GM Moves from Fake News to Fake Opinions

GM's Bob Lutz, in one of the company's VNRsGeneral Motors is no stranger to fake news, having funded eight of the video news releases tracked in the Center for Media and Democracy's two reports on fake TV news. Now, the automaker is setting its sights on print media. "One area where we're beginning to do more, and will want to work with newspapers to explore new options in, is advertorials," said GM CEO Rick Wagoner, at the Newspaper Association of America conference. Advertorials are ads written as though they are independent op/ed columns. GM is also interested in overseas promotion. "Some of you own foreign-language newspapers that may have links to papers in other countries," explained Wagoner. "Hispanic papers with links to South America or the Caribbean, for example. Others, I'm sure, have business or editorial connections with foreign newspapers that we at GM probably have no idea about." Wagoner said that GM was putting less money towards traditional print ads in part because the company no longer offers a "deal of the month."