With the political debate fully engaged in regards to state video franchising, especially in regards to Ohio Senate Bill SB 117, it is important to understand where some of the facts, figures and sourcing for information included in that debate are coming from, and who is bankrolling the political and PR campaigns in support of this rather legislation.

Articles, advertisements, opinion polls, etc.. will often be attributed to groups such as TV4US, FreedomWorks and others, which are astroturf organizations being funded by the telco corporations in order to pursue their business agendas.

For those unaware of what an ‘astroturf’ organization is, here is some background information.

What is Astroturfing?

What are Front Groups?

Who are the Bell Corporations Engaged In Astroturfing?

Mark Glaser at PBS weighs in on Being Vigilant Against Astroturf Comments

As for comments placed by agents of these astroturf groups, regular readers here at USTV know that we have run into this phenomenon on more than one occasion, including here, as well as these rather silly postings here and here.

This article is interesting for a number of reasons. Could they have possibly used the adjectives ‘left’ and ‘left-leaning’ more often in this piece?

Having personally attended this event, I can say that it clearly involved people from a wide range of the political spectrum, with some of the more bitter and outspoken critiques from folks coming from what would normally be termed ‘the right’ according to standard political terminology of the day. These people made their unhappiness with the current corporatized state of the media system quite clear.

Consistently referring to critical analysis of the current state of our media system is not an accident or oversight, as it serves to sow seeds of partisanship and inflammatory buzzwords out for those who would have an immediately negative or suspicious reaction to anything ‘left’. This then buys some time and political space for the corporate few who want to continue to control and dictate the public debate, and keep public scrutiny off of the systemic condition of ruling elites using the media to ‘manufacture consent.’ Effective actions being undertaken to question the control of our media system by oligarchic power can be discredited by the sweeping smear of ‘leftists. This is designed to trigger a negative knee jerk reaction to this effort by large percentages of Americans who are prone to this kind of simplistic ideological persuasion, successfully obscuring the ability of people to unite in their shared desire for a true open and equal playing field of civic communication for all citizens.

The Wall Street Journal
Nonprofit Takes On Big Media
By Amy Schatz
The Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2007

Hundreds of liberal activists are expected to pack the pews tonight at the Broad Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio, to protest a Bush administration plan. It has nothing to do with Iraq. It is about rules governing how many properties media companies should be allowed to own in local markets.

Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, wants to loosen existing ownership limits on newspapers and broadcasters to allow them to own both in most markets. But his efforts have stalled, the result of a surprisingly energetic grass-roots opposition campaign guided by Free Press, a nonprofit with offices in Washington and Northampton, Mass.

“Such changes could have a serious impact on the diversity of viewpoints and coverage of local issues in every community,” the group argues in fliers and an Internet site under its “STOP BIG MEDIA” campaign.

For a relatively low-profile organization, Free Press is on a roll. Four years ago, it used old-fashioned grassroots organizing, along with basic Internet tools, to help derail the FCC’s years-long effort to relax media ownership rules. Last year, the group thwarted a multi-million dollar lobbying effort by the Baby Bells to rewrite the nation’s telecom laws over “net neutrality,” the idea that Internet providers can’t discriminate against any Internet traffic.

Progressive, left-leaning grass-roots activists have gotten more attention for their opposition against the Iraq war, but their bigger impact may have been on national media regulations and telecom policies. By mobilizing the progressive left to focus on media and telecom issues, Free Press has effectively blocked some of the most-wanted issues on corporate wish-lists.

The Free Press success is all the more remarkable, given the array of big-name media companies pushing for change. Technology has changed the competitive landscape, said a coalition of media firms — including Belo Corp., CBS Corp., News Corp.’s Fox Entertainment Group and NBC Universal Inc. — in a December letter lobbying the FCC to ease the rules. The FCC “should modernize its local ownership rules to reflect these dynamic changes in the media marketplace,” they say.

Media reformers have been working on these issues for years, but “they’ve never had traction among grass-roots America before,” says Mike McCurry, former press secretary for President Clinton. Mr. McCurry drew scorn from left-leaning bloggers last year after he helped launch a public-relations effort on behalf of phone companies hoping to kill net-neutrality rules.

Free Press, which launched in 2003, has 300,000 members, about two dozen full-time employees and an annual budget of roughly $2.5 million. Last year, it raised more than $5 million in funding, mostly from liberal-leaning private foundations, including George Soros’s Open Society Institute. In 2005, almost half of its funding — $755,000 — came from the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which at the time was overseen by its president, journalist Bill Moyers. This year, the group is hoping to raise $4.5 million and wants to hire more grass-roots organizers.

It is raising its ambitions as well. After stymieing efforts to loosen media rules, Free Press members believe they may be on the verge of changing the terms of the debate — to tightening regulations again.

“We’re going to use this opportunity to move the goal posts,” says Josh Silver, Free Press co-founder and executive director.

Unlike other watchdog groups that have focused on telecom and media-reform issues in the past, Free Press has successfully tapped into the grass-roots network dominated by MoveOn.org.

“We just have to remind them to talk about media reform, not the war,” says Amanda Ballantyne, Free Press’s field organizer who is in charge of getting people to show up tonight for the Columbus hearing, the 11th on the subject in the past two years. She helps coordinate similar events around the country, rounding up locals and tutoring them on the basics of media-ownership limits.

Recently, Ms. Ballantyne holed up at a Nashville Best Western for a week, trying to convince locals to attend an official FCC media-ownership hearing. With the help of local organizers, nearly 400 people showed up. Even with a strictly enforced two-minute time limit, it took seven hours for the FCC commissioners to listen to everyone.

In February, the group attracted more than 3,000 activists and bloggers to Memphis for three days of workshops and speeches from progressive and liberal heroes, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Mr. Moyers.

“If you watch TV news, it’s all car crashes, shootings and Brangelina. If we can’t create more hard-hitting journalism, then we have a real problem,” says Mr. Silver, a political activist who says he decided to form the group after becoming mad one night when a local newscast led with a story about the rising price of lobster. Local ownership of stations or newspapers leads to more accountability to citizens and better journalism, he says.

With the help of University of Illinois professor and media critic Robert McChesney, Mr. Silver soon launched a nonprofit group dedicated to media reform.

The current FCC chairman, Mr. Martin, had hoped to propose easing rules this year which would allow media companies to own newspapers and broadcast stations in most markets. But that proposal will have to wait until next year at least, FCC officials say. The agency will hold at least three more public hearings around the country and is awaiting 10 studies it commissioned on media-ownership issues, which have already cost more than $550,000.

The Wall Street Journal provides more evidence for the need for fundamental reform of our media system through their description of this event calling for the fundamental reform of our media system.

In regards to Josh Silver of Free Press commenting about working to move the goal posts. I would think that we don’t need to just move the goal posts, we need to change the entire playing field. You usually don’t win when you are playing the other team’s game. And this is a game where the rules and regulations have clearly not been written by and for the public interest, benefit and welfare. We currently have the best media policy that money can buy.

Sometimes it takes a little comedy to get straight to the point.

Watch The Video

A good post by Hunter on The Daily Kos regarding the role and operation of so called ‘think tanks’ in Washington, and how they have been used by ideologues to skewer the national dialogue for as long and as effectively as they have. Well worth the read.

Tax cuts? Global warming? War? They can pretend to be experts at all of them. Figure out the policy you want to support, then have Sowell or someone else scribble down the Very Erudite Explanation of why black is actually white, the sky is actually magenta, or Saddam’s secret still-really-really-existing WMDs have been spirited to the kitchen of an Applebee’s in… oh, let’s say “Syria”, this time. The whole point of think tanks is rank dishonesty in areas where serious educators, intellectuals, government workers, and other experts in the field in question have unanimously come up with an answer that conservatives don’t want to hear.

It’s serial dishonesty as a game, as played by the most very enfranchised players in America — conservative media figures, past conservative administration officials — whoever can lend that sheen of public credibility and bring the money in for the hacks to keep hacking. They’re the major league sports franchises of political lying. On any given day, you can have Richard Scaife provide funding to attack George Soros in yet another battle of the So Goddamn Fucking Enfranchised That You Couldn’t Possibly Get More Enfranchised If You Ate George Washington’s Shriveled Corpse For Breakfast.

What I find interesting (in a strictly car wreck, we’re-all-going-to-die sort of way) is while the think tanks started out to provide thin but important-sounding justifications for whatever conservative graft or manipulation was being attempted during any particular period, the think tank model has now entirely transferred to the White House itself. Listening to Tony Snow (or any of the previous press secretaries) is like listening to an off-off-Broadway theatrical production exploring the pathology of compulsive lying. They don’t care what the truth is: after spending every minute of every day reinforcing their fragile little bubbles of newspeak, in fact, it’s not even clear they know what the actual truth is.

Which is why, in a nutshell, we’re in Iraq to begin with, the perfect think-tank-produced war — because the policy came first, and actual knowledge was ignored as new “facts” were fixed around that desired policy. And all of those facts — nearly every single one of the “big” facts used to enter the war — turned out to be either fabricated or a product of extraordinary incompetence.

Is it any wonder why many refer to them as ‘coin-operated’ operations? Drop your money in them, get the product you want.

Read The Complete Post

So much for that canard about the so-called ‘liberal media’.

As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo pointed out….

This really is pretty unbelievable: NBC won’t run ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary because, in the words of the NBC’s commercial clearance department, “they are disparaging to President Bush.”

Networks usually at least go to the length of coming up with a phony ‘we don’t run ads with a political message’ excuse. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one say something like this. I would have thought that with the president’s popularity so low some of the network’s usual supineness and cowardice would be a little less evident. Would they not run political ads either?

Perhaps NBC isn’t comfortable criticizing Bush, since his administration and the wars he has propagated has helped provide billions upon billions of dollars of additional profits for their owners at GE, one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world.

The entertainment industry publication Variety reports…

“It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America,” Harvey Weinstein said in a statement. “The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.”

According to the Weinstein Co., NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.”

TWC also quoted a rep from the CW as saying it had concerns that “we do not have appropriate programming in which to schedule this spot.”

CW communications topper Paul McGuire rejected that version of events.

Read The Complete Report

Brad Friedman and the good folks at Brad Blog caught this not too long ago…

Just amazing. Fox’s O’Reilly Factor just covered the Mark Foley (R-FL) issue in two different segments, one of them with a page who says he received communications from Foley, and another with Ann Coulter.

Never mind the content of either segment for now. Incredibly during a total of three different cutaways to video footage of Foley, he was labelled at the bottom of the screen eachtime as “(D-FL)” !

Just an oversight no doubt. Three different times. In two different segements. Each cutaway about 15 seconds or more. Showing Foley as a DEMOCRAT. Amazing.

Read The Original Post

This is the most critical view of Al Gore’s film I’ve yet read. The author astutely asks deeper questions about how we got into this downward spiral – questions that Gore refused to address; but she doesn’t develop her thinking here to the depth that would serve the article and readers’ understanding..

Unfortunately, at the end, her remedy is for “a new investment model,” that she believes will turn this around. Too bad she doesn’t go to the heart of ‘We the People.’

- Posted by Kat Walter, CELDF

———————–

The Hidden Lie In Al Gore’s Film
By Catherine Austin Fitts
http://solari.com

Watching An Inconvenient Truth is more useful for understanding how propaganda is made and used than for understanding the risks of global warming (I am not qualified to judge the scientific evidence here — I am assuming that Gore’s presentation on global warming is sound).

The fundamental lie that Al Gore is telling comes from defining our problem as environmental - in this case global warming - whereas our environmental problems - as real and important as they are - are but a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Gore defines our problem as “what.” He is silent on “who.” For example, Gore does not ask or answer:

- Who is doing this?

- Who has been governing our planet this way and why?

- Cui bono? Who benefits?

- Who has suppressed alternative technologies resulting in our dependency on fossil fuels? Why?

- Who has generated how much financial capital generated from this damage?

- How did things get this bad without our changing? How much was related to fear of and dirty tricks of those in charge?

- How do we recapture resources that have been criminally drained and use them to invest in restoring environmental balance?

Utah Phillips once said, “The earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses.” In one sentence, Utah Phillips told us more about global warming than Al Gore has told us in a lifetime of writing and speaking, let alone in An Inconvenient Truth.

Needless to say, Gore offers no names and addresses. Gore’s “who” discussion is limited to population. He seems to imply that the issue is the growth in population combined with busy people being shortsighted, leading to some giant incompetency “accident.” That makes it easy to avoid digging into the areas that would naturally follow from starting with “who” ˆ which should lead to dissecting the relationship between environmental deterioration and the prevailing global investment . . .

The planet is being run by people who are intentionally killing it. Their power is their ability to offer all of us ways of making money by helping them kill it. Hence, understanding how the mechanics of the financial system and the accumulation of financial capital relate to environmental destruction is essential. . .

For example, there is no place on Gore’s time line that shows:

- the creation of the Federal Reserve;

- the movement of currencies away from the gold standard;

- the growth of non-accountable fiat currency systems;

- the growth of consumer, mortgage and government debt;

- the growth in the superior rights of corporations over people and living things;

- the growth of “privatization”

- the subversive and sometimes violent suppression of renewable energy, housing and transportation technologies and innovations;

- the growth of the offshore financial system and the use of that system to launder and accumulate vast sums of pirated capital. . .

The documentary ends with a long list of things that we can do. Many of these items are on my list. We all need to come clean in the process of evolving towards sustainability. However, without a new investment model and the governance changes that automatically follow, the result of An Inconvenient Truth is to teach us to be good consumers of global oil and consumer product corporations and banks and — we are supposed to intuitively understand — vote for Al Gore or the candidates he endorses.

Gore draws us down a rabbit hole, which leaves us even more dependent on the people and institutions that created and profited from the problem in the first place. . .

To think that people question the basis of the claim that we do not live in a democratic republic, but rather a corporate state. Things like this should help dispel that illusion.

“A new bipartisan poll released today finds that an overwhelming majority of American voters favor video choice over onerous “Net Neutrality” regulations,” states a press release by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. While bi-partisan it may be, honest it is not.

The Verizon funded survey, conducted by Glover Park Group (traditionally Democratic) and Public Opinion Strategies (traditionally Republican) questioned 800 registered voters on their thoughts on network neutrality. The survey in question uses a tactic known as “push polling”, which presents questions phrased in such a way as to elicit one particular answer.

This is the question asked used to support the committee’s assertion of public opposition to net-neutrality laws:

Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you: Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV, or enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee?

In this case the second option suggests that there is a push to prohibit ISPs from selling faster broadband speeds, a dishonest talking point we’ve seen used by incumbent PR gurus in multiple editorials.

While push polling is a frequent tactic in corporate PR and political-campaign smear attempts, we should not see the same tactics originating from what’s supposed to be an objective Senate committee, tasked with intelligently navigating tough questions in the field of technology law.

Read The Complete Posting

The National Journal reports on this as well.

SourceWatch and New Networks do a good job of explaining and chronicling what are termed ‘astroturf’ organizations involved in the battle over new telecom policy.

This is essential information to anyone who is interested in understanding the issues being discussed today over the future of the internet and media policy, and who is actually behind a lot of the mis-information being spread today.

These phony ‘consumer’ organizations are taking domestic corporate-sponsored Orwellianism to new heights.

The New Networks homepage on astroturf groups

What is Astroturf?

Source Watch explains…

Campaigns & Elections magazine defines astroturf as a “grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them.” Journalist William Greider has coined his own term to describe corporate grassroots organizing. He calls it “democracy for hire.”

Senator Lloyd Bentsen, himself a long-time Washington and Wall Street insider, is credited with coining the term “astroturf lobbying” to describe the synthetic grassroots movements that now can be manufactured for a fee by companies like Beckel Cowan, Bivings Group, Bonner & Associates, Burson-Marsteller, Davies Communications, DCI Group, Direct Impact, Hill & Knowlton, Issue Dynamics Inc., National Grassroots & Communications, or Optima Direct.

What’s wrong with “astroturf” groups?

These faux grass-roots groups and their ’skunkworks’ — a cabal/campaign that controls the message for various groups — are essentially out to deceive the regulators, the press and the public. This allows BellSouth, AT&T and Verizon to use “non-profit status’ to create campaigns that benefit these companies, but have the look-and-feel of being good for consumers. Or worse, there are co-opted organizations such as American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) or League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), that represent various black, Hispanic, disabled or seniors’ issues. Because of their corporate funding, they make decisions that help their non-profit organization, but at a cost — many of the issues they back don’t help their constituents.

And there is a great deal of documentation that shows that various Bell-funded campaigns raised customer rates, retarded competition and slowed America’s broadband deployment and the economy — real harms because faux groups have the funding of deep-pocket corporations to shout louder than anyone else.

And then there is TRAC…

1) TRAC published a series of biased reports that were used to help the Bellcompanies enter long distance while trashing AT&T and MCI. This data wasused and quoted by Verizon, BellSouth, SBC and others as real.

Example: “A new study by (TRAC) found that consumers in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida and Georgia could save at least $507 million and up to $1.73 billion on local phone and long distance service after one year of increased competition.”

2) Even though TRAC is a non-profit, it was able to use money from Issue Dynamics (the Bell companies as clients) to do these reports.

TRAC IRS filings for 2002 showed TRAC made $19,600, had $47,000 of expenses, and owed Issue Dynamics and others $122,000 in liabilities. “During the year, TRAC purchased goods and services from an affiliated taxable organization named Issue Dynamics, inc. Issue Dynamics, Inc. provider management services as well as overhead costs for fees to TRAC.”

3) Economics & Technology wrote about TRAC and its data: “The so called consumer group that released these long distance studies, TRAC, is actually the creation of a Washington, DC public relations firm who’s clients include Verizon, all of the other Bell companies, and the Bell companies’ lobbying organization, the United States Telephone Association.”

“The study’s various assertions and assumptions, and the conclusions based thereon, are demonstrably false.” More on this case Here

4) Teletruth filed a complaint with the FCC over the fact that TRAC and other Bell funded groups are on the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee.

Read More About TRAC

SourceWatch outlines some of the relationships between the Bell companies, Issue Dynamics and the United Church of Christ Here.

Common Cause has released two reports on the new crop of organizations that are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, examining the current net neutrality and broadband and franchise debates.

There is a lot more information on this from Teletruth

Senator Ted Stevens’ effort to get enough votes to push his Telecommunications Bill (ATOR HR 5252) to the Senate floor has reached a new low point. On Sept 18th, Stevens released an opinion poll on the US Senate Commerce Committee web site that shows that Americans want better cable service for lower prices - quite an insight!

Unfortunately for Stevens, the poll also clearly demonstrates that those polled know little about the issue at hand, much less the details of his telecommunications legislation. The poll questioned 800 registered voters and drew this astonishing conclusion: “an overwhelming majority of American voters favor video choice over onerous “Net Neutrality‚ regulations”. This is an extremely suspect conclusion given that the poll itself reports that 91% of those polled had not even heard of ‘net neutrality’. Needless to say, the poll sought little to inform otherwise.

Not surprisingly, the majority of those polled equate lower prices with competition, a mantra of American corporate doctrine though it bears little truth in the current legislation nor has it been evidenced in recent telco video roll-outs in various states. The polling questions used exploit such familiar beliefs, amplifies their relation to the issue at hand, and coyly persuade subjects with leading questions to achieve the desired outcome. Such manipulation of public opinion is not new, yet it’s tragic to see an esteemed Senator such as Stevens stoop so low to appease his corporate benefactors.

The Stevens poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies (POS), a republican pollster, and The Glover Park Group (GPG), known to many Democrats. Not surprisingly, both firms proudly count Verizon as a current client. POS has a track record of political polling for Republican candidates and also of of creating issue based polls that always seem to show support for Republican positions. Polls in the past on genetically modified foods and social security reinforced party positions. Most recently POS released a poll that showed “Ned Lamont (D) trailing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I), 51% to 35%, in the Connecticut U.S. Senate race.” (see report Here) Lamont won days later with 52% of the vote. POS reported a margin of error of 4.3% - we’d estimate +/- 17% to be more accurate.

Not to be outdone, Glover Park Group (GPG) made news last year when it was revealed that the firm created and directed the activities of the non-profit ‘citizens’ organization “Don‚t Count Us Out” (an astroturf) to serve the interests of their client, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (see report Here) GPG played the race card and used this astroturf to enrage the public to challenge a new Nielsen rating system that worried News Corp executives. This ranks as one of the most sordid and irresponsible uses of public opinion polling in recent years.

When prominent Senate Committee Chairpersons resort to public opinion polling and PR firms to pressure their colleagues to support legislation, something is broken. Ironically, that something is the credibility of our system of democratic communication, precisely what the Steven’s ATOR Bill (HR 5252) will impact upon most negatively. We happen to know that Senator Stevens has received over a million impassioned and informed letters voicing dissent against his legislation, thousands were sent to him from saveaccess.org alone. On the issue of ‘net neutrality’ he has received over one million emails, far more than the 91% of the 800 individuals polled that knew nothing of this issue and how it affects them.

Yet we can expect that Stevens will persist in pushing his legislation through the Senate. His goal is to achieve cloture, a Senate procedure in which a Bill’s sponsor secures 60 Senate supporters to agree to support the legislation in advance. Once this support and majority is achieved through private negotiations, the bill moves quickly to the floor for a vote with limited debate and without the possibility of filibuster.

Cloture is very much like the opinion poll released by Stevens today, It’s a distortion of the democratic process in the name of democracy. It’s public policy and opinion decided upon and manufactured by the few and imposed on the majority. Reject this poll, reject cloture and most of all reject ATOR HR 5252.

- Posted by Michael Eisenmenger