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PR Firm Behind Al Gore YouTube Spoof?
mytrip writes to tell us ABC News is reporting that a supposed amateur video posted to YouTube.com may have actually been designed and posted by a Republican public relations firm called DCI. From the article: "Public relations firms have long used computer technology to create bogus grassroots campaigns, which are called 'Astroturf.' Now these firms are being hired to push illusions on the Internet to create the false impression of real people blogging, e-mailing and making films."
This falls into the category of "duh" for me. Who else would sponsor such a thing? Maybe the oil companies?
Political hacks have been sponsoring spin in books and the "news" media since forever. What's new here is that they now see the blogosphere as important enough to merit attention.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And if any PR company produced that, they're seriously over paid.
Afraid you're missing the point. YouTube is largely community-produced content, often full of drunken dancing / buffoonery and clips from TV shows, etc. This clip was designed to "fit in" and look as amateurish as the rest of the tripe on YouTube to pass the smell test for most of the content there.
I'd say they did their job brilliantly.
Bingo. It's a campfire with no soldiers around it, designed to make one's forces look much more numerous than they are.
Of course, if they make it look too stupid, it just reflects badly upon their side...
This is a continuation of the oil industry and friends' campaign of "we can't argue the science anymore with out looking like morons, so we'll just call people names". It's like the bully in the school yard who knows he's wrong so he'll just kick and scream.
You know, I can understand complaints of rejected stories when they were submitted weeks or months before... But 24 hours? Give me a break.
So, the editors (using that term loosly here) probably got 1000 submissions of the story, and picked the one they prefered, instead of just the FIRST ONE, which probably wasn't yours (but somebody else before you) anyhow.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The real troubling thing here is that major news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, ABC, and even our beloved Slashdot are playing right into the hands of Exxon, DPI, and whoever else is behind the video.
By reporting about this incident, these outlets are providing the video a vast amount of exposure that it otherwise would not receive.
I'd bet anything that WSJ didn't stumble upon this story randomly - someone at DCI surreptitiously helped them along because DCI knew that they could get media outlets to unwittingly distribute their propaganda.
And at the end of the day, it's still considered good PR for all parties involved - Exxon got their point out to millions of viewers, DCI got paid, and ABC/WSJ/Slashdot did a good job of uncovering the "truth" of the situation, which pleases their readers and viewers just as much as any other story.
All of this is just an elaborate game to get you to view an anti-Gore advertisement.
Sad that this is how the media works today.
The way I see it, each party is as bad as the other. One's just better at it than the other one. Both try to exploit human characteristics in order to gain and hold power.
"Look at these poor people being oppressed! If you let us do X, thereby strengthening our power, we'll help them!"
"You're being oppressed! If you let us do X, thereby strengthening our power, we'll help you!"
Variations on these lines have been used by both the Left and the Right for decades. They've probably been used for millenia, whenever there has been a political divide. The "oppressed people that need saving" are generally actually being oppressed, but the result is always more power for the government, in the form of increased taxes, more spy powers, or laws that serve their ends.
I'm aware of the psychological roots of this method, but I still find it detestable. Instead of arguing like an adult, the oil firms reduce themselves to the political equivalent of taunting the guy who gets high grades and/or is knowledgeable about many subjects because he's a "nerd".
Come on, oil companies, argue bravely and responsibly. If you think Gore is wrong, show us the proof. Don't just close your ears and shout "la la la la, I'm not listening!"
My new blog
This is not 'public relations' or not 'lobbying' - this is PAID propaganda. And this particular one, is what is actually lying about some person to demean him/her - the owners of this firm need to be sued, and to hell that is, and should be expelled from public life.
This is NOT democracy. Anyone who tells that this is democracy, are probably other paid propagandists.
Read radical news here
With trademark violations the key question is usually whether the use of the trademark creates a false impression that the product originated with the trademark owner. The non-comercial nature of this video, and the way in which the trademark is used is unlikely to create that sort of impression, so no trademark violation here.
The image is also protected by copyright but the copyright owner says: "Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks." The key bit here being "if someone asks".
The big deal here is the dishonesty.
t m) from soldiers in Iraq, in local newspapers.
w s&id=31418), while it failed and ruined poor farmers (http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6737).
Trying to make it look as if there is a grassroot movement.
It's like the prefab letters (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3190934.s
It's like producing thousands of letters-from-the-public to look to be genuinely written by granny's. ("In 2001, the Los Angeles Times accused Microsoft of astroturfing when hundreds of similar letters were sent to newspapers voicing disagreement with the United States Department of Justice and its antitrust suit against Microsoft. The letters, prepared by Americans for Technology Leadership, had in some cases been mailed from deceased citizens or nonexistent addresses. [3]" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing)
It's like writing that Indians will be oh so happy with GMO cotton (http://www.newkerala.com/news3.php?action=fullne
That's LYING and CHEATING for profit. That's the problem.
If the article was just a link to the video, your post would be true. Someone would click the link, see the video and think that it was funny and (at a subconscient level) see Gore as a political who cannot be trusted (because the depiction of the video gets to the mind, even if realizing it is a joke, because it shows that people does not like him and are very vocal about it).
But if you link to this video while telling the whole story, then the user does not see a video mocking Gore, he/she sees a video created to deceive them, created by a firm and falsely posted as Jhon Doe... as the receptiveness of the people changes, the thing that they see differs completely.
Why can't
If I, as an average citizen, espouse the opinion "Al Gore is a boring, irrelevant blowhard", I am being honest, but once I do something like rise to the presidency of my company or amass more than a million dollars in personal net worth, suddenly a statement like "I think Al Gore is a boring, irrelevant blowhard" is disingenuous?
Because the average citizen is a disinterested party. The head of a company that pumps billions of tons of carbon into the air (directly or indirectly) has a lot more to lose (short term, we all lose long term) if Al Gore is right.
What?
Also, Michael Moore isn't the democratic party. the GOP is the republican party. This story is "The GOP is spreading propoganda" not "one republican is spreading propoganda" Big difference.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Try googling carbon-neutral gore, and hang your carbon filled head in shame. The man is more consistant and does more to act on his convictions than probably anyone here. (Of course if you still are buying the "invented the internet" misquote there's not much chance you're looking for real information.)
One thing I'm curious about though. What do you people who spout this non-sense think Gore's motivation is? Trying to drum up business for his fat-cat environmentalist friends that he's in the pocket of? Surreptitiously trying to destroy the United States, covert operative for The Terrorists that he is? Ah no, i remember now. Sorry, I'd forgotten the 2000 election smear campaign. He's just simply a raving lunatic (raving in a wooden, personality-less sort of way, that is, of course).
Sigh. Go see the movie. At least you'll have some idea what you're talking about then. (Of course it will do no good to mention that scientists, all except the one prominently being funded by the oil companies, seem to think the movie was pretty much, with just a few quibbles, completely accurate.)
Well, sorry to have bothered you. I'll let you get back to your stem-cell research now.
Because taking credit for another person's work is fraud. It's as close as you can get to actually "stealing" information, taking it (or at least the credit for it) away from its author. Sharing music, on the other hand, doesn't involve deceiving anyone about the origins of the music, unless you're intentionally mislabeling the files. I believe deceiving someone about the authorship of a work is far, far worse than simply disregarding the author's wishes about how it may be distributed, and I believe a lot of slashdotters agree.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Reminds me of an old saying: If the facts are on your side you pound the facts; If the facts are not on your side you pound the table.
I'd like to know how the PR firm infiltrated all of these blogs to even get the movie seen. I saw it on Fark and when I watched it, I was wondering why the hell the thing even showed up there. It's technically awful, it's not funny, the pacing is slower than An Inconvenient Truth (which is hard to do for a 3 minute movie!), and basically didn't have any merit to it whatsoever besides the message that Al Gore is boring. Why would it be posted to all of these popular sites?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
To make matters even more decetful, these rapist advertise everywhere, then argue that if we don't like it we can walk to work.
The oil companies aren't forcibly raping us. We're bending over, spreading our cheeks, and taking it without lube from them!
We drive unnecessarily huge, inefficient cars. We live in comparatively big houses which are often poorly designed (read: no passive solar heat in winter, no convection ventilation in summer) even if well insulated. We oppose the construction of new nuke and hydro power plants: not in my backyard! We commute to work by car from 40 or 50 miles away. We don't complain when our employers put up a new headquarters in the middle of nowhere. We haven't electrified our railroads in order to move freight without using oil.
This isn't rape. This is a consensual masochistic activity on the part of the US.
-b.
Many Republicans are extremely corrupt, and are willing to do anything to get what they want. Read more about it: Armed Madhouse.
Do you think that the violence of the U.S. government will end the 3,000 years of violence in the Middle East?
Are you willing to pay to occupy Iraq so that supplies from the second biggest reserves of oil in the world can be restricted, thus driving up the price of oil?
Can people who gladly pay to kill other people be correctly called Christians?
There are many people out there who 'walk the walk'. However, you are never going to hear from them because they live frugally on their farms and don't have access to the media that Gore does.
Yes, Gore is a politically active member of the American upper class. Like most other members of the American upper class, he uses lots of energy. Unlike them, however, he also works to get the message out about global warming. In return for his hard work, he gets called a hypocrite, while his equally energy-using do-nothing peers all skate by without a second look. No good deed goes unpunished, of course... but I for one am glad that someone with the resources to make a real difference also has to balls to do so -- even if it does mean taking flack from the peanut gallery.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The big deal here is that campaigns on MoveOn *ARE* grassroots campaigns. They are by real people and organizations *NOT* for-profit businesses! It corrupts democracy.
rootsmith Inc.
This is what drives me crazy about the DNC. The Democrats will complain like crazy about Global Warming and making a change, but block the technology that could single handedly drop emissions in the country more than anything else.
But then my alternative is the Republicans who see no need to worry about CO2 emissions whatsoever. But they will build nuclear power plants.
So who will have a greater effect on reducing CO2? Right now I'm leaning towards the Republican side because economics will reduce oil consumption, and we will have nuclear plants. With the Democrats we would have better cars, but nothing would be done about the huge amounts of CO2 emitted by coal and gas plants.
Theoretically with both the RNC and DNC we could have the best of both worlds. But in reality, we get the worst. (sigh)
These people pretend to be someone else while they snipe at Gore and his movie. They don't debate or argue his claims, they don't find fault with his methods or supporters-- it's pure assassination, and they do it from hiding.
If you're sure you want to draw a lesson here, please do. I suspect you're too busy cheerleading to do so.
I love the head-in-the-sand morons who deny reality. Just keep repeating the Big Lie, like our moron-led government does now about so many things, like the WMD idiocy. And "9/11" has gone from a tragedy for a few thousand people, to an excuse to bankrupt the country, discard the US Constitution and Amendments, and move the USA from the most-admired to the most-loathed country on Earth. This is not just bombast, I travel overseas about half the time, if you go around starting wars for no reason, and deny obvious facts like manmade global warming, people tend to mistrust/hate you. What a surprise!
War is Peace. Hate is Love. Oil Companies are a LOT richer than they were 5 years ago. All is well.
Documentaries are not limited to films created by national geographic, they can be (and hundreds are) political.
/very/ little over the cause of it. Scientists have since moved on to discuss what to do about it, and the world would benefit from people actually researching the facts instead of spewing baseless doubt over the conclusions they've drawn.
There are not two sides to scientific fact. Even a minor amount of research on your part will reveal that there is no myth or debate over global warming occuring, and
Let's see, multibillion dollar commercial firms using whatever method they can to get their (anti-Gore) message across?
How is that news?
Next thing you're going to tell me is that Mr. Gore made this movie all by his poor little self, without the backing of multimillion dollar enviro-conglomerates? Or perhaps a handy billionaire or two, who might have a vested interest in attacking the current administration?
(And please, if you believe that Greenpeace & Co. don't have an agenda, just don't even bother posting. Just hit 'cancel, I'm naive'.) What's so ironic is that it was MR GORE's administration that refused to sign Kyoto. Anyone remember that?
Anyone got any idea who paid for "An Inconvenient Truth"? Or did the crew just make it out of the goodness of their hearts?
Amazing.
One side spends millions (ok, I've seen the movie...maybe tens of thousands) of dollars to make a pure propoganda movie that would make Leni Riefenstahl wince with it's unsubtlety, and the OTHER side is 'evil' for having its own propoganda campaign? Could we mod this story -1, hypocritical?
-Styopa
...I mean, Al Gore was behind that science spoof, 'An Inconvenient Truth'
Why oh why didn't I take the purple pill?
I for one find the whining about fossil fuel burning and climate change to be the same sort of sad, illogical drone as that emanating from Kansas on the topic of evolution. The inability for the reader to understand the science means that magical forces must be at play..
The simple fact is the sun is a variable star. The earth has been both hotter and colder than it is currently, all without the intervention of man. Lets remember that you get what you pay for. Pay for a bunch of yes men academics to produce papers saying what you want isn't the same as real science.
With a the warmer periods provided by the higher output in the suns cycle you get the following:
- forests and grasslands will be dryer which lead to more fires, which in turn increases C02 levels
- higher ocean temperatures result in die backs of plankton and other temperature sensitive fauna, which in turn reduces the amount of CO2 absorbed by the ocean leaving the gas in the atmosphere
- changes in heat absorbtion by the land affect the weather patterns
- decrease salinity of the oceans resulting from increased rainfall impacts ocean currents and large scale weather patterns
Bring on the heat. I've got central air.
Perhaps the whole "We need your help" is more a way to make people think they are involved in the political process, rather than a fundraising method. Of course corprate donations are much bigger, and tax dollars support some political activities (or do they? I might be wrong). Almost like rich musicians pretending to "keep it real," these appeals for aid would make parties seem more homely.
Also, who knows, maybe the video was put up by Gore to increase publicity... but I highly doubt it.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Okay... and how did you reach this conclusion? I've seen Gore's movie and I can assure you that it does not accuse you personally of being manipulative. Of course, when a Republican PR firm releases a video that poses as an amateur work and makes personal attacks against Gore and says that everyone who agrees with him is an idiot, it's only logical to assume that the firm is being manipulative. Do you disagree?
My point is that neither side has a monopoly on being good or being evil.
No, historically and over the long run, neither label, "Republican" or "Democrat", has had a monopoly on being good or evil: evil people, corrupt people, and incompetent people are attracted to power, whatever label it happens to fall under. It just happens to be that in 2006, they seem to have taken over the Republican party: incompetent foreign policy, abusing the tax system for social engineering, vast expansions of the federal bureaucracy, costly and ineffective wars, violations of human rights, intrusive government, bad economic policies, cronyism, and widespread instituionalized corruption, to name just a few. This administration and this Congress are one of the worst we have ever had in US history, and the damage they are doing to the US will be felt for decades to come.
And if you're saying "no, no, the other party doesn't agree with me on ____", you should find out why. If you can't find a reason why someone disagrees with you, save they're evil, you really need to open your mind.
I don't know about the GP, but it's no mystery why Republicans disagree with me: the party is dominated by people who are incompetent, power hungry, and, at times, simply corrupt. And since they have excellent PR people working for them, plus wealthy funders to pay for PR, they can convince enough people to vote for them to remain in power. The real problem isn't that there are evil Republicans or that they have power, but that people like you are stupid enough to vote for these kinds of people. I mean, assuming you're somewhere in the 40k-200k income bracket, you're so dumb that you let the current government talk out out of many thousands of dollars that they collect in taxes from you and funnel to their political buddies, and you don't even notice it.
Republicans brought an end to slavery in America.
Yeah, if only anybody could bring those Republicans back. Unfortunately, today's Republicans are the antithesis of that; they have simply latched on to the name in order to give their agenda an acceptable veneer.
I will take a shot :) I will respond with questions of my own.
1. Where does the CO2 come from? We know our cars produce it. But, in what proportion compared to breathing, forest fires, cows, etc. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas) says that CO2 causes between 9% and 26% of the greenhouse effect. They also say:
"There is considerable debate ast to how much human activity can be attributed to the Greenhouse effect, since at most, mankind contributes only 3% of the total increase in atmospheric CO2" In other words, the CO2 is rising, but 97% of the rise isn't related to human activity.
2. Where does the CO2 go? We know trees, grass, etc consume it. But, in what proportion to algae, etc. In the end, I wonder what the net loss of CO2 consumption is from deforestation. I couldn't find anything on this one.
3. It isn't realistic that we will stop driving, flying, and using electricity any time soon. What is a reasonable expectation of CO2 emission reduction?
You didn't blame the oil companies, but I've seen it as a common theme in this thread. So, forgive me for adding it to this reply. But, the oil companies aren't to blame (conceding for a moment that blame is to be had). It's us. I drive, I fly, I use electricity. And so do the rest of you. Blaming the oil companies is just a cop out.
Let me start by saying that I don't think it's climate change skeptics you want to hear from so much as "human induced climate change skeptics." Just because a person doesn't believe that humans are having a significant, or even measurable, impact on global temps does not mean they don't believe that the global temps are rising. "Don't believe me that all scientists are united on the side that it's climate change exists? You don't have to. Pick up ANY scientific journal -- Nature or Science are rather dense for non-scientists, so try New Scientist or Scientific American or any one of countless others." I'm old enough to remember when they are ALL in agreement that we were coming up on a new ice age (way back in the 70's.) "Who on Earth is paying scientists to produce evidence showing that climate change exists? No-one stands to benefit in the least. Are these strange people paying the entire, vast scientific community around the world? Is this some sort of global consipracy?" Are you serious? The more "evidence" there is of global warming the more money is given to "environmentalists". That compounded with the save the whales, newts, bermuda grass, or whatever other FotM endangered species there seems to be that many people who study these fields come into them with is more than enough to bring their results into question as far as a lot of people are concerned. And this is from someone who won't even consider a vehicle that isn't ULEV-rated, never leaves the light on when they leave the room, and goes out of their way to conserve. I want cleaner air/water for its own sake. Believe me, if you can't convince people that clean air/water is a noble enough cause to get them to change their behaviors then you're surely not going to get them to change by simply repeating that it's hotter and it's all our fault.
>> " I'm old enough to remember when they are ALL in agreement that we were coming up on a new ice age (way back in the 70's.)
I remember the media blowing out of proportion a couple of wacky scientists and a couple of hard winters. I don't remember every scientist that looked at the issue saying that we were going into an ice age. In fact they had a lot of scientists that disputed the claims by this tiny minority.
The media blew out of proportion the cold fusion issue a few years ago too. One lab in the world said they could perform cold fusion and the media became a circus around them. The rest of the worlds scientists were saying, "Ummmm, this needs to be confirmed by independent labs." Which they attempted to do and failed because of flaws in the original experiment.
I really wish the media would wait until the scientists came up with a consensus on research before making wild claims on either side.
Unfortunately for your arguments, it is the consensus by 99.9% of all scientists on earth that there is global warming and that the global warming is being caused by human activity. How do we know this? Because they have built very accurate forecasting models based on the facts that humans are releasing green house gasses into the environment. These models have been very accurate in predicting global temperature gains the past few years. Scientists using a sun changing temperature model have not been accurate in predicting the actual temperature changes we are monitoring.
It is not the scientists that are heavy handed propagandists. The Bush administration has been caught time and time again trying to change NASA reports and silence our own scientists in regards to this matter, because a few politicians and vested interests find the truth to be inconvenient.
When you call me "dumbass" THAT is ad-hominem.
... do you pass up my offer to buy you an ENTIRE BOOK filled with refutations of your arguments? It's much cheaper for me to buy you a book than spend time teaching Yet Another person basic economics. Let me try teaching you just one thing, to see if there's any hope for you. The reason the economy can expand infinitely in a finite world is because people value things relative to other things. Let's say that I have a USB cable and want an Ethernet cable, and you have an Ethernet cable and want a USB cable. We swap. No new thing has been created. Finite number of atoms. Yet you are more wealthy because you assign a higher value to your new ownership of the USB cable. I am more wealthy because I assign a higher value to my Ethernet cable. We have expanded the economy. Each of us is richer (by a very small amount, of course) and no new atoms have been needed. You can repeat this process forever; the economy expands infinitely in a finite universe.
So
Don't piss off The Angry Economist