Interesting “Media Notes” column on washpost: Persuaders or Partisans (washingtonpost.com).
The part that really captured my attention was the following description of how online newspapers are now using Google’s advertising service to match up their readers with appropriate (or, in this case, not so appropriate) ads:
“The technology is not yet foolproof. The online edition of The New York Post, which is owned by the News Corporation, ran an article last month about a murder in which the victim’s body parts were packed in a suitcase, and Google served up an ad for a luggage dealer.”
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not sure exactly when this happened, but i read one of the wapost’s infinite series of “is howard dean a commie? or will he totally rock the white house?” articles recently, and the advertising link was for w-a-y right wingnut stuff. like “click here to get your deck of wanted democratic politicians playing cards” and “click here for the ann coulter book club.” looks like someone needs some better AI, huh?
These are the sorts of things that would make a wonderful collection, if only you could clip them out (I suppose you could always *print* and clip…)
You may remember that I had a similar experience when I was criticizing the Georgia flag for evoking symbols I considered racist. I ended up getting advertisements associated with white supremacist groups. Disturbing stuff, in part because they were clearly making enough money to buy advertising space on Blogger.
Thanks goodness – no supremacist ads for you on wordherders! 😉