why does the mainstream media still ask/trust CNW/Art Spinella?

[cwerdna]

Any time I see CNW/Art Spinella being quoted or asked in any news story, I'm pretty wary and have little reason to believe anything he says.

I just came across http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/bu...r=yahoofinance. Why for crying out loud should the NY Times even BOTHER talking to the purveyor of the Hummer and Tahoe are greener than the Prius junk science?

Maybe we ought to start a letter/email campaign to the NY Times, Reuters, AP, and other news agencies to just stop talking to him. If we cite all the material out there debunking his crap study, perhaps it might make a difference.

[jpadc]

Junk and plain poor science..

One OBVIOUS confound is the fact that there are a lot more brands available today in the US than there were in 1986... How much of that trend can be accounted for by that fact alone?

[qbee42]

I assume the media listens to Art Spinella because he offers a controversial view, and controversy sells papers. The paper isn't saying it, some "expert" (Art) is saying it - not their problem if the facts are wrong.

Tom

[kenmce]

Any time I see CNW/Art Spinella being quoted or asked in any news story, I'm pretty wary and have little reason to believe anything he says.

That is very reasonable. However, I'm not sure if you have the full background. CNW works in the marketing and advertising fields, and they do seem to do actual research regarding buying decisions. They report that they have done work for various car companies, presumably looking into why people buy or don't buy a given car. They are probably worth listening to when they talk about shopping, as Arty does in the Time article.

Our quarrel with old man "Spin"-ella is that they also do mud slinging on request. I consider the "Dust-to-Dust" report the finest known example of the fully articulated, thoroughly modern, Internet disinformation campaign. I have never run across figures for how many dollars worth of sales they were able to shift away from Toyota and towards their customers over the course of that particular marketing project. That information is undoubtedly tightly controlled. That it worked cannot be doubted, since they were hired to do a second time. If their client(s) have trouble coming out with something that can pass for a hybrid we will probably see a third round while the corporate masters scramble to develop a salable product.

I expect that a lot of spinmeisters have taken note of that project, and that disinformation campaigns will only become more professional and more common in its wake.

[Mike Dimmick]

Most likely Spinella issued a press release, and the media, hungry for a story where they don't have to expend any effort, basically paraphrased it and printed it. The New York Times is more likely to paraphrase and fill out the story with a few rent-a-quotes, other papers would often just print the release.

Result, column inches filled, new content on the website, something to sell to the customer and move on to the next press release.

A British freelance journalist, Nick Davies, has written a book about how the press (dys)functions: Flat Earth News. It's an interesting read.