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The ACORN people got fired too, before it was discovered that those videos were faked and O'Keefe was ordered to pay up $100,000 for that stunt.

Donald Trump's foundation paid O'Keefe to make the Veritas videos.

You believe whatever you want to. O'Keefe is a convicted criminal whose "exposé videos" have repeatedly been proven fake.

The Bush Administration never said Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. That's a false narrative that was pushed by anti-war activists back in 2002.

You mean to tell me that more than two out of three Americans who believed that Saddam was behind 9/11 did so because anti-war activists back in 2002. pushed that line? That lie was still poisoning the discourse of one out of three American voters in 2007. Apparently, the drive by, liberal, mass media was involved on pushing this lie too. This lie was foisted upon the world by the Bush Administration. What bothers me most is that you (or the people who told you the lie you're repeating) know that this was not only a despicable lie but one that they felt needed to be countered or the lie you are regurgitating never would have seen the light of day.

And yet it happened:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

You either didn't read the Forbes article you linked to, or you didn't comprehend it.

The article's author, James Taylor, claims that the survey conducted by the paper's researchers didn't ask the right question:

As is the case with other ‘surveys’ alleging an overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, the question surveyed had absolutely nothing to do with the issues of contention between global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics.

Taylor does also claim that the papers composing the data of phase I of the study were misclassified - but he relies solely on the analysis of "investigative journalists" at the crank site Popular Technology to support his position. Further, both Taylor and Popular Technology conveniently ignore the fact that phase II of the study had the authors of the papers self-classify.

As an aside, pointing to an opinion piece on Forbes written by James Taylor, a lawyer at the Heartland Institute, hardly lends weight to ANY argument. Mr. Taylor claims to be a "scientist by training" because "I successfully completed Ivy League atmospheric science courses". His employer, Heartland Institute, has likened climate scientists to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, murderer Charles Manson and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Also this notion that peer review catches all frauds is laughable:

snip

NOBODY said the peer review process is perfect. But as GP correctly states, it's the best we've got. You seem to think that just because some academic fraud exists, that it's therefore having a substantial impact on climate science. That's a pretty extraordinary claim...got anything to back it up?

As to your point about reading the abstracts. That's not enough. You need to actually have the study itself vetted. And peer review does not do that.

That's not what GP was saying. Jesus. Namarrgon is saying that before YOU or some other guy on the internet starts pontificating about this or that scientific research, YOU should at least read the abstract of said research. But since you're happy to rely on opinion pieces and pop science articles that are chock full of hyperbole and distortion, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Namarrgon's wise advice is falling on deaf ears. At least in your case.

And that is frequently what is going on.

According to who? You? On what credible data do you base that extraordinary claim? Another James Taylor opinion piece in Forbes?

Because the inadmissable sample is a much cheaper lead that can be done before spending money on the real thing.

Alright buddy, I look forward to your response to this. Occam's razor is a funny thing--it bends every which way depending on how uninformed the user is. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP launched a $200 million whitewashing campaign, including a now-defunct youtube channel full of propaganda videos--
http://www.prwatch.org/news/20...
--but there's no way any of that would go towards paid trolls! Oh wait, there totally is.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

The slashdot summary doesn't even mention the death threats sent by BP agents in the original article.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indep...
"Billie Garde, BP's deputy ombudsman, in a letter to the Government Accountability Project dated December 18, 2012, stated clearly that "BP America contracts management of its Facebook page to Ogilvy Public Relations" and added, "Ogilvy manages all of BP America's social media matters". According to BP America, Ogilvy has a group of 10 individuals in different time zones that perform comment screening of the page," wrote Garde.

In spite of this, you want to tell me that, even though Samsung pays trolls:
http://www.techmtaa.com/2013/1...
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/...

Even though telecoms pay trolls:
http://www.vice.com/read/troll...
Even though non-domestic propaganda contractors like Leonie Industries pay trolls to troll domestically:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetw...
"USA Today reports that in his campaign against the reporters, Chidiac created "fan sites" with URLs matching the names of the reporter and editor who worked on the stories and then filled those sites with content that criticized the journalist's past reporting."

...even despite all this, you somehow think that Exxon-Mobil, the second richest corporation in the world, wouldn't pay trolls for the purpose of PR cleanup?
If you don't think opinion here makes a difference, then ask yourself why every topic about the NSA is full of endless "fuck beta" comments and huge blobs of meaningless text with bolded sections telling you how to configure your router. Maybe it doesn't make a difference, but it seems like there are many with deep pockets who do not agree with you.

Regardless, you have a lot of reading to do before you're fit to tell anyone about occam's razor re: paid shills.

The last person on the planet I want to have supplying curriculum to children is Rupert Murdoch. He's a one-man ignorance machine.

Arizona is the first state, but it won't be the last, to pass ALEC-inspired laws to crack down on homeowners putting up their own solar panels. "Net Pricing" is the current standard, if you are generating more power than you are using, you can sell it back to the utility at a reasonable price; then buy power back when you need it. This horrifies the utilities (at least in Arizona) so they were looking to shut it down. The final result was that they are charging the homeowners to sell their power back to the grid.

If you have a big set of batteries sitting in your garage, it would make more sense to charge them up during the day; and not go for net pricing. Those batteries can store a lot of juice.

That one favors the GOP so it's evil. No really, the wonkish left has been in a panic recently over a proposal to do just that in a few of the swing states (Pennsylvania and Ohio, I think).

The National Popular Vote is assumed to favor the Democrats so it's all sweetness and light. Unless you're a Republican, where it's an obvious abrogation of the Founder's federalism.

Damned if we do, damned if we don't-- but you aren't wholly accurate

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11618/dont-ask-dont-tell-concerned-citizen-uncovers-whole-foods-policy-selling-food-gro

Microsoft uses Burson Marsteller. They're very influential, and responsible for much of the big end of astrotuf and sock-puppetry.

http://www.jongreerconsulting.com/burson-marsteller-outed-as-microsofts-sock-puppet

http://www.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations/astroturf?page=6

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/07/19/microsoft-hires-burson-marsteller-ceo.html

The NRA doesn't want to make it legal to shoot people.

Bullshit. The NRA is one of the most prominent backers of the Stand Your Ground laws:

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/07/11628/studies-show-more-people-shot-death-%E2%80%9Cstand-your-ground%E2%80%9D-laws

They sell insurance intended to protect you from any financial ramifications of shooting people, and make sure that you have the lawyers you need to protect you from legal ramifications:

http://www.indecisionforever.com/blog/2012/06/14/nra-sells-insurance-covering-legal-costs-of-shooting-people

The NRA routinely champions gun ownership as a means of self-defense, despite the well demonstrated fact that gun ownership makes you (and your family) less safe:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506

There are some real reasons to own guns, but the NRA is a bunch of howling vigilantes. They not only want to make it legal to shoot people, they want to make it easy.

The way the measure temps is laughable

I suggest that what you are doing is trying to understand the issue by reading people like Anthony Watts and their manafactured contraversies are confusing you. Here's a link to a very simple NASA experiment you can do yourself, it anhilates the ashpalt and concrete argument, Watts' recation to that debunking was to start issuing false DCMA take downs to hide it. Watts is just wrong and refuses to aknowledge it for political/financial reasons, however the database that Watts has is the best available survey of the current state of US wether stations, so he has contributed something positive. Unfortunately there is a lot of potential for error in his own survey so it's unlinkely it would be very useful as a way of measuring improvement (or otherwise) of the infrastructure.

This is not to say that the urban heat island effect is a fantasy, it's just that climate scientists discovered it decades ago because it's fucking obvious!!!! In fact the MET reseach center that was at the center of the climategate beat-up and accused of "tampering with the raw data" has spent over two decades maticuosly transcribing the raw data set (multiple times with different transcribers to cross-check) and looking for precisely these kinds of anomolies. Unlike Watts and his army of amature photographers they are world renowned experts in sources of observational error wrt to weather staions and they back that up by frequently publishing in top tier journals such as Nature and Science. It's extremely tedious work and is replicated by an independent team using different statistical methods at NASA. These are the two main historical temprature sets, the enourmous amount of work that goes into verifying them is why the rest of the scientific community trust and applaud them.

I am fed up with these idiot scientists

The cure for that is to get your information from the horse's mouth

I blame scientists for this

Which is exactly what the anti-scientists who manafacture these 'contrversies' want you to do, they paint scientists as both complete morons, omnipotent conspirators or grant leeches hoping you will buy one or the other demonization and join their army of useful idiots. The 50 or so stink-tanks in the US who generate most of these climate myths, they have powerfull supporters in congress such as senator Inhofe. They use the exact same play book that was used for decades to deny that smoking causes cancer, it's the same play book creationists use. Why is it the same play book? - Because some of these stink-tanks such as the heritage foundation are paid to do it by the three different groups of deniers. Winning heats and confusing minds, it's how these stink-tanks earn a living.

Now as for the supposed claim (didn't RTFA) that AGW has caused Moose populations to drop dramatically, if the orginal work was published in a peer-reviewed journal I'm inclinded to think the journalist added that bit of confusion all by himself. A hard core cynic might even think it was inserted to distract from the real cause of the Moose decline but it's much more likely that the journalist was just manafacturing his own little contraversy to grab eyeballs and/or appease sponsers. If you want good investigative journalisim that gets to the bottom of these 'climate contraversies' I highly recommend Peter Sinclair's youtube series climate crock of the week.

Coercion, by Douglas Rushkoff
http://www.rushkoff.com/coercion/

Trust Us, We're Experts, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
http://www.prwatch.org/books/experts.html

The Sears catalogue is way better than a nudie scanner image IMO.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1069/5126112341_178c93bd52.jpg > http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/bodyscan.jpg (yes even with that woman making a weird face)

That's true, although they probably already spent up all their lobbying money making sure gays aren't allowed to get married.

Plus you can't forget the anti-union videos they need to produce to intimidate new hires, they're not cheap. Refuse to sign and keep Target union free!!

They're no better than Walmart. Everything they sell is foreign made crap, too. The clothes are more stylish than what Walmart carries, but they fall apart just as fast. Couple this with their piss-poor way of treating employees (speaking as someone that worked there and saw the discrimination first hand) and their support of those hypocritical "family values" groups, I won't put a fucking dime into that corporation's pocket.

Gees numb nuts, I don't have to read those crappy News Corps rags everyday, or watch those crappy Fox not-News channels everyday, there are a whole range of web sites that do it for more and show the highlights 'er' lowlights. You know, I don't have to hit my head with a hammer to know it will feel good when I stop, I don't have to walk with my shows full of rocks to know it will feel better when I stop, I don't have to starve for days to know it will feel good when I eat, I don't have to eat chemically laden artificial junk food to know I well feel better when I eat fresh organic and of course my mind doesn't have to wade through cruft http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cruft day in day out to know I will be far more intellectually satisfied when I obtain my news from better sources.

The crazy idea that I need to read News Corp rags and watch Fox not-News everyday just to appreciate how bad they really are, seriously WTF. I have only got so may free hours in the day for news so I simply go to better sources , now that's common sense. As for the News Corp and Fox not-news lowlights, I wag my head in disbelief and thank people for doing the hard yards of wading through that cruft for me.

Here allow me to save you the pain, you obviously seem to be suffering http://www.newshounds.us/, http://www.fair.org/index.php, http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/, http://mediamatters.org/, http://www.prwatch.org/ ;D.

I can counter your right wing sources with left wing ones:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/27/153179/report-from-poll-taxes-to-voter-id-laws-a-short-history-of-conservative-voter-suppression/
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10711/voter-suppression-bills-sweep-country
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/voter-fraud-or-voter-suppression
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/15/voter_suppression

While I do think there is some voter fraud in the modern era, and would point to Florida in the 2000 election and Ohio in 2004, it is often twisted and blown out of proportion to fuel a hysteria that we need to make it harder to vote. So we end up with laws that make it harder to vote for those who vote Democratic. I find it hard to believe that is an accident.

What we need is a way to verify votes that does not end up constituting an effective poll tax, and keeping people who have a right to vote from the polls. I wonder if any slashdot readers have any suggestions? I'd be quite hopeful on that account, some rather clever people read this site and have left encouraging comments on past articles about voting.

Problem is, you're going up against some of the biggest, and most powerful lobbies ever seen.
When you've got both the agricultural lobby and the pharmaceutical lobby both agreeing on something there's NO WAY you're going to get enough time with your congress critter to make a dent.

We'd sooner get the corn ethanol mandate removed before getting antibiotic use curbed.

You're shooting the messenger. Everything on the site is documented, and it doesn't really matter who did the documenting. Consider them the wikileaks of the activist world.

That site has improved a lot since it was first founded by Rick Berman of Berman and Company, a Washington DC lobbying firm. Probably most famous for his 'Nanny State' campaign, Berman launched ActivistCash.com in 2000 as one of a constellation of other pro-industry astroturfing organizations, including ConsumerFreedom.com, NannyCulture.com. The site (and indeed, the tactic) is a legacy from the pre-9/11 era when corporate America got spooked by the anti-Globalization movement. What is Berman's guiding philosophy for these sites?

"Our offensive strategy is to shoot the messenger. Given the activists' plans to alarm beyond all reason, we've got to attack their credibility as spokepersons." (cite: Berman & Co.: "Nonprofit" Hustlers for the Food & Booze Biz', by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber. PR Watch, 2001)

Turn-about, as they say, is fair play.

The question of using new technology to develop food is hardly a political one. Sure, the discussion has become politicized, with all manner of uninformed people weighing in, but that doesn't mean the discussion is unimportant.

There have been problems with new foods, like transgenic crops. Trust Us, We're Experts details a case where potato crops utilizing a moth gene caused anaphylaxis (resulting in death) in a not-insignificant number of people who ate them. The scientist at Monsanto who was responsible for the problem attempted to raise awareness of the issue and had his career promptly squashed by his employer. Nanotech foods are similarly new.

That's not to say that new food technologies aren't important. They absolutely are. But the issue not as black-and-white as you make it out to be. Healthy skepticism is not the same thing as a knee-jerk backlash.

Everything that's "natural" is good. (Umm... what about ricin? Perfectly respectable "natural" product...)

Yeah, we get it, ricin is poison. Want this Alar sprayed Apple? No? But the Natural people are crazy right? Go ahead take a bite - they are silly, I mean the company that makes it says it is OK. I mean they are scientists right? All one big brotherhood. The guys at Phillip Morris didn't lie did they? They were scientists right?

Everything "nuclear" is bad. (The parent is potentially a good counterexample).

Yep the public hates them. With good reason whether you want to see it or not. If the wind towers blow over and the solar panels fry and the coal plant blows up - the worst they got is no electricity. A nuke plant goes (and it has happened twice) and you get what? We spent 20+ years making sure the public was scared of nukes, now you deride them because they are scared of them. Nice. Go do a bit of work about how Chernobyl went down and what happened to the citizens of it during the meltdown. If people are skittish they have good reason to be. ALL of them were built to "never fail", yet two have. Want to convince the public? Walk over to a holding tank of waste and lick the containers. In other words you are going to have to put up or shut up. And show it on TV.

Everything "renewable" is good. (Using corn-based ethanol as a fuel source is a really bad idea ... there are better sources that have less environmental and economic impact).

Again, this is what they were taught, and so you call them ignorant. Five years ago corn was the gift of God to power. Now it is realized that this isn't so true, give them a bit, they are coming around on this one. At the same time they are being sold on switchgrass as the same thing. So is it renewable? Is it a bad thing?

Again I fault your science education for lacking the ability to realize what are baseless generalizations and what are statistics and what are facts. If there are nitwits out there, part of the problem are people like yourself that call them that and walk away. Try helping instead of bitching.

And FYI - (one of) My Degree is in Botany, my undergrad work was in Plant Systemics (fungi mostly), and I spent years growing (and evolving!) germs for a living.

Seraphim

Which commentators, pundits and so on? Left wing, right wing, balanced?

Right wing, mostly. See the links below.

If you actually had evidence of this, it would be a huge story.

Indeed, it has been big news when evidence came to light concerning the programs under which the Bush Administration, including the DoD, was paying pundits and news analysts to promote administration programs, or otherwise buying the news.

But you don't.

If GP didn't (which I suspect is not the case), the web certainly does, including evidence directly from the horse's mouth at the DoD link above.

So you're nothing but a mindless droning troll.

I would be careful throwing around insults like that, especially when you clearly don't know much about the subject and are just assuming that the person to whom you are responding to is wrong because of your own ignorance.

You really need to read this book. Read it critically, of course. But it opened my eyes to the fact that companies like Monsanto, BP, Dow Chemical, and so on, will never emit unvarnished truths-- there is too much of a financial incentive for them to spin things their way, even to the detriment of humanity. There's a story in the book about a Monsanto scientist who discovered that the gene they were inserting into GMO food was causing anaphylactic shock in some people. Working inside the company got him nowhere, so he spoke publicly about it, and Monsanto buried his career. I just can't trust information from a company like that.

If you work in medicine or biology, most of the research on the effects of various foods on the body is unambiguous. The fact that people feel the way you do is a testament to the efficacy of the PR efforts by the various food industries. Read this sometime.

You're kidding, right? Apparently you've missed out on Margaret Jones, or James Frey, or the entire bogus memoir industry that produces crap like this with the help of a ghost writer. I work for a publisher, and simply put, they rarely fact-check. Instead, what they do is send prerelease books to reviewers. The hope is that the reviewers will be smart enough to catch glaring errors. How knowledgeable the reviewers are depends somewhat on the audience of the book. College textbooks typically go to professors and grad students. Trade paperbacks can go to pretty much anybody, but usually quotable people or professional book critics.

In any case, this is exactly the same mechanism that Wikipedia uses: throw it out there and see if anyone catches something. As a practical matter, publishers cannot fact-check. They do not have the resources. The only books I would depend on fact-checking for are the ones that claim to do so as a principle of their cognitive authority: dictionaries and encyclopedias. The imprint I work for publishes several hundred textbooks a year, and reprints darn near a thousand. We have a little over 200 employees. See what I'm getting at?

Even scientific articles are "fact-checked" this way: throw it out there. Typically the reviewers are peers, and quite knowledgeable. This works better than with trade publishers because the reviewers have specific knowledge about that particular field. But does the publisher fact-check themselves? No! I should add that the pay scale for reviewers goes up depending on the relative reliability of the reviewers. Reviewers for scientific reviewers are often paid in the several hundreds range. Reviewers for college textbooks in the low hundreds (sometimes in trade for other goodies), and trade paperback reviewers, not much, if anything. Often it's for the privilege of seeing pre-release stuff.

There's only one kind of publishing where fact-checking (aside from dictionaries, etc.) is done as a rule: journalism. But there have been many scandals there as well. There was a study mentioned in the book Trust Us, We're Experts that said that nearly half of the Wall Street Journal's article's were simply slightly modified press releases. And the Wall Street Journal is regarded as one of the more reliable papers! I think I only need to mention cable TV journalism for you to see where I'm going with this.

The publishing industry is not reliable. They're in it for the money. Books like Frey's sell just as well, if not better, than the real ones. Just look at the demand for O.J. Simpson's book-- a book that never even claimed to tell the truth! People want something juicy, and the publishing industry is happy to give it to them. Sorry, ptrourke, your premise is false.

It's not "BP", it's "bp". I know your evil plan, you want us to remember the days of British Petroleum.
Hah!
It ain't British Petroleum; they're now beyond petroleum.
Eventually, the humanitarian corporation will transcend the material plane and become beings of pure energy, effectively destroying our oil dependence! At that time, they shall only be known as the color green (specifically Pantone Color 348C). for they will have no use for words!

I for one, hail our green-color trademarking overlords.

Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the administration disagreed with Dr. Carmona's statements. "It has always been this administration's position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science," Mr. Hall said.

Actually, in this case, the Pentagon was part of the push for war:

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2002Q4/war.html

Don't be naive. The military industrial complex has become immensely powerful, and they need a nice bloody war every few years to keep the "industry" part running.

No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.

As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.

Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".

Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:

Public relations firms and corporations have seized upon a slick new way of getting you to buy what they have to sell: Let you hear it from a neutral "third party," like a professor or a pediatrician or a soccer mom or a watchdog group. The problem is, these third parties are usually anything but neutral. They have been handpicked, cultivated, and meticulously packaged to make you believe what they have to say--preferably in an "objective" format like a news show or a letter to the editor. And in some cases, they have been paid handsomely for their "opinions."

Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?

FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:

Given that most media outlets are owned by for-profit corporations and are funded by corporate advertising, it is not surprising that they seldom provide a full range of debate. The right edge of discussion is usually represented by a committed supporter of right-wing causes, someone who calls for significantly changing the status quo in a conservative direction. The left edge, by contrast, is often represented by an establishment-oriented centrist who supports maintaining the status quo; very rarely is a critic of corporate power who identifies with progressive causes and movements with the same passion as their conservative counterparts allowed to take part in mass media debates.

This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tim_Bal l

Dr. Timothy Ball is Chairman and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). [1] Two of the three directors of the NRSP - Timothy Egan and Julio Lagos - are executives with the PR and lobbying company, the High Park Group (HPG). [2] Both HPG and Egan and Lagos work for energy industry clients and companies on energy policy. [3]

Ball is a Canadian climate change skeptic and was previously a "scientific advisor" to the oil industry-backed organization, Friends of Science. [4] Ball is a member of the Board of Research Advisors of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian free-market think tank which is predominantly funded by foundations and corporations. [5]


The links to PR companies is what bothers me. PR companies have studied and refined group psychology for decades, centuries even if you look at how it evolved from greek study of rhetoric, and it has even gotten us into wars like the 1st gulf war ( http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html ). They make Hitler's propaganda team look ineffecient in comparison. Stalin would be envious of them. Having observed PR campaigns for decades, this is a very high level and well funded campaign. I see their tactic - attacking global warming advocates as emotional and vindictive. Basically taking the science out of global warming and turning themselves into victims, because everyone likes a victim. I wish I wasn't so skeptical and negative but having seen PR companies in action, this has all the hallmarks of a PR campaign. The best PR goes unnoticed, it's not obvious to those uniniatied in PR tactics, but it is most definitely happening.

I personally only want to see peer reviewed data, nothing else matters. The PR companies want to take this to the people rather than to the journals.

-FL

First of all, standard disclaimer that I work at MS (specifically the games studios). Anyways ...
Thanks and OK. Most of us wont hold it against you. This article isn't just about Microsoft proxies.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of "fans of Microsoft" that don't work here,
Yes, they are members of "team windows". Ask around the campus about team windows. Hell, I just learned that Microsoft still sends team members to disrupt/interfere with the competitors product conferences. I met a few (Microsofties) at a Lotus conference (no I wasn't a conference member, I happend to be in the hotel, stuck in an elevator with Microsoft employees) in DC back in 1995. I can't beleive Microsoft is still practices this. Back in the day, Microsoft compensated these people with free software.

As for TFA, when I first read the title, I was thinking, "Oh good lord, what the hell did PR do this time?". But after reading the actual article, I can understand a bit of the reason why they did it. (However, my personal stance is that it's still something they shouldn't have done)
Your employers past history in this area is legendary. Since you can't use Google, let me provide a few links:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=microsoft +astroturf&btnG=Search
My favorite: http://www.prwatch.org/node/647
I'm pretty sure middle and uppper management does not inform you when they sic the PR firms on what they percieve as bad publicity. Your on the inside looking out. Most of us are on the outside reading stupid PR releases.

However, if you take your average Slashdotter's opinion, they'll think that all FUD must originate from big corporations looking out to take down the "little guy". While that's certainly the case for lots of things, it also happens the other way around. MS is arguably the biggest example of this, since it's by no means a "favorite" company for your typical Linux/OSS/etc-friendly Slashdotter
As of now, there are over a million slashdot IDs. You equate a vocal few with Anti-Microsoft feelings to mean that slashdot has a majority of anti-Microsoft users. You do know that a lot of us still run BSD/OS2/BE etc. We love computers for what they do for us, not what Microsoft says we are allowed to do with our computers. Most Linux users don't care or preach about anything Microsoft does.

I made a career choice back in the 90's to not be locked into any one technology (Microsoft DDE) . That decision has benefited me compensation wise very well. I can program in any embedded/PC/Mainframe envrionment. If your serious about your specialty (craft), I can look forward to seeing (purchasing) your games on a Wii/Linux/PS3/Mac system soon.

Enjoy,

The person writing that inflammatory straw man blog did PR work for Exxon.

"2 November, 2002
Wrote an article entitled "Greens Praise ExxonMobil for Efforts to Save Tiger," which highlighted ExxonMobil's donations to tiger conservation efforts.
Source: CNSNews.com"

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.p hp?id=1126

Exxon currently has a PR campaign going to refute global warming, they are worried that energy efficiency schemes will reduce their profits.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5642

So he's just a shill, trying to exaggerate statements made by a weather channel presenter in order to denigrate the science of climate change.

Why not link to the the real article instead of, or in addition to, the story about the article?

"My mind is made up because of the facts."
Well then, lets see some of your data to backup that statement. As I've stated earlier, I've included links, that you glibly avoid discussing, to support my point. You simply make a statement as if it's a fact without proof. Here is another link to support the fact of media consolidation. Lets look at what media consolidation is, it is when more and more media outlets, whether they are television, radio, newspaper, etc;, are owned and controlled by a smaller and smaller group of corporations. If you had been paying attention for the last ten years, you would already have known this. Obviously your too busy playing WOW or watching Survivor... I don't know which is worse. Here is an article by Ted Turner where he discusses the folly and danger of media consolidation, terming it a "Loss of democratic debate". Remember when you said media consolidation had nothing to do with Democracy?

"they'll tell you what you want to hear"? That's merely media being responsive to the public interest.
I disagree strongly. "Responsive to the public interest."? Give me a break. Good journalism is supposed to make people question and think, not blindly accept as the dittohead's do. Also, the vast majority of talk radio is spouting this type of right wing jingoistic krap (theres that word again), and guess who owns the stations that play them? Thats right, Clear Channel, Cox, and the rest of the consolidaters. The only real place to find voices of dissent or questioning is on public or "free" radio, those stations not controlled by corporations.

"and I probably watch "Democracy Now" (something that would not exist if "media concentration" claims were true) more than Fox News."
I find that hard to believe, because if you did watch or listen to Democracy Now then you wouldn't have the "world is flat" opinion about media consolidation that you have. Check this link for details. I dare you.

"The studies get "tilted" into meaninglessness when those who make the claim that there is media concentration basically fake their case by not counting most of the media voices. So EASY to make a case that there are too few voices when you arbitrarily toss out most of the voices from being counted."
Thats a good one. You are using that methodology now. As I stated earlier, you are taking the tack that the Bush administration takes when a scientific study comes up they disagree with. They simply dismiss it because they don't like how the data came out. Thats what you are doing here. The internet is full of examples and proof of this. The fact that you argue the point makes me think that you're either:
A) A corporate shill getting paid to post this krap on /.
OR
B) Someone too scared of the truth to research anything, knowing they won't like what they find.
Which is it?
Also, what specifically do you mean by "voices"? Being vague and rhetorical are the weapons of politicians, why don't you run for office?

"The ability to purchase media outlets is part of freedom of the press, not a favor to be granted by the FCC."
The Freedom of the press has nothing to do with creating media monopolies. When a single company owns more media outlets in a given market it gains unfair advantage. You may have trouble understanding this concept... Perhaps you should read up on American history, particulary the beginning of the 20th century during Theodore Roosevelts period. Do you know what a VNR is? That is essentially "fake news" that PR firms create to push a specific point of view of product. These VNR's are then played on local news stations and the average viewer assumes they are "real news" pieces by real journalist

The organization at the core of all of this is The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). Odd linky which connects them to here.

Ready for the brain-twister? They are pro nuclear energy.

Demonize away!

The other interesting tidbit found here (sorry about the horrid flash link) is that Exxon has moved $12+ million (discoverable) towards anti-global warming organizations. That sounds like a lot -- until you realize they make a billion $ a day ...

Countering propaganda by investigating and reporting on behind-the-scenes public relations campaigns by corporations, industries, governments and other powerful institutions.

Informing and assisting grassroots citizen activism that promotes public health, economic justice, ecological sustainability and human rights.

I'm not looking to make an ad hominem argument here, but please take anything that comes out of junkscience.com with a huge grain of salt. Steven Milloy, the site's creator, has a long history of paid-for punditry, primarily for the tobacco industry ( http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.ht ml , http://www.trwnews.net/Documents/Dow/junkscicom.ht m ).

Sites like junkscience.com take great care to mention only those few "prominent" scientists who share their view, while ignoring the distribution of views among researchers in the field. In reality, there's practically consensus that the recent global warming is a man-made phenomenon ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/570 2/1686 ).

Always do a background check on authors when hearing controversial claims.

Ulf Magnusson

This isn't an issue about infomercials with the disclaimers you mention, nor is it about humorists. Those obviously wouldn't warrant an investigation. The issue is about "news reports" that are created by government and/or corporate organizations which are sent to "real" news producers, who then put them on the air without disclosing their source. It's a way for those producers to fill time in their broadcasts without spending any money and the creators of the segments get to spread their message to the public through a medium which that audience [probably foolishly] trusts. I posted this link in a message down a bit further, but it probably bears repeating.

Here's an article from the Center for Media and Democracy that gives a lot more information about this practice and also provides video examples for your viewing "pleasure."

http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

The "junk science" fad is actually in the attribution of the label "junk science" to topics that threaten various SIGs within the United States. Fearing a decreasing interest in adoption of tobacco products from studies implying negative health effects from "second hand smoke," Philip Morris originated a marketing campaign to discredit the general public's confidence in the scientific community. The idea evolved into a cross-industry conspiracy to undermine the work of the EPA and FDA and to discredit broad-ranging issues in scientific research that conflicted with the interests of the conspirators. This conspiracy operated under the name "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition." The conduit of the misinformation was Steven Milloy, the owner and operator of junkscience.com who frequently posts stories calling into question the legitimacy of various scientific studies and ad hominem against specific researchers whose work conflicts with his sponsors.

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.ht ml
http://timlambert.org/category/science/milloy/
http://info-pollution.com/milloy.htm

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5066 [prwatch.org]

"On his CNN TV program, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post interviewed Thomas Ricks, the Post's Pentagon reporter and author of the book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Ricks told Kurtz,
"One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon."

Kurtz responded, "Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of its fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?"

Ricks replied, "Yes, that's what military analysts have told me." Kurtz remarked "that's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here."

Ricks replied "It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well."

"On his CNN TV program, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post interviewed Thomas Ricks, the Post's Pentagon reporter and author of the book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.

Ricks told Kurtz,

"One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon."

Kurtz responded, "Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of its fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?"

Ricks replied, "Yes, that's what military analysts have told me." Kurtz remarked "that's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here."

Ricks replied "It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well."

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5066

"Political TV ads always have to say who paid for them. I don't see how a video posted to youtube would be any different."

"The best PR goes unnoticed" is apt in this case. PR firms wouldnt survive if you knew who paid them.

Read this for more information about how PR companies shape America.


In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."83

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."84

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

Check out http://www.prwatch.org/node/4458

Other frontgroups include; http://www.handsoff.org/ http://www.minimumwage.com/ http://www.abionline.org/ http://www.consumerfreedom.com/ http://www.epionline.org/ http://www.animalscam.com/ http://www.activistcash.com/ http://www.consumerfreedom.com/ http://www.activistcash.com/ http://www.physicianscam.com/ http://www.epionline.org/ http://www.abionline.org/ http://www.physicianscam.com/ http://www.petakillsanimals.com/ http://www.nannyculture.com/ http://www.cspiscam.com/ http://www.animalscam.com/ http://www.maddatgm.com/ http://www.cspiscam.com/ http://www.bacdebate.com/ http://www.bacdebate.com/ http://www.maddatgm.com/ http://www.responsibledrinker.com/ http://www.petakillsanimals.com/ http://www.bermanco.com/ http://www.firstjobs.org/ http://www.petapetition.com/ http://www.bermanco.com/ http://www.obesityscam.com/ http://www.rottenacorn.com/ http://www.madcowscare.com/
http://www.livingwage.com/

While I'm not arguing with your general point, the following need addressing:

They utterly failed to pick up on Bin Laden's little plan;

Apart from the 'knowing a fair amount about it' bit - see the 9/11 Commission report.

they failed to notice Saddams intentions to invade kuwait until hours before it happened;

Again, rubbish. Saddam basically asked permission to invade Kuwait, and as the US didn't object, took that as presumptive permission. But the only reason this was a problem at all (compared to all the other episodes where erstwhile allies invade their neighbours that we don't object to) was that it was the subject of some effective propaganda.

More importantly, they failed to take notice of what their own intelligence analysts were telling them - there was no way that Saddam was even close to effective WMD production. But of course, that didn't fit the political narrative.

Please, read this: http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary

Well the editor, Frank Salvato, seems to be a content thief. The flying pig logo he uses on his "The Fifth Column", looks awful familiar to me.

But maybe Salvato is just a dupe and got the graphic from the talentless - Propagandizing PhotoHacktress - thieving - disrespecter of a Navy Corpsman, Linda Eddy, who has No Shame, and is listed as a contributor on the site.

(yeah, it's personsal, i was a lotterywinner_and_conscriptDoc)

Well the editor, Frank Salvato, seems to be a content thief. The flying pig logo he uses on his "The Fifth Column", looks awful familiar to me.

But maybe Salvato is just a dupe and got the graphic from the talentless - Propagandizing PhotoHacktress - thieving - disrespecter of a Navy Corpsman, Linda Eddy, who has No Shame, and is listed as a contributor on the site.

(yeah, it's personsal, i was a lotterywinner_and_conscriptDoc)

Microsoft has another connection to the Abramoff scandal. Microsoft e.g. supports IPI, a right wing republican organisation which is involved in the Abramoff scandal - in fact its lobbyist Giovanetti openly had to admit it when his organisation was accused.

IPI represents MS interests at WIPO (euphemism for insults against NGOs), recently wanted to join the MS-EU antitrust case. This was rejected by the EU court of Justice for good reasons. See curia.eu.int

Further MS pays ACT, an SME association astroturf with the well-known lobbyist Jonathan Zuck. Close relations to DCI + ATL. I remind you of dead people letter campaigns of ATL... Guess for what company ATL did it?

Microsoft paid DCI's TechCentralStation journo-lobbying. TCS funds political radicals all over the world, spreads anarcho-capitalist ideas and insults France, Muslims, alledged socialists etc. The idea behind DCI is to inject radical views supporting their corporate sponsors into right wing sectarians and barraters.

My personal advice: when you hire the ... of US-lobbying and sent it all over the world, you'd better stop complaining about unfair reporting.

MS did not have luck before. Here at Germany Microsoft was involved in the Hunzinger scandal which forced a minister of defense, Mr. Scharping, to step down. Hunzinger's main corporate customer was Microsoft. I think it started when Hunzinger letters about a TV placement for Ms were leaked to the press and media professionals started to discuss the case. So Ms was involved in one of the few German lobbying scandals which had serious business consequences for Hunzinger. Microsoft quickly switched over to another lobbying firm but could not avoid bad press. This is a risk of MS lobbying: They burn lobbyists, they also burned Hunzinger, because smart people watch what MS does.

Last year a press worker for Microsoft Denmark, Marianne Wier, communicated to the Danish press (Borsen) a blackmail attempt of Mr. Gates himself, directed towards the Danish government. They were so sure of themselves that they even communicated it intentionally to the press. The scandal was echoed in the DK Parliament. ...