Channel Four 4
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/cambridge-analytica-database-identified-black-voters-as-ripe-for-deterrence-british-broadcaster-says/
no lnx
Cambridge Analytica database identified Black U.S. voters as ripe for ‘deterrence,’ British broadcaster says
Sep. 28, 2020 at 3:26 pm Updated Sep. 28, 2020
By Craig Timberg and Isaac Stanley-Becker
The Washington Post
A database built by Cambridge Analytica, the Republican-aligned firm that unraveled over allegations of improper use of Facebook data, disproportionately identified Black voters as ripe for “Deterrence” in profiles prepared for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to a report Monday from Britain’s Channel 4 News.
The president’s reelection campaign called the segment “fake news,” and an aide who handled data in 2016 said the material went unused by the campaign.
Still, the evidence the British broadcaster says it has uncovered is likely to intensify concerns about voter suppression and the opportunities afforded by Facebook to narrowly segment and target portions of the electorate.
The material revives debates over the extent to which the voter profiles touted by Cambridge Analytica were actually used to sway the vote in 2016. The firm was founded in part by The Trump campaign’s onetime chief executive, Steve Bannon, and collapsed in 2018 after news reports detailed its improper use of Facebook data in analyzing voters and other allegations of impropriety.
The new cache of materials could add detail to allegations about Cambridge Analytica’s role in the campaign, particularly in efforts to harness Facebook’s powerful ad technologies to dissuade Black voters from supporting Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Four years later, turnout among similar communities may help decide the Nov. 3 contest.
The tactics described in the Channel 4 report are legal, and the sorting of voters into categories for the purposes of political messaging has been a routine – and all but unregulated – part of campaign tactics for years.
A database of nearly 200 million American voters, obtained by Channel 4, sorted likely Democratic voters into several categories, such as “Core Clinton” or “Disengaged Clinton.” The database put 3.5 million African Americans into a third category called “Deterrence,” in an apparent bid to single them out for messages designed to dissuade them from voting, the report said.
The file spanned 16 states, according to the news channel. In crucial battlegrounds, Black voters made up a disproportionate share of those marked for “Deterrence” – 17% in Wisconsin despite making up just 5.4% of voters, and 33% in Michigan while accounting for 15% of the voting population.
The margin in these states, which Trump won in 2016, was exceptionally narrow. Trump bested Clinton in Michigan by 11,000 votes. Meanwhile, Black turnout fell in Michigan and Wisconsin by more than 12 points, estimates suggest.
The database, in Channel 4’s telling, was “used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign” – an allegation the campaign denied.
“This machine was built in part by a team from the now-notorious company Cambridge Analytica, working hand in glove with a team from the Republican National Committee,” the segment further claimed. Channel 4 did not say how it had obtained the database.
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for Trump’s reelection campaign, dismissed the report as “fake news,” adding in a statement that Trump’s record gave him a “relationship of trust with African American voters.” The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, “has not seen the documents” described by the British broadcaster, said Paris Dennard, the party’s senior communications adviser for Black media affairs. He added, “that is not our data.”
Matt Braynard, who served as the Trump campaign’s data director in 2016, said his team did not use the categorizations featured in the report, relying instead on material from the party and from thefirm L2 Political.He also said, “Deterrence doesn’t mean suppression and it doesn’t mean deterrence from voting. It just means deterrence from voting for Hillary Clinton.” James Barnes, a former Facebook employee embedded with Trump’s team, said he had “no exposure to a ‘deterrence’ segment in 2016.”
Trump’s 2016 campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $5.9 million, according to Federal Election Commission data tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Wisconsin state Sen. Lena Taylor, a Democrat from Milwaukee featured in the Channel 4 News report, called the revelations “shocking” in an interview with The Washington Post. “It just makes me feel disgusted what the president of the United States did to disenfranchise the citizens of our most important thing, which is our democracy.”
Cambridge Analytica’s former director of business development, Brittany Kaiser, called the new findings consistent with her understanding of how Cambridge Analytica and Republicans targeted Black voters in 2016. She provided an internal company document describing a similar sorting of Democrat voters into categories, including “Deterrent,” from that year.
The document also showed $55,000 spent in Georgia targeting African American voters with advertising, including the Clinton “Superpredator” video.
“This comes as no surprise,” said Kaiser, who did not work on the Trump campaign but received detailed briefings about it while still working for Cambridge Analytica. “I’ve been screaming my head off about this for years.”
More than half of the voters the database marked for “Deterrence” messages were Black, Asian or Latinos, with particularly high percentages in predominantly African American neighborhoods in urban areas in key areas such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, according to Channel 4 News. It quoted voters in predominantly Black areas of Milwaukee and elsewhere expressing frustration that they had been targeted in this way.
The Channel 4 report also showed evidence that the database sorted American voters into categories based on psychological analyses provided by Cambridge Analytica, using terms such as “Individualist,” “Thinker” and “Adventurer” as shorthand indicating what kind of political messaging might be most effective in reaching them.
David Carroll, an associate professor of media design at the New School in New York who has waged a multi-year battle to learn what information Cambridge Analytica had assembled on him, said he found the evidence of Republican voter suppression presented by the Channel 4 report “unambiguous.”
omfg
msnbc? calls it rommney exxn bill, not the bipart infra
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/senior-exxonmobil-lobbyist/
raw story
Channel 4 in the U.K. published a startling expose on ExxonMobil's lobbyists who revealed the top most important U.S. Senators who are the ones behind any legislation that might hurt the oil industry.
While many oil companies are diversifying with natural gas, it appears ExxonMobil is going all-in battling to keep "big oil" alive and well.
"Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the U.S. Congress for the last eight years," explained the report.
"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not," said McCoy on camera. "Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing, there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders."
McCoy compared his work with elected officials to fishing with ExxonMobil who supplies the "bait" before it "reels in" the official on issues like a carbon tax, electric cars, taxation and infrastructure.
"When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: 'Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah,'" McCoy continued. "And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax.You know, it's all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in."
"I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They're a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them," McCoy also said.
He went on to explain that lobbyists aim to have close relationships with officials.
"You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we've asked for everything," he said.
But it was the shocking revelation that he has 11 U.S. Senators on the hook.
"Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio," were all cited.
He went on to explain that the last thing they want is to appear in a public hearing before Congress where the American people can see.
"We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress," McCoy confessed.
"There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?" he asked.
See the video below and read the full story at Channel 4:
wiki
Channel 4, in common with the other main British stations which were broadcast on analogue, airs a range of programming. It wasestablished in 1982 with a specific intention of providing programming to groups of minority interests, not catered for by its competitors, which at the time were only the BBC and ITV.[1]
Channel 4 was one of the first "publisher-broadcaster" stations in the world. All of its programming is produced by other companies; it exists only to fund, broadcast and distribute its programmes – a stipulation which is included in its licence to broadcast.[2] It was also one of the first broadcasters toput its name on the introduction or end credits of programmes that it did not produce, a practice that is now widespread.
Global Warming
On 8 March 2007 Channel 4 screened the highly controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. The programme states that global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times".[citation needed] The programme's accuracy has been disputed on multiple points and several commentators have criticised it for being one-sided, noting that the mainstream position on global warming is supported by the scientific academies of the major industrialised nations[16]There were 246 complaints to Ofcom as of 25 April 2007,[17] including the complaints that the programme falsified data.[18]The programme has been criticised by scientists and scientific organisations and various scientists which participated in the documentary claimed their views had been distorted.
Against Nature: An earlier controversial Channel 4 programme made byMartin Durkinwhich was also critical of the environmental movement and was charged by the Independent Television Commission of the UK formisrepresenting and distorting the views of interviewees by selective editing.
The Greenhouse Conspiracy: An earlier Channel 4 documentary broadcast on 12 August 1990, as part of the Equinoxseries, in which similar claims were made. Three of the people interviewed (Lindzen, Michaels and Spencer) were also interviewed in The Great Global Warming Swindle.