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

William Fisher gives a decent historical overview on the use of media by hysterical reactionary forces throughout our history, serving as a reminder that there really isn’t anything new under the sun.reminder about the history.

People who are too young to remember the 1930s, 40s, and 50s may not know that the airwaves were filled with hysterical, fear-mongering voices long before we ever heard of Bill O’Reilly.

Back then, the airwaves were radio waves. Nightly, millions of families gathered before their Radiolas and Emersons to listen to the news. There were such “commentators” as Lowell Thomas, Gabriel Heater and H.V. Kaltenborn, whose notion of news consisted largely of reading press releases from the Republican National Committee. On Sunday evenings, there was Walter Winchell, a gossip columnist turned world affairs authority, who always began his program with the greeting, “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.” Winchell’s rabid anti-Roosevelt and anti-New Deal views were barely concealed in his staccato delivery.

But then, as there remains today, a need for voices of reason and enlightenment in the public discourse. American hero Edward R. Murrow served as an influential one during some tenuous times…

In 1954, at the height of the McCarthy era paranoia, Murrow produced the program that, more than any other single broadcast, has come to define him: A televised critique of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy.

There’s a reason I cite all this old radio-days history. Then, as now, there was little and largely ineffective public push-back against right-wing radio “news.” Then, as now, networks controlled the airwaves, and sponsors controlled the networks. Today, we have television as well as radio. And today, both are still controlled by large corporate interests - owners and sponsors.

The impact of today’s TV and radio “news” has been well-documented. The nightly news programs of the major broadcast networks are caricatures of the cult of “objectivity,” in which anchors feel obliged to present the views of “both sides” of an issue, even when they know one side is peddling falsehoods. In both broadcast and cable outlets, the line between news, commentary and entertainment is no longer decipherable.

Read The Full Article Here

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts, takes to task not just the crass hubris and incompetence of the Busheviks, but their media lackeys servicing empire, as well as their loyalist followers in the American electorate who refuse to come to grips with reality and continue to enable this criminal regime in their disastrous policies. Roberts is no left-winger, as he was also an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review.

Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information.

Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox “News” and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media is affected to some degree.

Despite the media’s failure, about half the population has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq has not made them safer and that the Bush administration’s assault on civil liberties is not a necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, thus, lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the population.

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Why does any American think that spying without a warrant has any more effect in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Bush is disobeying, requires the executive to obtain from a secret panel of federal judges a warrant for spying on Americans. The purpose of the law is to prevent a president from spying for partisan political reasons. The law permits the president to spy first (for 72 hours) and then come to the court for permission. As the court meets in secret, spying without a warrant is no more effective in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant.

Instead of explaining this basic truth, the media has played along with the Bush administration and formulated the question as a trade-off between civil liberties and protection from terrorists. This formulation is false and nonsensical. Why does the media enable the Bush administration to escape accountability for illegal behavior by putting false and misleading choices before the people?

It is extraordinary that anyone would think Americans are safer as a result of Bush invading two Muslim countries and constantly threatening two more with military attack. The invasions and threats have caused a dramatic swing in Muslim sentiment away from the US. Prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, a large majority of Muslims had a favorable opinion of America. Now only about 5 percent do.

Read The Complete Article

Here is an excellent interview with Tom Engelhardt, the creator and editor of Tomdispatch.com, as conducted by another contributing writer, Nick Turse.

“I’ve always claimed that, when you read articles in the imperial press, the best way - and I’m only half-kidding - is back to front. Your basic front-page stories, as on the TV news, usually don’t differ that much from paper to paper. It’s when you get toward the ends of pieces that they really get interesting. Maybe because reporters and editors sense that nobody’s paying attention but the news junkies, so things get much looser. You find tidbits the reporter’s slipped in that just fall outside the frame of the expectable.”

This actually would be just as appropriate to place within the section on “What Is Patriotism?”, but either or, it is well worth the read.

I’ve been following the Iraq news intimately for at least four years now and the American imagery has told such a story: There were the first upbeat images after the invasion when we were teaching the Iraqi child - as the likes of Rumsfeld and Bush put it - how to take the “training wheels” off that bike of democracy. So fabulously patronizing. Then, as things got worse, you got your “turning points.” (The President’s the only one left mentioning those these days.) And with them went the “milestones” of progress, after each of which there would be a worse set of disasters until they kind of faded away and you got images instead of the invasion having opened a Pandora’s Box in Iraq.

Then, maybe six months ago, Americans officials made it to the metaphoric “precipice” and soon after looked into the “abyss” of civil war before “taking a step back.” You saw such imagery quoted in the press all the time, usually from the mouths of the anonymous officials who swarm through such stories.

Now, Burns, today, has the newest Bush administration image. I first noticed it when Condi Rice went to Baghdad at the end of April to twist arms and get the prime minister we wanted. Officials in her party were quoted as saying that this was “a last chance,” which was, of course, absurd. I mean, this situation has been devolving for four years.

A month of sectarian catastrophe later, Burns’ piece quotes yet more anonymous American “military and civilian officials” who feel they are “witnessing what might be the last chance to save the American enterprise in Iraq from a descent into chaos and civil war.” If you keep reading, you find that we’re now at a “critical juncture,” kind of a turning point without the optimism; then, that the Americans “played a muscular role in vetting and negotiating over the new cabinet.” Now that’s a wonderful phrase, like we’re at the gym.

NT: It’s the strong arm.

TE: Yes, but so much more polite. Then you discover that our ambassador, Kalmay Khalilzad, “acted as a tireless midwife in the birthing of the new government.” Now, if this were, say, the Russians and some Central Asian autocracy, it would be strong-arming the locals and creating a puppet government. And then, part way in, those “milestones” arrive. The piece is a compendium of images from the Bush experience in Iraq - with some new gems thrown in. This is just the automatic writing of the press in a hurry. But for me, it would be a jumping off place for a piece.

Reading newspapers, I’m often aware of what an imperial planet we’re on. Things only work in one direction. Sometimes, just for the hell of it, I imagine flipping the directional signs.

For instance, a recent front-page New York Times piece about the CIA went essentially like this: Good news! Despite all its well-known problems, the Agency has bolstered its corps of spies, ramped up its on-the-ground capabilities, and we’re finally on the verge of breaking operatives into closed societies like, say, Iran. I’m thinking: Whoa, it doesn’t even faze us to proclaim to all and sundry that we have the right to mobilize vast numbers of covert operatives and put them in any other society of our choosing, for any kind of mayhem we might desire. We broadcast that fact on the front pages of our major papers.

So flip this story. Blazing headlines, the Tehran Times. The Iranians announce that, despite years of problems, their intelligence agencies have just bolstered their spy corps significantly and proudly expect to be capable soon of seeding the closed society of Washington with covert teams of operatives. We would be outraged. We’d be bombing them tomorrow! The fact is we’re allowed to talk and write in a way permitted to no other people on Earth. It’s imperial freedom of speech.

There is also a second follow up article to this interview. Here is just one of the money shot points made in it…

When I interviewed Ann Wright, one of three State Department diplomats who resigned in protest as the invasion of Iraq rushed toward us - a brave act - I asked her what she thought her military and State Department careers and her anti-war activism had in common. “Service to America,” she said. And here was the thing, I had written the word “service” next to the question beforehand. So I replied, “Hey, I knew you were going to say that,” and I showed her. I’ve come to feel particular sympathy for many of the people you write about, Nick, in your Fallen Legion series, people in government or the military who thought they were serving their country and find themselves serving officials they can’t bear, who have betrayed them and the country. In that sense, Tomdispatch has come to feel like my version of service to country.

Of all the things that people write me when they’re angry, the one that most gets my goat - and also makes me laugh - is: Go back to …

Twenty years ago, it would have been Russia, but now, depending on the moment, they’ll put in China or maybe France. Part of me thinks: a plane ticket and some Peking Duck or a croissant. Sounds like a good couple of weeks. But my deeper feeling is, hey, you jerk, this is my damn country and I’m not going anywhere!

You can read Part II of this insightful interview discussion Here

Here George Lakoff has delineated a bipolar split over creation of a consensus definition of “freedom.” I think one problem with Lakoff’s piece is this bipolarity. Apparently, if only the “Progressives” would “reclaim” the conceptual connotations of the words “freedom” and “liberty” then we could “reclaim not merely the words “freedom” and “liberty,” but the ideas that made this a free [sic] country.” But for Lakoff, it’s all in the spin, not in the substance. He ends with the giveaway line: “To lose freedom is awful; to lose the idea of freedom would be worse.”

Well, to believe freedom ever existed in this country seems symptomatic of having “lost the idea of freedom” somewhere back in the pie graph.

Of interest in this article is the reference to cognitive redefinition:

“The mechanism of redefinition [of words like “freedom”] is cognitive. It is in our brains. We can’t see it. Freedom is what cognitive scientists call an ‘essentially contested concept,’ which means there will always be distinct and disputed versions of freedom that are inconsistent with each other. There is no single, universal, and objectively ‘correct’ meaning of freedom. There is a single, uncontested, but limited, core meaning of freedom that we all agree on. But that is the limit of consensus. Progressives and conservatives have different value systems that extend the uncontested core in opposite directions.”

Although Lakoff blows the whole discussion, arguing his point from one side of an artificially bipolar debate, “redefinition” is one of the tools of propaganda and enculturation used to colonize minds with things like “belief that the Regulatory System offers remedies to communities under corporate assault.” Redefinition is a powerful tool for reshaping the thoughts brains think with the words they are given to think with. Changing the connotations attached to words changes the mental outcome of thinking with those words.

Lakoff has failed to check for the camouflaged colonizers in his own head.

Yes, Lakoff’s own redefinition of “freedom” in the context of a bipolarity of ideologies simply masks a bargeful of other deceptions, including the “truth” that all conservatives believe one set of chinchilla-lined “facts” while all progressives swear by a different set of hemp-lined “facts.”

When the facts are too complicated to render any absolute “truths” to suit your needs, it’s helpful to use all deceptions and coercions available to create a social consensus about the “facts” so that an elite of sorts can create the conditions wherein we all walk around in the bubble of some synthetic “reality.”

Lakoff made one point that bore some relationship to facts: a large divide exists over just what that consensus reality should look like. There is no division over the idea that some point of view must be coerced on unwilling minds.

- Posted by BenGPrice@aol.com, CELDF

Yes, that sounds like a staggering headline, but it is actually quite true.

In the ongoing effort by the Reich Wing of American politics to defend the disastrous war in Iraq and the criminal acts it betrays, they have come to this. These kooks are always trying to claim the legacy of the Second World War as some kind of analogous event to and rationale for what is happening today, but such strained and implausible efforts are now reaching the point of looking glass absurdity.

Read the transcript of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly ascribing the Malmedy massacre of December 1944 to American soldiers, and using it as a rationale for why it seems okay to him that there are massacres by American soldiers in Iraq. (Malmedy was actually a war crime where SS soldiers gunned down in cold blood American prisoners of war taken captive during the Battle of the Bulge).

Its probably also worth noting that the goal of WWII was to destroy fascism, not to strengthen it, as the current administration seems to be geared towards doing.

Fascism: The domination of a government by corporations of the political right, combined with bellicose nationalism. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Actual investigative journalism by local TV news (this from the great state of Wisconsin) on the fraudulent PR(opaganda) being carried out by the telco corporations in regards to video franchising and new broadband telecommunications legislation.

TV4US coalition spokesperson Kelley Gannon said the ads are designed to “educate the public.” They’re running across the county, and in Madison, to put pressure on Congress to pass the COPE (Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act) Act.

It would drastically change how the cable industry works. The bill allows phone companies, like AT&T, to get a national cable franchise and offer video to any customer in America. Currently, cable companies, like Comcast and Charter Communications, negotiate with local municipalities valid only in that community.

UW telecommunication professor Barry Orton is critical of the campaign, “Here’s a phony ad,” says Orton. “Here’s a group that is a puppet of AT&T.”

“What’s driving all of this is the desire by AT&T and Verizon, the two big phone companies to get into the cable business and offer video. And they want to do it without local licenses,” said Orton.

In the industry, the concept of offering a variety of services, like phone, Internet, video and mobile phone, is called “bundling.” Telecommunications outfits think it’s the key to future profit. AT&T is already bundling services like home and mobile phone and high speed Internet.

WISC-TV’s Reality Check found the claim promising lower rates is misleading.

Of note is the mention of the phony TV4US astroturf lobbying operation, pretending its a citizens grassroots organization. Also unusual is the news article quoting from a telecom analyst (Barry Orton) who is one of the few usually referenced in the media who is NOT actually being paid by the telecom lobby.

Read The Full Report Read The Full Article Here

Larry Johnson says that journalists have an obligation to disclose family connections that cause conflicts of interest. One example is Howard Kurtz, media reporter for the Washington Post, whose wife works as a Republican consultant.

Read The Full Article Here

Is there any more direct and clear cut example of the threats to journalism being posed today by corporate consolidation of the media? TPM Cafe reports on their Daily Muck….

Because of the report from ABC’s investigative unit that House Speaker Dennis Hastert has attracted interest from federal investigators in the Abramoff matter, ABC’s corporate parent is expecting headaches as it lobbies on unrelated legislation. In particular, Disney was pushing to roll back a provision in a recent tax bill that they project costs movie studios $180 million over a decade.

The Wall Street Journal reports on this issue Here