Los Angeles police recruitment ad on Breitbart prompts inquiry

[Judi Lynn]

Source: NBC News



Sept. 29, 2019, 1:16 AM CDT
By Dennis Romero

The Los Angeles Police Department was trying to figure out Saturday how one of its ads for new recruits ended up on right-wing news site Breitbart.

The department, in which Latinos comprise the largest ethnic group of officers, was quick to denounce the placement on a platform that has often highlighted the misdeeds and crimes of people living in the U.S. without proper documentation and that critics have accused of posting racist content.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore tweeted Saturday that his department would team up with the city's Personnel Department to determine how the ad, featuring a photo of an officer and the words, "Choose Your Future," ended up on the website once run by Stephen Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump.

The ad placement story went viral after Noah Shachtman, editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, tweeted about it Friday night.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/los-angeles-police-recruitment-ad-breitbart-prompts-inquiry-n1060026

[PerceptionManagement]

1. LAPD is running low on racist cops is a good thing, yes? Silver Lining found!

[Judi Lynn]

2. Outstanding! That would never have occurred to me. It is good news, after all!

[dalton99a]

8. +1

[Turbineguy]

3. Hi!

We're looking for racist right-wing nutters with authority issues, because shooting dark-skinned people is a great law-enforcement tool!

[Shell_Seas]

4. It's a display ad. 90% of websites that advertise are part of google's display ad network..

Ads use cookies and tracking pixels to show ads relevant to each user.

There really is no mystery here.

[ToxMarz]

6. Right, same way the ads here show up.

The advertiser didn't all say I want my ads on DU, most have never heard of it.

That said, it's possible to more selectively target where ads are directed if you know what you're doing or hire someone that does. Lesson to learn here.

[Mc Mike]

5. Hat Squad controls the LAPD ad budget?

[AllaN01Bear]

7. to those who say that the ad was driven by google others , nonsense .

l a pd has and was and is known as a racist orginazation and has been for years . i think even the feds took it over for a while to clean out the trash. i lived in glendora ca and would hear horror stories even from whites about this nortorious pd .

[IronLionZion]

9. Ad buys can proactively exempt certain sites, or types of sites

When the LAPD ordered the online ads, they probably didn't specify to exclude any sites.

Their history of racism is probably a separate issue from this ad buy. If they deliberately chose to advertise to racists, then it would be a problem. It looks like it wasn't deliberate this time. As the article states, "Latinos comprise the largest ethnic group of officers" now. It was a bit different back in the day when they were beating Rodney King.

[Initech]

10. Some of those who work forces / are the same that burn crosses!

[Iggo]

11. That is definitely true.

However, if this paragraph was first instead of being buried in the middle, there really wouldn't be much of a story:

"How the advertisement ended up on Breitbart was not much of a mystery to media experts, who noted that online ad buys, particularly those made through Google, target demographics rather than publications and can even follow targeted readers from site to site."

You're not going to catch me defending the LAPD much, but this time their deniability is certainly plausible.