SATURDAy, NOVEMbER 9 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
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NIKKEI 225 23391.87 2.INTERNATIONALSTOCKMARKETS110 0--yyrr nnoottee
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Vista Outdoor Inc 9.67 45.
VeritivCorp 20.03 44.
Ring Energy Inc 2.38 36.
Invacare Corp 10.70 31.
Koppers Holdings Inc 43.81 31.
Synaptics Inc 59.01 31.
Century Aluminum Co 8.28 29.
Sally Beauty Inc 19.90 27.
Triumph Group Inc27.70 26.
Office Depot Inc 2.56 26.
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Axon Enterprise Inc65.29 24.
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KLX Energy Services 9.76 22.
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Realogy Holdings 10.12 21.
Sykes Enterprises 38.18 21.
TimkenSteel Corp 7.36 21.
Green Plains Inc 15.33 20.CCoommp paannyy CClloossee5 5DD %%
CChhgg
Unit Corp 1.04 -50.
McDermottIntl 0.97 -42.
Chesapeake Energy 0.90 -37.
Plantronics Inc 25.47 -37.
Insperity Inc 68.88 -36.
Exterran Corp 8.64 -33.
Medifast Inc 74.36 -31.
Lannett Co Inc 8.93 -30.
Myriad Genetics Inc 23.64 -30.
ANI Pharmaceuticals 57.38 -26.
Cytokinetics Inc 8.20 -26.
Expedia Group Inc 101.32 -26.
Shake Shack Inc 62.06 -25.
Supernus Pharma 21.72 -24.
Meridian Bioscience 7.90 -21.
Aaron's Inc 58.22 -21.
TripAdvisor Inc 31.96 -20.
Avanos Medical Inc 35.54 -20.
Dean Foods Co 0.78 -20.
Vonage Holdings Corp 7.97 -19.Brazil R$
4 4. .117 755 DD%%CChhaannggee
0 0. .99%%CClloossee2 277,,6 6881 1. .2 244
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1 188..77%%FFuuttuurreess CClloossee 5 5DD %% CChhgg
Copper 2.68 1.
Crude Oil 57.24 1.
Gold 1462.90 -3.
Natural Gas 2.79 2.
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FFuuttuurreess CClloossee 5 5DD %% CChhgg
Silver 16.82 -6.
Sugar 12.57 0.
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Wheat 5.10 -1.
Corn 3.77 -3.DDooww JJoonneess 3 30 0 IInndduussttrriiaallss
CCoommp paannyy CClloossee
5 5DD %%
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3 3MM
3M Co 173.15 1.8 5.
AmerExpCo 121.47 2.0 -3.
Apple Inc 260.14 1.7 27.
Boeing 351.00 1.7 4.
Caterpillr 148.16 2.5 21.
Chevron 120.93 4.1 -1.
Cisco Sys 48.83 3.8 -8.
Coca-Cola 52.21 -3.1 -2.
Dow Inc 55.99 7.0 19.
ExxonMobil 70.77 1.7 -2.
Gldman Schs 222.91 2.5 7.
Home Depot 232.84 -1.9 10.
IBM 137.61 1.5 -1.
IntelCorp 58.27 3.1 23.
J&J 133.00 1.4 1.
CCoommp paannyy CClloossee5 5DD %%
CChhggCChhgg %%
3 3MM
JPMorgan 130.38 2.0 18.
McDonald's 193.61 -0.2 -11.
Merck & Co 83.59 -1.6 -1.
Microsoft 145.96 1.6 5.
NIKE Inc 89.81 0.7 8.
Pfizer Inc 37.05 -3.5 0.
Prcter& Gmbl 119.70 -3.4 1.
Travelers Cos I 133.29 2.0 -10.
UnitedTech 148.88 1.5 13.
UntdHlthGr 256.97 1.9 3.
Verzn Comm 59.35 -1.7 6.
Visa Inc 178.97 -1.1 -0.
Walgreens 59.24 3.2 11.
Walmart 119.44 1.5 10.
Walt Disney 137.96 3.9 0.EEuurrooppee --2 25 5..33%% ++2 25 5..33%%
STXE 600 (EUR) Pr 405.42 1.
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DAX INDEX 13228.56 2.
FTSE 100 INDEX 7359.38 0.BY TONY ROMM
AND ISAAC STANLEY-BECKERLast month, Google took ac-
tion against seven ads purchased
by President Trump’s 2020 cam-
paign, claiming that they violated
the company’s rules — even
though they had been viewed at
least 24 million times.
But Google said little else: It
didn’t share a copy of the ads in
question or disclose what stan-
dards they had violated. To ex-
perts, those unknowns are just
two of many mysteries that dem-
onstrate the company’s contin-
ued struggles to spot and shield
users from potentially problem-
atic political content with the
2020 presidential election a year
away.
Much like its Silicon Valley
peers, Google finds itself under
heightened scrutiny for the pow-
erful targeting and messaging
tools it provides candidates and
their allies to pay to expand their
audience online. The issue has
commanded unusual public at-
tention in recent weeks because
of Facebook, which maintains a
policy that essentially permits
politicians, including Trump, to
lie in their political ads.
But critics contend that Google
— a company that came into
existence roughly 20 years ago
promising to “do no evil” and
“organize the world’s informa-
tion” — suffers from its own blind
spots around paid political
speech, which has generated
nearly $124 million for the tech
giant since it began releasing its
data in May 2018. Over that peri-
od, conservative advertisers have
massively outspent their oppo-
nents, by a margin of 3 to 1 among
the top 10 spenders. The Trump
campaign and an associated
fundraising committee have
spent nearly $12 million.
Google isn’t required to main-
tain these records of political ads
under federal law. But some ex-
perts say that voters shouldn’t
have to depend on voluntary ef-
forts by the tech industry — and
that regulation is the only l asting
solution to help voters under-
stand who is targeting them and
why.
“Right now, we’re operating in
a system where there is simply a
hodgepodge of policies at each
tech company,” said Michael
Beckel, a top researcher at Issue
One, a nonprofit organization
that studies money in politics.
“A nd this voluntary approach,
this voluntary patchwork ap-
proach, leaves Americans in the
dark about vital information
about who’s trying to influence
them online.”
Google declined to discuss the
Trump ads, the reason they violat-
ed company rules, or any of its
policies around political ads. “We
strongly support greater trans-
parency in political advertising
and have voluntarily invested sig-
nificant resources to create a
transparency report that enables
researchers, reporters and users
to study political ads that run on
our platform,” spokeswoman
Charlotte Smith said in a state-
ment. “We are constantly work-ing to improve the report and
appreciate feedback on how we
can make it better.”
The Trump campaign declined
to comment.
Google unveiled its political-ad
transparency efforts last year, re-
sponding to regulatory threats
from Congress in the wake of the
2016 election. During the race,
Russian agents took to YouTube
and the Web’s other social net-
working sites in a bid to stoke
political unrest, relying on a mix
of ads and organic posts, photos
and videos to undermine Demo-
cratic contender Hillary Clinton
and boost then-candidate Trump,
U.S. investigators have found.
But Google’s efforts ultimately
stopped far short of what law-
makers had hoped. The company
vets organizations that seek to
run ads about federal candidates,
and it caches many of them in a
publicly available archive. But the
search-and-advertising giant still
discloses far less than its competi-
tors, offering little transparency
about the sprawling network of
dark-money groups and super
PACs that run ads about polariz-
ing issues such as abortion or
immigration. Those are the kinds
of ads that Russian malefactors
deftly exploited four years ago
and that continue to vex tech
companies today.
“Google’s criteria for inclusion
in their transparency archives is
only content that is by or primari-
ly about federal candidates or
officeholders,” said Laura Edel-
son, a researcher at New York
University’s Ta ndon School of En-gineering. “Their policy was writ-
ten in such a way to exclude the
kind of content that has disinfor-
mation in it.”
State and local races aren’t
included either, though advertis-
ers certainly can purchase space
in search results and alongside
YouTube videos to support or
oppose down-ballot candidates.
And Google provides only limited
information about ads it takes
action against for violating its
rules, such as the seven ads run by
the Trump-supporting campaign
committees over the past few
weeks.
Experts said that approach
poses major problems.
“People have potentially been
exposed, but we can no longer
reconstruct the effect,” s aid David
Lazer, a professor of political
science and computer and infor-
mation science at Northeastern
University. “It’s bad for two rea-
sons — not just the accountability
of Google but also the account-
ability of the Trump campaign,
which can do more with impuni-
ty.”
Entering the 2020 election, the
first tests of Silicon Valley’s new
digital defenses have been do-
mestic in nature — from cam-
paigns and their allies, particu-
larly those with ties to the presi-
dent.
Last m onth, Trump’s c ampaign
stoked widespread ire by running
ads that contained falsehoods
about former vice president Joe
Biden. Facebook refused to take
down the ads despite Democrats’
repeated requests. G oogle-ownedYouTube adopted a similar ap-
proach, noting its policy prohibit-
ing ads that contain misrepresen-
tations didn’t apply in this case.
In the end, three versions of the
Trump campaign ad received at
least 12 million views over just a
two-day period last month on the
video-streaming site, the compa-
ny’s ad archive shows, even
though Google has said little
about the matter.
Internally, Google executives
have debated changes to the com-
pany’s political-ad policies, ac-
cording to two people familiar
with the deliberations who spoke
on the condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized
to discuss them on the record.
They said that there are many
technical and policy options on
the table, including those that
could restrict campaigns from
running ads that are too narrowly
targeted to specific users. They
stressed that banning political
ads outright is not one of them.
Similar changes to ad-targeting
are under consideration at Face-
book, a third source said this
week. Twitter said it would ban
political ads, including issue-ori-
ented ones, beginning t his
month.
On Monday, a group of technol-
ogists led by the browser-maker
Mozilla asked Facebook and
Google in an open letter to “take a
stand and issue an immediate
moratorium on all political and
issue-based advertising,” arguing
that their inconsistent or poorly
applied policies could have a dan-
gerous effect on a different politi-cal contest — the fast-approach-
ing Dec. 12 British election.
Mozilla and its peers noted a
litany of problems with Google’s
policies and political ad transpar-
ency tools, citing the need for
regulation. “These issues will
take time to resolve,” the group
wrote, “but in the UK we do not
have time.”
The tech industry’s slow prog-
ress also has again infuriated top
lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who
have long advocated for new reg-
ulations targeting social media
giants — without much success.
Since the 2016 election, Demo-
crats including Sen. Amy Klobu-
char (Minn.), who is seeking the
party’s 2020 presidential nomi-
nation, have sought to subject
companies including Facebook,
Google and Twitter to heightened
ad disclosure laws similar to
those that govern broadcast TV
and radio. But the ideas have
gained limited traction in Con-
gress, where a partisan dispute —
and a GOP reluctance to tackle
campaign finance — have kept
the Honest Ads Act from even
receiving a hearing. Google
hasn’t endorsed the bill, either,
Klobuchar said Thursday.
“Google sells the most political
ads and makes the most money,”
she said in a statement, “but they
are often conveniently absent
from the debate about how to
prevent foreign interference in
our elections and curtail the
spread o f misinformation online.”
[email protected]
isaac.stanley-becker@
washpost.comGoogle acts against some pro-Trump ads, but its rules remain a mystery
BY JONATHAN O’CONNELLThe country’s leading news -
paper union issued a scathing
analysis of the proposed Gannett-
GateHouse merger Friday, saying
the deal would drive down wages
and e mployment for journalists at
the 2 50 daily newspapers and
hundreds of weekly and commu-
nity papers the combined compa-
nies would own, and would over-
compensate GateHouse’s private
equity backers.
“This merger will hurt the com-
munities these media organiza-
tions serve,” Bernie Lunzer, presi-
dent of the NewsGuild-CWA,
which represents more than
20,000 journalists, said in a state-
ment. “To fund the merger, local
papers will likely disappear, jobs
will be slashed, and journalism
will suffer.”
The 11-page analysis produced
by the union argues that the deal
GateHouse and Gannett reached
will unnecessarily lead to more
cuts to the benefit of Wall Street
investors. The deal calls for Gate-
House parent New Media Invest-
ment Group to purchase McLean-
based Gannett for $12.06 in cash
and stock per share. Shareholders
from both firms are scheduled to
vote on t he deal next week.
The union suggests in its report
that private equity giants Fortress
Investment Group and Apollo
Global Management are getting
the b est of the deal. Fortress backs
New Media Investment Group
and is slated to come away with
4.5 m illion shares in t he new com-
pany. Apollo is issuing a $1.8 bil-
lion loan to finance the deal, at an
expensive 11.5 percent interest
rate and could gain control of theboard if the company does not
meet financial expectations, the
union determined.
Spokesmen for Fortress and
Apollo did not i mmediately r eturn
requests for comment Friday
morning.
Spokesmen for New Media and
Gannett d eclined to comment, but
executives at t he two companies —
America’s largest two newspaper
publishers — have said t he $1.4 bil-
lion deal would save $300 million
annually in overhead costs, in ar-
eas such as marketing, human re-
sources and accounting. It would
create the largest newspaper pub-
lisher i n the country.
When the companies an-
nounced the deal in August, New
Media Chairman Michael Reed
told shareholders that, should the
deal be approved, it will “not only
preserve but actually enhance thejournalism in our local markets.”
Gannett Chairman Jeff Louis said
that “together, we will deliver on
our shared commitment to jour-
nalistic excellence.”
The union’s report puts its
views in sharp c ontrast w ith t hose
comments, saying New Media has
historically cut jobs held by re-
porters, editors and photogra-
phers after making acquisitions
and that the company prioritizes
sending dividends to sharehold-
ers over i nvesting in j ournalism.
Lunzer said in the u nion’s s tate-
ment that it was hard to see the
agreement as “anything more
than a callous piece of financial-
ization m eant to create short-term
profit at the expense of the news-
papers.”
The newspaper industry has
been in steep financial decline for
more than a decade, and bothcompanies have enacted d eep cuts
to newsrooms in recent years, as
have nearly all other publishers.
Analysts say the companies could
achieve substantial savings in the
deal, but the companies have not
outlined where the newly formed
company will identify $300 mil-
lion in annual cuts, something
they have promised to find in the
first 24 m onths.
Fearing more newsroom cuts,
staff members at one of Gannett’s
largest publications, the Arizona
Republic, voted to unionize in Oc-
tober in advance of t he d eal.
Like many newspapers, Arizo-
na Republic staffers say they have
already suffered dramatic cuts,
from roughly 425 journalists in
2007 to about 130 today. T he n ews-
paper’s four community bureaus
have closed, and a single reporter
covers both the city of Phoenix a ndMaricopa County governments.
Gannett recently fended off a
hostile takeover attempt b y a more
cost-focused chain, MediaNews
Group. The chain, backed by
hedge fund Alden Global Capital,
is now a New Media shareholder
and supports the deal, according
to a securities filing MNG made
last week.
Gannett stock opened trading
Friday at $10.44 a share after
reaching a 2019 high of $11.04 the
day the merger was announced.
After the deal was announced,
New Media’s stock f ell from nearly
$11 and opened Friday trading at
$7.86 a share. Both companies
have scheduled shareholder votes
for T hursday.
“If we h ad a vote, w e would vote
no,” Lunzer said in the union’s
statement.
[email protected]Union claims ‘journalism will su≠er’ under Gannett deal