You’ve Heard Of Officials Putting On Fake TV News Interviews

Joe, Before you get your underwear in a bunch over this, don't you think that the last line "Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President." was a pretty good clue that this was not a news story? Just sayin...

Where did I say in my post that it was not in the ad? This is a simple pointer post. We did tons of stories about fake tv interviews when the government was accused of doing them. yes, it does raise an eyebrow with some people when an ad is made to sound like a news story. Read what I wrote again and the headline and i don't think I made an allegation that there was no id at the end. The ID at the end is not the issue.
and since this is political season where everything is perceived through the prism of whether it will help or hurt one candidate, people can take this as they wish. But, no, my "underwear" is not in a bunch. Where does this post suggest hysteria? See ya.

So, DWSUWF, the first line, "This is an election news update," isn't a tad misleading at all, since it's a commercial and not a news update?

So, pacatrue, do you think anyone - even one voter - was mislead with that tag line at the end?

The difference Joe , is the fake TV interviews produced by the government did not have have an ID at the end identifying the source. A pretty significant difference - don't you think?

That was not actually the first line. If you follow the progression at the Politico, one of two places that dumped this on the public, you'll see that the original "story" was the Obama campaign releasing an incomplete transcript. Why would they even bother to do this is one question.

The story then hours and hours later had an update that said the actual first line was "I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approved this message." The fact that Obama gave them the release was only in the update.

It was the combo of horrible journalism - not listening to the ad before reporting (kind of like here, actually though Politica is a de facto journalism site) - and poor actions from the Obama campaign. It's all small stuff but still ... Time magazine's blog still has the incorrect transcript up without further clarification or update.

Thanks for the update, templestark. It's good to know that the ad lead off with a statement that this is not actually news, just pretend news paid for by one of the campaigns. It's still a little dubious to me in the same way that those infomercials are, the ones which start off saying this is a paid advertisement, then act like a true call-in interview show with an unbiased doctor, say, and then close with an announcement that it was a paid advertisement. If such techniques didn't add some air of legitimacy to them, then the infomercial people wouldn't use the technique. Still, back to the Clinton ad, it remains a poor decision in my taste, but it's certainly not a voting issue for me by any stretch.

Being a campaign ad, Billary has to run the disclaimer. But what happens if she becomes POTUS, will she continue this practice that W used to spin facts?