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YOUTUBE….Jason Zengerle on John McCain’s recent spate of attack ads:

Eve asks whether the McCain campaign will release a new Hillary ad every day this week. Of course it will — so long as we in the media keep linking to the ads and doing news segments about them on TV. I’d love to know from our readers in these “key battleground states” where the ads are supposed to air whether they’ve actually seen any of them on TV, other than the times they’ve seen reports about them on CNN and Fox and MSNBC.

I’ll go a little further. The majority of these “YouTube ads” are designed solely to get media attention, not to be seriously used as part of the campaign. If they were podcasts, or blog posts, or flyers, or email blasts, the media would ignore them if their purpose were so transparent. I mean, who cares about a flyer produced in small quantities and handed out only to the media?

But if it’s video, it’s news! I couldn’t really say why, aside from the fact that the media is convinced that YouTube is a transformative election medium even though there’s precious little evidence to back this up. So I’d say this: cable news stations need to stop being played for suckers. Unless a campaign says it’s committed to a serious ad buy for the video in question, it’s time to quit playing the game. Wise up and treat ’em the same way you treat attack email blasts.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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