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Comment by beatpanda | Hacker News Reader

Just a note about the "Richmond Standard": it exists for the sole purpose of publishing press releases from Chevron, as well as op-eds by Chevron-supported public figures, as a propaganda tool in the ongoing fight for political control of Richmond, California. They trick people into reading the Chevron PR as "news" by hiding it among stories like this one and hoping people don't read the fine print.

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Yes, they have to write so many seemingly legitimate articles to hide the PR releases among, that nearly 99.998% of all articles are decoys!

How dastardly.

I agree with you however, it should be noticed there's a large box on the page where Chevron notes its role (emphasis mine).

"This news website is brought to you by Chevron Richmond. We aim to provide Richmond residents with important information about what's going on in the community, and to provide a voice for Chevron Richmond on civic issues"

I was reading this, thinking, "I sometimes get down to Richmond, I should check this place out. Wait, Chevron? There's no Chevron activity in Richmond, Virginia. Where the hell is this?" And then had to infer it was California based on other publications the editor works on.

This has been going on for what, 100+ years? Is there any newspaper that is not owned by some rich company or individual with their own motivations? I'm still waiting to see how far Bezos plans to go with the Post.

The Tampa Bay Times [ formerly the St Petersburg Times ] is published by Times Publishing Company which is wholly owned by the Poynter Institute.

The Poynter Institute is dedicated to journalism.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_Bay_Times

[2] http://www.tampabay.com/

[3] http://www.poynter.org/

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