Sunday, May 23, 2010

Legal Ads Influence the News

By Gary Tilzer

Today's Daily News has 5 pages of legal ads from the NYS Comptroller. The paper also has a story about an
ongoing investigation, Gov. Paterson making nice by endorsing Andrew Cuomo(DN) The story does not contain anything about the NYS Comptroller who is also under investigation by Cuomo. Could the 5 pages of legal ads which the advertising thin Daily News be a factor in there reporting on the comptrollers? DiNapoli In Cuomo's Crosshairs Cuomo and his special counsel, Linda Lacewell, confirmed an April 5, 2007 meeting between Global Strategy Group’s Jon Silvan, a partner from Intermedia (a private equity investment firm seeking pension fund investments) and a MirRam Executive and DiNapoli at his Manhattan office is part of the AG’s probe.

Has the Daily News
abandoned their constitutionally protected role to inform the public. Could the reason why the DN did not go after the state comptroller was the paper needed his friends who appointed him, in our state legislators’ complicity to protect one of their most steady income streams. With the internet taking away regular business advertising, most local papers today depend on legal notices to survive, which our State legislators require our court system and other areas of government to print in newspapers. In exchange for this lucrative advertising, newspapers are careful not to bite the hand that feeds them. Many state legislatures across the country have begun to eliminate this system of media manipulation by allowing legal notices to be permanently posted (newspapers have less than a week shelf life) on the internet for free, but, of course, New York’s is not one of them. Our state legislators don’t want to give up their hold on our print media. Legal Ads Help Keep the Political Machines in Power (True News)

In NJ
GANNETT's NJ newspaper the COURIER-POST sued the Penn newspaper PENN JERSEY ADVANCE, INC., to stop them from getting ads from the New Jersey courts, comptrollers an government. Gannett lawsuit which they won just shows you have important and political the revenue of legal ads are. NJ lawmakers wrote into their rules and law that all Jersey legal ads would go to Jersey newspapers because they knew the money from the ads would mean that they would get more positive coverage from the papers.

The legal ads system continues in New York and other cities because the political leaders have an arrangement with the local media to push them or the candidates they support. Local papers are filled with stories that praise elected officials and attack challengers to them. Many journalist in local papers say privately the ads effect what they are able to report. The Law Journal a very powerful paper in the legal field and courts in New York cannot exist without legal ads. Time seems to be running out on the Journal and other papers who depend on legal ads.

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