Do You Want ExxonMobil, Chevron or British Petroleum to Finance Your News?

Well, they do.

Take a look at this CBS News page from the online CBS News website:

Home » Politics

McCain Office Mailed Threat, White Powder

Letter's Return Address Listed A Colorado Inmate; Second Letter Deemed False Alarm

You can see the full page at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/21/...

(By the way, these letters were undoubtedly a classic Rove diversion from the "I don't know how many houses I have" fiasco by McCain.)

Of course, this pales by comparison to the news that ExxonMobil, which just recently made the largest corporate profit in the history of the world, and is a key leader in Cheney's "War for Oil" foreign policy, is sponsoring most of coverage of the presidential debates. Uh, if you don't think that puts a damper on questions about the role of ExxonMobil and other oil companies in our military adventures, then you got a rock for a brain.

And how about this sponsor of the "sacrosanct" PBS Jim Lehrer News Hour:

"Corporate Responsibility: The Power, The Power of Human Energy. Finding Newer Cleaner Ways to Power the World."

Funny, but here's what Chevron has listed under its news section as of August 22:

Chevron Announces Agreements to Develop the Hebron Heavy Oil Project Offshore in Canada

Chevron Reports Second Quarter Net Income of $6 Billion

Chevron Announces First Oil Production From Agbami Field

Nothing about cleaner energy. In fact the heavy oil project in Canada is bound to be an environmental disaster.

Then there's the progressive "Atlantic Monthly," as another example.

Here's the ad appearing above the column of right-wing shill turned moderate-anti-neo-con Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic:

That's as of 8:03 EST on August 22nd at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.... (The ad may have rotated off the page by the time you look at it, but we captured this at the time designated above.)

Now, many progressive websites do select out such ads, but they become equally beholden to not offending candidates, advocacy groups who might be going centrist (there recently has been a big brouhaha from their Florida chapter about the Sierra Club "endorsing" Clorox, for example), and companies like Amazon.com, etc. (Not to mention that you not infrequently find photos of the likes of Ann Coulter pop up on progressive sites, with an encouragement to click through and enroll in her e-mail alerts.) Advertising inherently puts political pressure on news, cultural, and political coverage and accountability, no matter what progressive sites say about separating advertising and editorial and news coverage. That's what the corporate media says too.

In fact, awhile back we engaged in a rather "spirited" exchange with several leading sites who were running ads and accepting lots of money from a group that was opposed to net neutrality, and the ads were grossly deceptive to boot. Talk about being paid to hang yourself!

BuzzFlash, just so you know, is pragmatic. We live in a culture awash in advertising. Advertising, with its lure of aspirational lifestyle pleasures, is, in fact, what drives the engine of the consumption society. In that sense, we do strongly disapprove of the damage done to our society by holding out the promise that if we just purchase one more thing, we will reach the ultimate state of pleasure, or we will be thinner, or sexier, or live a life of luxury.

But we realize that advertising is an international reality. We're realists. We aren't trying to create a utopia.

But we are trying to inject at least some alternative models into the mix.

One of them is what we have been doing for 8 years at BuzzFlash: having our readers finance BuzzFlash. We are not accountable to ExxonMobil or Chevron or British Petroleum, or some political candidate or cause, just to you. We choose only the premiums we think will be progressive and of interest to our readers. We do not accept any money from book or DVD sellers whatsoever to sell a book or promote it. (In case you didn't know, booksellers often pay for space in the front of bookstores. That's why you often see so many of those kooky, slanderous titles from the right-wing Regnery Press up front in the chain stores.)

So we're not on some Quixotic crusade, we're just offering something different for those who want their news and commentary supported by the citizens of America, not the advertisers.

BuzzFlash is only accountable to you.

It's your choice on whether or not you want this style of journalism to grow, or whether you'll stick with corporate news and websites who are always looking over their shoulder not to offend the people who are giving them the check to cover their next payroll.

And one final note, money that comes from foundations and big Democratic funding consortiums doesn't come without restrictions either. They too have their agendas and will ask that certain stories be spiked or not pursued, or they won't have to ask because there is a wink and a nod about how far a publication can go given the agenda of the givers.

BuzzFlash has never spiked or censored a story because of third-party pressure, subtle or heavy...never.

We can only continue to grow with your vote of confidence and your financial support, because we are responsible to you and no one else.

Yes, we bite our e-nails every month when our credit card is due because we almost never have enough money, we have loaned BuzzFlash money (including $6500 right at this moment), and our readers get tired of our fund drives (remember that if $10,000 is spent on premiums, only about 30% goes back into operating expenses to cover our staff and numerous other costs because of the costs of buying and fulfilling the premiums.)

But would we change what we've been doing short of going bankrupt, not a chance.

You don't get an opportunity to build new models of journalism, free of advertising very often.

And we'll continue expanding and borrowing money until the till runs out.

Right now, our readers are coming back strong and it looks like we'll make it through another month, the same as we have held our breaths since May of 2000. But we're still here, as feisty, candid and as irreverently honest as ever.

It's not that hard to gouge Americans by running an oil foreign policy such as ExxonMobil and Cheney do, and live like royalty, but it sure is tough scraping by running a scrappy news and commentary site that even a lot of "progressive" sites are afraid of posting because it might offend their funders and advertisers.

We don't fashion ourselves as anyone like the great and legendary I.F. Stone, but money isn't the motivator for us, as it wasn't for him.

We're just patriots running a publication on a shoestring and the prayer of enough premium purchases and donations coming through to make it to the next month -- and somehow hire additional staff on a wing and a prayer.

We're fine with that, although our fingernails are getting shorter by the month.

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

August 22, 2008

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