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A couple of Time Warner shareholders went after CNN CEO Jeff Bewkes Thursday in LA at a Time Warner shareholders meeting [...] David Almasi, the Veep of the National Center for Public Policy Research1, a conservative communications and research foundation, is in LA to question Bewkes. Both Almasi and President David Ridenour are Time Warner shareholders.
[...] “Mr. Bewkes, we have urged you many times to make CNN more objective,” Almasi said in his statement. “You have admitted to us in 2014 the need for more balance. We praised you last year after CNN President Jeffrey Zucker also acknowledged this and acted on the need for more diverse views. But bias is apparently worse than ever. As shareholders, we are concerned about the repetitional risk to our investment in Time Warner as CNN appears to be a key player in the war against the Trump presidency.”
Almasi cited a Media Research Center2 study of CNN programing for 14 hours and 27 minutes of news coverage back on May 12. The report concluded that all but 68 minutes were devoted to Trump with 96 guests out of 123 being negative.
[...] “I’m inquiring about CNN’s bias and our return on investment,” Almasi continued in his statement. “Half of the American public – which includes potential and current CNN viewers – voted for Trump last November and supports his agenda. CNN acts as if it is part of the anti-Trump resistance. Are you willing to lose viewers, possibly forever, because of the bias?”
Almasi even threatened Bewkes, saying that Media Research Center plans to alert advertisers about news programs that “peddle smear, hate and political extremism.”
He asked Bewkes, “Are you concerned about advertisers leaving CNN? Will you continue to ignore our appeals for objectivity at the risk to our investment in Time Warner?”
Source: The Daily Caller
1The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a self-described conservative think tank in the United States. In February 2014, at Apple Inc.'s annual shareholder meeting, NCPPR proposed Apple "disclose the costs of its sustainability programs" was rejected by 97% vote. The NCPPR representative argued that Apple's decision to have all of its power come from greens sources would lower shareholders' profits.
2The Media Research Center (MRC) is a politically conservative content analysis organization based in Reston, Virginia, founded in 1987 by activist L. Brent Bozell III. Its stated mission is to "prove—through sound scientific research—that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @05:45PM (1 child)
Why else would voting machines be pushed through when their security is shown to be terrible? Makes it very VERY easy to change the results.
Saw another report on election ballot handling where the "super secret tape" that shouldn't be removable was easily lifted and placed back. Boxes had enough openings to stuff ballots into. There was a single guy transporting the boxes in his van, he could stop anywhere along the line and do whatever.
Voting machines are terrible, paper ballots are not always 100% foolproof and require the participation and total transparency from start to finish.
The only way forward I can see is to use some crypto tech similar to bitcoin where the vote database gets distributed and mass verified, and each vote is tied to a token generated for each vote. The token would contain a hash that indicates what and who was voted for, to prevent people changing their minds and claiming fraud. Then millions of people check their vote results against the public database. Have the verification site only available through Tor to prevent IP / vote tracking, and thus anyone can download the vote results and do their own analysis.
Right now we have a massive black box system whose integrity depends on millions of volunteers and fail points. I do believe tech can make a more secure method, the main objection has always been the need to maintain anonymity of vote results. I think the above general method would suffice, and it would actually be preferable to eliminate party registration altogether. Why register as democrat or republican anyway? To participate in primaries which are obviously a load of crap?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:30AM
No. Screw your crypto, screw your tech in general. None it actually works like you think it does and more important 95% of the country will never understand the math well enough to have sufficient trust in it. The US Army showed us how to run an election. Look how they did it in Iraq. Nobody contested those elections and they were in effin war zones.
Sort out your voter registration lists far enough ahead to resolve disputes. Use hard to forge photo ID. (Although I think they managed to run some without this step, we would absolutely need it in the US) Paper ballots in clear plastic tubs sitting on unadorned tables. Every party with a candidate on the ballot can have a poll watcher who can keep eyes on the box from the time it is sitting there empty awaiting the first voter until it again sits empty after the final count is certified. Paper ballots go into the tub, voter's finger goes in the purple ink. Polls close, everybody watches the ballots get counted as they are withdrawn from the tub. Low tech, almost perfectly reliable. And zero chance of such a system being adopted anywhere in the US. Which tells us everything we need to know.