The Ladies’ Home Journal Runs a Red
Aug 14th, 2008 by John Stodder
“Hit & Run,” a blog offering of Reason magazine, rats out a recent Ladies Home Journal article on the danger of drivers running red lights, which they claim was concocted to advance the interests of three private companies that make red light cameras.
Halfway through the article, there’s a box with a header set in bold and all-caps that reads, “WHAT CAN YOU DO?” The copy inside the box says:
Readers can go to www.stopredlightrunning.com/lhj and click on a form letter urging the federal government to encourage states to adopt automated enforcement laws to reduce red-light running. The letters will be compiled by the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running and sent to the White House early in 2009.
Neither the magazine article nor the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running website offer specifics on just how the federal government might “encourage” the states to adopt red light cameras, but the best bet is that they’ll ask Congress to follow the example set in previous attempts to impose traffic regulations on the states—by withholding federal highway money from the states that don’t comply.
What Alexander and Ladies’ Home Journal don’t disclose in the article, however, is that the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running is funded by three private companies: Affiliated Computer Systems, Gatso USA, and Redflex, Inc. All three are in the automated traffic enforcement business, and all three stand to make millions should the campaign prove successful. That’s a pretty big omission.
Of course, Reason’s core philosophy would put grant less power to government, so they don’t like the red-light cameras on principle. But the article (not online) should have mentioned that private companies had created and funded the “Stop Red Light Running” campaign, and would stand to benefit massively if the Ladies’ Home Journal’s form letters work their hoped-for legislative magic. Local and state governments tend to like red-light cameras because they create a new revenue stream. According to Reason, some cities actually shorten the yellow lights’ duration so as to write more tickets.
The PR people that gulled the Ladies’ Home Journal into doing their bidding earned their pay this month, I suppose — assuming readers follow the call to action, something I’m always dubious about. Deceptive astroturf campaigns — fake grassroots campaigns paid for by special interests with a financial stake in a political outcome — have been around since long before the invention of Astroturf. But for a purportedly journalistic enterprise to participate in one can only degrade further journalism’s reputation.
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