Astroturfing

Documents leaked from the Heartland Institute reveal its funding sources (including Charles G. Koch and an unnamed single donor providing about 20% of their total revenue) and recipients of funding (including $5,000/mo to Fred Singer and a plan to raise $90,000 for blogger Anthony Watts in 2012). The Heartland Institute is essentially the Tobacco Institute for climate change denial. See previous posts as this blog with the Heartland Institute tag. UPDATE (February 18, 2012): It appears that one of the documents, the one with the most embarrassing statements, was a forgery–but the statements I’ve made above all appear to be confirmed. UPDATE (February 21, 2012): Climate scientist Peter Gleick has confessed to being the leaker of the documents, but claims the apparently forged document was mailed to him anonymously and he scanned it in before distributing it with the others which he obtained by subterfuge after receiving the anonymous mailing. The oddities and errors in the forged document, however, strongly suggest Gleick himself forged the document after receiving the others. ...

The blogosphere was in an uproar about Section 220 of Senate Bill 1, on the basis of a press release from astroturf organization GrassRootsFreedom, run by conservative political activist Richard A. Viguerie. This press release claimed that this section of the “Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007” would require all bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people to register with the government. Slashdot promoted the press release with its typical inaccuracy, with very few commenters actually bothering to read what Section 220 actually said. In fact, the bill only required registration for bloggers with audiences of 500 or more people who are paid. And not just paid, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter. And not just paid at least $25,000 per quarter, but paid at least $25,000 per quarter by a client to promote lobbying on a political issue. Specifically, Section 220 required “paid grassroots lobbying firms” to register and file reports, and defined those as a person or entity that “is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period." The Captain’s Quarters blog was one of those that correctly identified the misinformation from Viguerie. Viguerie has been a major player in U.S. politics for a long time, and is described as follows in my “Fundamentalism is Nonsense” pamphlet (6th edition, 1986): Richard A. Viguerie, of the Richard A. Viguerie Company of Falls Church, Virginia, runs one of the largest direct mail fundraising companies in the country. He has raised money for such organizations and individuals as the Panama Canal Truth Squard, Gun Owners of America, the American Security Council, Citizens for Decency Through Law, Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), the Conservative Caucus, and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, Senators Jesse Helms (NC), Jim McClure (ID), Orrin Hatch (UT), William Armstrong (CO), John Warner (VA), and Representatives Philip Crane (IL), Mickey Edwards (OK), Larry McDonald (GA), and Phil Gramm (TX). Viguerie also publishes the magazine Conservative Digest [Conway 82, pp. 83-84, 87].The reference is to Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman’s 1982 book, Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America’s Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives (Doubleday). Viguerie’s efforts were successful, and Section 220 was removed from S. 1 by Senate Amendment 20. ...

Seth Godin has pointed out a new Anti-Astroturfing Wiki, for exposing those who are creating fake grassroots efforts by actions like coordinating letters to the editor or blog comment posts which don’t mention the coordinating body–a practice engaged in by both advocates for and against net neutrality regulations. The current Wikipedia definition: “In American politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals." The Anti-Astroturfing Wiki and campaign has been set up as part of TheNewPR Wiki by Paull Young and Trevor Cook in response to the PR Institute of Australia’s promotion of a “how-to” seminar on astroturfing even though the practice violates the PRIA Code of Ethics. Young has issued an anti-astroturfing statement: ...

On June 9, the Hands Off the Internet blog posted an entry (http://handsoff.org/tiered-service/turf-battle/) about one of my posts, but it was deleted by June 10. I wonder if they noticed my Creative Commons license, considered their use to be commercial, and decided not to risk a violation? In my opinion, their excerpt would be fine under fair use. Here’s the post, from Google cache. Turf Battle June 9, 2006 at 9:21 am - Tiered Service, Net Neutrality, Debate, Internet Legislation, Consumer Benefit ...

As the InOpinion blog has pointed out, Save the Internet-generated form letters have been published as letters to the editor here, here, and here. This is ironic given their complaints about astroturf by “Hands Off The Internet." InOpinion has a project to identify astroturf where it appears, which appears to be nonpartisan.