Recent quotes:
Pay transparency matters more than level?
employees who were underpaid—that is, paid less than the market rate for their position—were more satisfied with their work when their company was transparent about compensation. The percentage of underpaid employees who were satisfied with their compensation jumped to 82 percent from 40 percent when a manager simply sat down and discussed their pay. On the other hand, 64 percent of employees who were paid fairly (at market rate) believed they were underpaid, and would consider looking for higher-paying work elsewhere. The research shows that dissatisfied employees left even if their pay went up.
But Wednesday, spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury confirmed what I'd suspected: "The ad has not appeared on Comcast Spotlight and media reports and press releases to the contrary are incorrect." What happened here? It seems that MarijuanaDoctors.com jumped the gun, publishing its press release before it was sure the ad was going to air. "All commercials are subject to final review by Comcast Spotlight prior to airing and during that process it was determined that the spot did not meet our guidelines," Khoury said. When I told Draizin this on Thursday, he disputed it. He told me that "the ads continue to be aired," adding "We are receiving phone calls from patients and doctors in New Jersey who have seen the ads." (My guess is the phone calls were from people who had seen the video on YouTube or in the media coverage that ensued.)
WNET officials also once again refused to address questions about why they did not explicitly disclose Arnold’s funding of the pension programming. Pando previously reported that PBS only mentioned Arnold in a long list of funders at the beginning of a few PBS shows, but did not mention that Arnold was explicitly funding PBS’s pension series. In its new response, WNET pointed to just three generalized mentions as alleged proof that it disclosed their Arnold relationship. However, those officials had no comment about why they did not explicitly disclose to viewers the direct funding of the pension programming. They also did not address why they omitted any reference of Arnold in its promotional materials announcing the series.
PBS rules prohibit corporate, political or ideological interests from financing programming that directly involves those interests’ agendas. According to PBS’s website, the rules do this to prevent the entire frame of said programming from “pre-ordaining” conclusions and systemically skewing coverage in an ideological direction.
The “Pension Peril” series, funded by the anti-pension billionaire John Arnold, is a good example of how such skewing works to bias news coverage and suppress contextualizing facts.