Picture this: an independent State-based effort to improve the lives of regional locals is hijacked by a group of massive corporations, who in turn use this new and freshly budgeted organization as a lobbying front to do the exact opposite of its originally proposed mission statement. They now take taxpayer dollars in order to mislead and confuse the public into thinking positive change is happening, while under the surface consumer interests are trampled.
What's more, that new, dubious organization is now being taken nationally in an effort to mislead the public on an epic scale, and has the support of both President Bush and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
I don't know. That seems like important news to me. Not Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson vacationing in Mexico important, but important.
That's essentially what Public Knowledge discovered.
Art Brodsky's piece above is probably the most important technology news bit I've read in the past six months (certainly trumping the iPhone, the Facebook Beacon scandal, and random musings by some guy nobody gives two shits about on the latest social networking site).
Such stories receive ZERO PLAY among the top technology journalists, pundits and/or bloggers, which is why I have very little if any respect for anything we've built online.
Online technology news outlets are suffering from the exact same problems that plague cable news outlets, namely a fealty to advertisers and a certain Gordon Gecko paradigm. They can't be bothered to report on the fact that Rome is burning from the inside out because they're part of the problem. Telling the unsexy, complicated truth doesn't get hits. Calling Macintosh owners shitheels gets hits.
I assume counter-spin will ultimately turn Brodsky's findings into conspiracy theory, and the entire discussion will be forgotten in a month.
This culture is broken.
