Mitt’s latest (involuntary) weapon against Newt? Tom Brokaw

We’re sorry, this is just low: Back in 1997, Newt Gingrich faced a tough punishment for ethics violations similar to those that caused his predecessor’s downfall. So, clearly, with Mitt needing some strong ammo to hold him off in Florida, this is probably the right line of attack. Problem is … well, what the hell does Tom Brokaw have to do with this? Mitt’s latest ad in Florida is just a long replay of a news clip from that era, with a little bit of dramatic music to really sell the whole thing. Brokaw is understandably pissed: “I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad,” he said in a statement. “I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.” We’re pissed for him —Romney just co-opted his trusted image to score some cheap points. Not cool. NBC has asked the Romney campaign to remove their news footage from the clip, and they better. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

action President Obama recently made it known that he’d be writing some of his own tweets on his popular Twitter account. This is really an inevitable intersection of social media and politics, and we’ll admit, it’s sort of cool to read a tweet sent by a sitting U.S. President.
reaction The National Republican Senatorial Committee, conversely, has been tweeting for a while. When Obama started tweeting, the NRSC began retweeting faked posts designed to look like Obama wrote them; they’ve done the same to Harry Reid and Tim Kaine. source

Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

1946 The U.S. begins a scary sounding syphilis experiment in Guatemala, infecting prison inmates, women and mental patients with the STD. Because that’s ethical.
2010 An author researching a similar test at Tuskegee discovers the study and informs the U.S. government, who’s very sorry for doing that. Really sorry. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

We will replace the Photoshopped version currently on bp.com with the original image tonight. We’ve instructed our post-production team to refrain from doing this in the future.
BP spokesman Scott Dean • Describing the issue with the Photoshopped image that we posted about last night (and based on tweets and traffic, drew a lot of attention this morning). Dean says that there wasn’t anything outwardly sinister in the photo deception, just an ethically weak photo editor who inserted three images in spots where the screens were blank. Which doesn’t explain, you know, the fact that the photo’s meta data has a 2001 creation date. But we’ll let that one slide, because the PR guy says it wasn’t sinister. Oh yeah, our boy Charles Apple posted an update. Check it out. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

ethical Arizona State University takes DNA from the Havasupai Indians to help with research into high rates of diabetes for the tribe.
unethcial The school uses the DNA for many other unrelated studies, and now the school is paying the tribe lots of money. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Jan 2012 13:54