WhoAdvertisesOn

Toolkit for tracking advertisers on partisan news channels with sampling, data science, and open data.

Active

Brooklyn, NY

For-profit television news is funded in part through advertising. To boost viewership, commercial news channels set aside journalistic standards in favor of sensational styles of programming. Furthermore, partisan channels, such as conservative media, selectively report or distort information for political gain. These deviations from journalistic standards have real world consequences that effect lives and families of even non-viewers. Therefore everyone has a right to know whose dollars are funding these channels. WhoAdvertisesOn is a toolkit for tracking advertisers on partisan news channels using sampling, data science, and open data. The initial project tracks Fox News Channel advertisers and provides them as open data. But the project also includes a guide to setting up its open source framework to track advertisers on other news outlets. To support the project please follow on Twitter @WhoAdvertisesOn, and disseminate the toolkit guide to advocacy organizations who might find it useful.