The Economist and the Financial Times hired controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica to help them get more subscribers in the United States, reports Mark Di Stefano of Buzzfeed.
Di Stefano writes, “Both the Economist and the Financial Times were Cambridge Analytica clients, with an industry source saying the data firm had been brought on board as way to gain new US subscribers.
“A spokesperson for the Economist told BuzzFeed News Cambridge Analytica was enlisted ‘to help us understand the size of the market in the US.’
“‘They shared their estimate of our market size and we then concluded the project,’ the spokesperson said. ‘We’ve not worked with them since.’
“The magazine said it didn’t know whether Cambridge Analytica had deployed the Facebook data during the project.
“The spokesperson said: ‘No, we don’t know. They certainly made no mention of using Facebook data.’
“At the FT, editors and reporters have been asking about what Cambridge Analytica did for them, with suspicions raised after the newspaper included a single-line disclosure in some of its recent reporting about the firm.”
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