About this episode

The episode discusses the impact of dark money on media and its implications for the upcoming midterm elections.

Conservative dark money is funding a network of so-called "pink slime" websites that sell influence to the fossil fuel industry and far-right special interests, where candidates and PACs can simply buy the coverage they want on hundreds, perhaps thousands of websites, and hundreds of millions of impressions across their ad networks. These sites look innocuous, but they're filled with undisclosed press releases, bylined to newsrooms or individuals that often don't exist. What's worse: they now outnumber the country's remaining local newspaper sites, and when Yale researchers put them side by side with the real thing, nearly half of Americans preferred the fake ones. Let's talk about it and what this means for the upcoming midterm elections.www.Patreon.com/KillTheComputer

Topics covered

• dark money
• media influence
• political advertising
• fake news
• midterm elections
• fossil fuel industry

Keywords

• pink slime
• dark money
• fossil fuel
• political influence
• fake news
• midterm elections
• advertising networks

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: fossil fuel industry, far-right special interests, Yale

Places: America

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