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North Carolina Voters Ensnared in Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis shake hands after the debate at UNC-TV Wednesday night.
Mike Oniffrey
/
UNC-TV

Facebook’s stock plummeted at the news that 50 million user accounts had been breached and used to create profiles of prospective voters. Since then the company behind the breach, Cambridge Analytica, has been suspended from Facebook. The damage in North Carolina has already been done.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is a poster child for Cambridge Analytica. He paid them $30,000 during his 2014 senate campaign against former Democratic Sen. Kay Hagen. On its website, Cambridge Analytica boasts that their research identified Hagen’s weakness and gave Tillis the tools to exploit it. Tillis is not the only North Carolina connection to the scandal.  WUNC Capital Bureau Chief Jeff Tiberii joins host Frank Stasio to unpeel the layers of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Plus, political scientist Michael Bitzer, a professor at Catawba College, provides insight about the history of campaigns, and how citizens "private” information has been used in elections for decades.

 

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Dana is an award-winning producer who began as a personality at Rock 92. Once she started creating content for morning shows, she developed a love for producing. Dana has written and produced for local and syndicated commercial radio for over a decade. WUNC is her debut into public radio and she’s excited to tell deeper, richer stories.
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