really annoying (trust me on this; I am one, I should know), but the vast, vast, majority of them do not have a policy that says that they are obliged to take any and all possible measures to prevent me from disagreeing with them or telling other people I think they're wrong. Yes, some of the specific organizations have, over the last couple thousand years, gotten way out of line. But it's never been the official policy of the entire thing. The "Fair Game" policy is a whole new category compared to the policies that religions generally have.
In short, they are on the lunatic fringe compared even to the lunatic fringes of the world's religions. (And I don't say "any other religion" because L. Ron Hubbard said Scientology was not a religion, and he's presumably authoritative.)
When the Catholic Church tells its members to absolutely cut off all communciation with anyone who badmouths them, at all, ever, then we can talk about how Scientology is in any way similar to religions. Without that, you're just demonstrating severe ignorance of what it is that people dislike about Scientology.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Is the Atlantic held to a higher standard for whatever reason?
Yes.
There are two differences. One is that the ad was made to look like a normal, unbiased news article. But at the same time, someone was removing critical comments. The latter is bad, the former is pretty much unforgivable for a news site.
When the Catholic Church tells its members to absolutely cut off all communciation with anyone who badmouths them, at all, ever, then we can talk about how Scientology is in any way similar to religions.
So, basically unless they're exactly like Scientology then we can't discuss the similarities? Fuck you, that false dichotomy, and any other apologist for any organization that has anything like "excommunication". I won't even go into how similar the infiltration and intimidation tactics are, even if one is a bit worse than the other... I'll just pose the question: Do you really think a US presidential candidate could claim to be anything but Christian and still win the election?
When you point a finger at someone else remember that there are three pointing right back at you.
"one nation under god" indeed.