The New Yorker:
On Tuesday, Britain’s Channel 4 News showed the second part of its undercover exposé of Cambridge Analytica, the controversial political consulting firm that worked for the Trump campaign in 2016. In Part 1, which aired on Monday, the firm’s British chief executive, Alexander Nix, was shown boasting of setting up honey traps and bribery stings on behalf of the firm’s clients in elections around the world. Part 2 focussed on C.A.’s work for the Trump campaign. These television reports came after the Observer, a British newspaper, and the New York Times both published articles this weekend featuring a former C.A. employee named Christopher Wylie, who decided to go public with details about how the firm “exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles” for use in personalized political advertising.
In the latest Channel 4 report, Nix is shown saying that he had met Trump “many times” and boasting about the firm’s role in the 2016 campaign. Just before the report was broadcast, C.A. announced that it had suspended Nix and set up an independent investigation to review the “comments and allegations” contained in the first report. In a statement, the firm said, “Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation.”
Yet the Financial Times has reported that C.A. tried to prevent Channel 4 from showing its report, threatening lawsuits. If C.A.’s “values” aren’t represented by its chief executive and the other two senior executives who appeared in the undercover videos, whose values are being represented? Those of Rebekah and Robert Mercer, the conservative billionaires who own part of the firm? Those of Steve Bannon, who once held the title of vice-president at C.A.? Donald Trump’s?
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