Reading The Pictures: A Banner Year For Corporate Debate Sponsors?

Back in October, following the Democratic debate at Drexel University, I was doing my usual run through the pictures when I landed on a page at Huffington Post 's "Off The Bus" project.

The entry featured a "behind the scenes" video by a young, indy media group called GroundReport. As the young reporter, Rachel Sterne, moved from campaign and media operations outside the Main Building Auditorium to the debate setting inside, something caught my eye.

Behind Ms. Sterne, on the far wall of the media's filing room, I noticed a banner for Walmart. What then attracted my notice -- while Ms. Sterne was interviewing Carl Cameron, the Chief Political Correspondent for FOX -- was a large banner over his shoulder for $18 billion drug giant, Astra Zeneca.

I thought enough of it to do a screen grab of the pharmaceutical banner, but I then sort of forgot about it. What rekindled my interest, however, was the buzz on Monday over the coal industry's sponsorship of at least three CNN debates. If you missed it, the coal industry has created a front group called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) which has a $35 million ad budget in states with primaries and caucuses to snow the public on the idea of "clean coal."

What is most disturbing, however, is the fact that, in those three debates -- including the one Monday night in South Carolina, as well as the CNN/YouTube debates in Nevada and Florida -- not one question was asked about global warming.

I know there are watchdogs, including Open Debates.org, which track corporate influence over the Commission for Public Debates (CPD), the organization that governs the debates once each party has selected a nominee. In searching the web for information on corporate sponsorship of party debates, however, I couldn't tell how these banners showed up, or how a deal like the one with ABEC came about.

So here are a few questions: First, who is selling corporate sponsorship to the party's presidential debates and what does it involve? Second, what corporations (besides the media corporations themselves) have backed which debates, and what issues might have been left off of which as a result? And third, but mostly: What is the point of candidates sanctimoniously calling each other out on taking money from lobbyists, PACs, and so on, when corporations can quietly buy a stake in the very stage they happen to be pontificating on?

For more of the visual, visit BAGnewsNotes.com.

No Questions On Global Warming Asked At CNN's Coal Industry-Sponsored Presidential Debates (ThinkProgress)
Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (Energy industry "clean coal" website)
Corporate Sponsorship of the Commission for Public Debates (via Open Debate)
Behind The Scenes In Last Night's Debate Spin Room: CNN and Fox Open Up On Debate Coverage Tactics (Ground Report video)

Comments

[DavidABEC]

http://www.americaspower.org/News/Behind-the-Plug/Debating-Climate-Change

[cindysundancer]

Much food for thought here. You know what I'm sensing in the air? Not much will change in Iraq, no matter who wins the next election. Sorry prediction; Iraq will become like Hawaii and all the land we stole from natives--ill gotten gain--but only a small percent of ethical Americans will want to give up on that huge pool of sweet crude beneath Iraq's sandy soil.

[ch4r1iegr1]

Ewwww. What the hell is Astra Zeneca and why are they doing ad placements on the political debates?

I went to grad school once for Integrated Marketing Communications. (I dropped out, traumatized, after one semester.) Trust me, corporations do not have accidental marketing. Wherever you see an ad... it's been put there because it works. (That's what focus groups, mail surveys, telephone interviews ect. are for.) Marketing is all about figuring out who your target market is and then getting your message to them as efficiently as possible. A consumer's brain is real estate and you want to get as big a share as possible.

I'd say the target market in this case must be old people on Medicare, who think they have all kinds of medical problems, who can be convinced to take any pill, no matter how many unproven side effects may be lurking.

American seniors do love their pills. I'm pretty sure that ad will get my dad's attention. He'll think about going to his doctor and he won't even know why. How can a 70 year-old man know about the current state of marketing. It's more invasive than ever before. Pills are killing millions of Americans every year, but their marketing is just so damn ubiquitous.

It's funny how many people complain about corporations, but it doesn't take long to find out that they shop at Best Buy, Office Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Macy's, Kohl's, ect. And they're fond of eating at Arby's, Burger King, Outback Steakhouse, Planet Hollywood, or whatever gross, commercial, greasy Frankenfood joint. It doesn't matter, they're all the same. The money all circles right back around to the rich man.

I envision a world where we all evolve beyond convenience-society and consumption-derived meaning. Only then, will corporate rule come to an end.

[Sciguy]

Whatever happened to sponsorship by non-partisan and non-business organizations like the League of Women Voters (didn't they sponsor debates, or am I all mixed up)? Whatever happened to Common Cause? Didn't we used to have a debate system that focused on issues and wasn't paid for by Fat Boys? Or am I having a leftover dream from the Nixon-Kennedy debate era?

[ImmanuelKant]

Does this discussion not point to the need for someone to lead that will represent and give voice to the people? The very idea our political system allows corporations (a fiction) a voice is very disturbing. I would not say that all fictions of government (entities created by paper and filing fees) are bad because there is no life to make them so. These fictions do have the ability to accumulate money a power granted by their paper creations and here and elsewhere money talks.
What the government did not give the fictions, and thankfully, is the ability to vote. Only human citizens can do this and we choose now whether we want the political system to represent us or the fictions collecting the money.
Yes I do support the nomination and election of John Edwards as he seems to understand this and is willing to change the status quo.

[research]

The race is over, less the one percent of Americans have undemocratically "caucused". There are a couple of adults running,

we Americans do not vote for honest politicians: we do not believe they can govern. So Kucinich, Gravel and others are excluded from debate.

The GE war profiteers select the corporatist candidates before Americans even hear the debates.

You American voters have proven yourselves incapable of seeing beyond the most obvious lies and deceptions.

All the remaining GE-vetted "contenders" are thick with Lieberman DLC.ORG and the PNAC.info crowd and credo: "We have a big stick and we're going to use it!"

So the MSM war profiteering military industrial corporations are safe. All the candidates will keep us in Iraq and at war forever.

Because there will always be a threat of Al quiada in Iraq.

[Pippen]

America has become a whore and everyone's just trying to pimp her out. And the sad thing is few people care anymore and certainly not the most powerful. American citizens have become sheep content to graze and use their cell phone toys, their suvs and watch American Idol.

We used to be a great country.

Our culture is being subverted by immigrants from both Mexico and abroad, who catagorically reject assimilation and see their efforts as an invasion. Some are protected by the very security laws currently on the books and some protected by the coming new security laws of the amnesty free liberals.

Make no mistake. It's ALL EVERY SINGLE TWISTED BIT OF IT is all corporate power guiding and corrupting our laws, and candidates to create a feudal state of haves and have nots.

We dont have a problem with people of color, its a pseudo class war we have and the poor and middle class are so ignorant and mired in their own racism they think the enemy is the guy who doesn't look like them. So the game continues and the rich win, again and again....

What do we have to do to sieze our country back? To remind the politicians WE THE PEOPLE run this game and not them or the corporations. We don't have a federal democracy anymore.

Doesn't matter who you vote for, they all have sold their souls to the corporate lobbyists like good lil minions. What's next ? Whatever it is coming down the pike I'm sure it's going to be a doozy.

[ThomH]

And of course Dennis Kucinich was blacked out of at least three debates and minimized in the others. But then the debates from which he was excluded were conducted by a media company (The Des Moines Register), a health insurance company (AARP) and a defense contractor (GE/NBC), each with vested interests in the outcome of the election.

Is it any wonder they excluded Kucinich, whose positions are strongly counter to their interests in each case?

Never mind that his positions are widely desired by the electorate--that's exactly why he frightens them, so they black him out and ridicule him. Would Tim Russert have posed the UFO question to Reagan, who saw them twice?

[angel66]

You nailed it. But it's obvious. The corporations literally control the debates. And what does it say about the candidates that they can't bring it up themselves?

[scooperss]

The so called debates are not watched in my home. I don't care to hear candidates spout the latest talking points the other candidates used the day/hour before. I don't have to hear them to know they're saying what they think I want to hear.
This year, none of them are saying what I want to hear.