Surviving Capitalism (Not) : An anti-pension billionaire shows the five rules of deceptive native advertising

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

An anti-pension billionaire shows the five rules of deceptive native advertising

Click here to access article by David Sirota from PandoDaily.

In order to fully understand this article, I had to go on a 30 minute pursuit of what "native advertising" meant. The article uses the term throughout, but hardly defines what it means other than to suggest it is deceptive advertising. After much searching, I gather that it means using another, more legitimate media content to hide an advertisement. Googling the term led me to advertising industry sites and other media sites that used a variety of jargon to explain what they were doing. Although not totally satisfactory, Wikipedia offered the best explanation that I could find.

Surely you must be aware that advertising technology which has long ago infiltrated all capitalist media, is no longer used merely to sell products. Such technology is also widely used to sell political ideas to serve the class that owns the media--the capitalist class. In this article Sirota lists five strategies that one billionaire has used to promote the slashing of public worker's pensions via public television (PBS).