Winehole23
12-04-2013, 10:20 AM
In the fifties, a bunch of rock stations got caught taking money from music producers to give their artists airtime. The "Payola (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2176/whats-the-story-on-the-radio-payola-scandal-of-the-1950s)" scam, as it was called, was sufficiently outrageous to become a major national scandal. Last month, Washington Post reporter Erik Wemple reported (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/11/20/politicos-mike-allen-native-advertising-pioneer/) that Politico's Mike Allen is running a similar scam — accepting lucrative payments from advertisers and lending his editorial voice to hyping, and sometimes parroting, their agenda. Given the relative importance of national politics vis-à-vis rock music, this struck me as a potentially career-ending revelation. Instead, Politico has ignored the report and carried on as if nothing at all were amiss.http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/12/politico-stonewalls-mike-allen-payola-scandal.html