The Misinformation Machine

Friday, March 9, 2012 by MediaCitizen
by Tim Karr


Dirty politics is a growth industry with few happy customers. In the run-up to Super Tuesday, television viewers nationwide had to endure an onslaught of negative and deceptive political ads.

For many in key primary and caucus states that meant sitting through up to 12 such ads an hour. And the vast majority of these ads went on the attack: The three political action committees buying the most television time this election season have spent more than 98 percent of their money on ads that discredit one or another candidate, according to Kantar Media.
These attacks by their very nature are misleading. FactCheck.org, which tracks accuracy in political messaging, found that the "avalanche of negativity" in recent political ads also contained a fair share of distortions and lies.

In February, Restore Our Future, the pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC, pushed an ad portraying Newt Gingrich as a supporter of China's one-child policy, a claim that sent the lie detectors at Politifact spinning.

Meanwhile, the pro-Santorum camp fired a salvo in Super Tuesday states with an ad claiming Romney left Massachusetts $1 billion in debt during his time as governor. Also false.

And it doesn't end with attacks on Republicans. An ad from the shadowy American Future Fund attempts to tar President Obama by listing dozens of former Wall Street executives allegedly serving under the president in the White House. One problem: Half of the people on the list never actually worked as Wall Street executives. As for the names of those financing the American Future Fund ad, the independent political group -- like all other Super PACs and 501(c)(4)s -- has no legal obligation to disclose.

The Real News Antidote
In this era of deceptive political ads, TV viewers don't receive enough of the antidote: the kind of hard-hitting reporting and election coverage that would help local voters separate political fact from fiction before they pick a candidate.

A 2011 Federal Communications Commission report found that 33 percent of commercial TV stations nationwide air little to no local news coverage. For those that do air news, the picture remains dim. Nearly two-thirds of local stations reported staff cuts in 2009 as owners focused on maximizing their profit margins. This has translated into fewer reporters on the political beat and less objective reporting about electoral issues.

A 2010 report by USC's Annenberg School of Communications shows that in the average 30-minute local news broadcast, less than 30 seconds is devoted to hard local government news, including reporting on political campaigns. Meanwhile, it's estimated that political ads will air up to 200,000 times nationwide before viewers become voters in November.

But what was bad for viewers and voters on Super Tuesday has been a boon for local broadcasters. Even after the rise of the Internet, local broadcast television has remained our most influential communications medium. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 78 percent of American viewers report getting their news from their hometown stations on a typical day -- more than the number that rely on newspapers, radio or the Internet.

Collateral Damage
Where viewers go, so goes the money to influence their votes. Industry analysts report that local television station advertising revenue is "going gangbusters" in 2012 as changes to campaign finance rules will unleash an estimated $3.3 billion in political ad buys across the country.

The media industry even has a term for this, "the Quadrennial Effect," which accounts for the surge in broadcast revenues every four years as national elections take center stage. The biggest beneficiaries are media corporations that control local broadcast television stations in battleground states. That group includes CBS Corp., Gannett Co., Media General and News Corp. All of these conglomerates have bought up stations in battleground states where cyclical election ad spending is concentrated.

What they don't want you to know, however, is that the broadcasters' rush to air political ads has caused collateral damage.

It is accepted wisdom among the campaigns and Super PACs that a political lie hammered repeatedly into the collective consciousness of the electorate will embed itself in the minds of many as truth. Spreading lies via an endless drumbeat of attack ads works especially well at a time when the press, by and large, doesn't question them.

And while all broadcast stations are legally entitled to reject outright any third-party political ad that pedals misinformation, few do.
Thus far in 2012, FactCheck.org hasn't found a single instance where a station has rejected a political ad for inaccuracy. 

"It's not to the advertisers or stations' competitive advantage to publicize this fact," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which runs FactCheck.org. "So the likelihood that we'll hear about this is low."

The irony, of course, is that stations pay a higher price for deciding to debunk political misinformation and pursue the truth. That's not the way media are supposed to function in a democracy.

They could correct course by spending some of their election-year profits on the kind of quality political reporting that viewers need before they go to the polls. They could devote more news coverage to exposing the wealthy individuals and corporations funding attack ads. They could do a better job of opening their own political files to public scrutiny to shed light on the Super PACs and independent groups that trade in deception.

But will they? With so much political ad money up for grabs in 2012, few broadcasters are willing to bite the hands that feed them. And that's bad news for anyone who believes the media should serve democracy and not merely profit from its demise.

Who’s Really Violent? Tips for Controlling the Narrative

Tuesday, February 21, 2012 by Waging Nonviolence
by George Lakey

Occupy Wall Street is similar to many movements in contending that its opponent—for Occupy, the 1 percent—is maintaining a system whose structural, systematic violence far exceeds any violence exhibited by the movement itself.

For example, movements will say that class oppression or sexism or racism hurt people in the daily course of life, pointing to statistics like each percentage point of unemployment resulting in increased suicide, homicide and domestic abuse. However, especially when the movement is still young and only beginning to get its message out, the powers that be in politics and the media will often succeed in dismissing such charges and in blaming every appearance of violence on the campaigners. Reversing this narrative in the public perception is one of a growing movement’s most important challenges.

For nearly a year, for example, the Syrian government has been sending its tanks to kill demonstrators while claiming that the violence mainly comes from the pro-democracy forces. The Russian government publicly agrees. The reason why defenders of oppression the world over charge activists with violence—even if they have to make it up—is because it’s a potent accusation. The oppressor doesn’t want the “violence” label to stick to its own side. Those who presently are undecided or passive might move to support the campaigners because they don’t want to support “violence.”

In some circumstances, although not all, who wins the struggle depends on who most believably asserts that the other side is violent. Occupy Wall Street got a tremendous boost in the early days when mainstream media were largely ignoring them, thanks to the blatant violence committed by New York City police. Many influential and uncommitted people swung immediately to the side of Occupy and gave it extraordinary momentum.

Those in power, however, are at an advantage in this contest with campaigners. They usually control or hugely influence the media coverage. They start out with some legitimacy won through elections or asserted through authoritarian cultural institutions—often religious ones. In the Global Nonviolent Action Database, we recount dozens of cases in which oppressive regimes have persisted against activist challenge for years, even decades, before the campaigners’ charge of “violence” finally stuck and key middle groups swung over.

After Martin Luther King, Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a swell of indignation in many Southern towns and cities. “Our town was peaceful until King came here,” people would say, “and then we had all kinds of trouble and violence, and then he gets the Peace Prize?”

King’s response was to say that those towns had been violent all along. Racism is violence, he said; just look at comparative statistics between whites and blacks of life expectancy, and infant mortality rates, and death in childbirth. He said that the town newspaper didn’t put those statistics in headlines, so (white) people didn’t see clearly the violence of racism. It took an activist campaign that brought out the Ku Klux Klan and police dogs, and blood running in the streets, for people to see that racism equals violence, because racism is a system that, when challenged, must be defended by violence. As we know, once the white people in the middle saw where the violence was actually coming from, large enough portions of them changed sides so that the activists could gain concrete victories.

How, then, did an oppressed people succeed in showing that the violence was actually in white racism, rather than in themselves?

They did it by creating brilliant dramas in which they contrasted their own behavior with that of their opponents. Part of the brilliance was in forcing their opponent into a dilemma in which either choice would put the demonstrators ahead of the game. The story-line for a lunch-counter sit-in, for instance, was: “I want coffee at this whites-only lunch counter. If you serve me, fine. I win. If you don’t serve me but instead beat me or arrest me, fine. I win because I show where the violence is coming from.” (I was privileged to learn this lesson firsthand; my first arrest was in a civil rights sit-in.)

In other words, at their best, the young people avoided doing what could be perceived as mere provocation—like walking into the streets to stop traffic or hassling shoppers. The students were much cagier than that. They carefully set up no-win situations for their opponents, and therefore, against all odds—including the KKK terrorists—they usually won.

Furthermore, because they knew the stakes were high, the students took steps to heightenthe contrast as much as possible. They showed up at the lunch counter with ironed dresses and white shirts and ties and polished shoes, with a textbook in hand.

The danger of such contrast is known well to people whose job is to defend an unjust status quo. When activist behavior reveals so clearly the injustice of the state, it results in a loss of the state’s legitimacy.

Dozens of dictators have learned this to their sorrow. Smart managers of repression have therefore come up with a counter-strategy: reduce the contrast in behavior between the activists and those charged with repression. Here are some of their tactics:

• Pay or persuade people to pretend to be activists and do something that can be called violence. This might be property destruction (since a lot of people believe property destruction is violence), but it could also mean attacking police or others on the side of the status quo.

• Accuse the activists of violence whether or not there’s any evidence of it.

• Plant the evidence. In Philadelphia during the 1960s, a young, largely-white anti-racist group couldn’t reach consensus to state publicly that they were nonviolent, even though they hadn’t yet planned any acts of violence. They were increasingly effective in their nonviolent campaign, so the police staged a raid on the communal house where some of them lived, herded everyone into the living room, searched the rest of the house and “discovered” explosives in the refrigerator. With that planted evidence they were able to pretty much destroy the group, and the young people were powerless to defend themselves.

Variations of the repressors’ “minimize the contrast” approach have been employed all over the world-- provocateurs used in India by the British Empire, in Serbia to hurt the student opponents of the dictatorship, and on and on. There are steps that activists can take, however, to prevent this kind of manipulation:

• Deliberately heighten the contrast. In France in the late 1950s, the anti-imperialist movement did a lot of demonstrations against the Algerian War, and were faced with notoriously violent police who were quartered in barracks to stay “battle ready.” While working in France in 1960, I was told that many of the French activists knew that the smartest way to reduce their casualties was to remain nonviolent—police in so many countries increase their violence when they experience fighting back—and they wanted to win over more of the French public to their side. They therefore adopted the tactic ofwhen in doubt, sit down. They found not only that they sustained fewer injuries, but also that observers (including media) of the confrontations spread the word about the drama: police standing over activists with upraised sticks; activists sitting on the ground creating the largest possible contrast. Their campaign grew as a result.
• Boldly declare that you are nonviolent, as some Occupy groups have done, and by doing so move to the “moral high ground” in the perception of most people. If critics claim that with certain tactics—say, locking arms—activists can challenge such claims on their own terms.
• Start again if there has been an activist lapse into defensive violence. Researcher Kira Kern tells us that when the Omanis jumped into the Arab Awakening on February 27 of last year, their protest immediately turned into a clash with the police, with violence on both sides. The movement pressed the reset button and began a nonviolent campaign, taking care this time to heighten the contrast with the police who used arrests, tear gas and rubber bullets. The assessment of the Omani activist leadership was that the sultan was too well-embedded to replace with democracy in one campaign, so they set for themselves concrete goals that looked achievable: better wages, more jobs, an elected parliament and a new constitution. They used a variety of methods: occupation, obstruction, picketing, limited strikes, graduating to a general strike. In a little over a month, they won most of what they demanded.

The student sit-inners, French war protesters and heroic Omanis remind us that, while enjoying our own creativity, we needn’t re-invent every wheel. We can also learn from sisters and brothers that went before us some ways to heighten the contrast and reveal the violent face of injustice.

Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street

Sunday, November 20, 2011 by MSNBC

by Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky, MSNBC TV 

A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”

Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker;  Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker’s assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly “tight” with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website.

Jeff Sigmund, an ABA spokesperson, confirmed that the association got the memo. “Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal – it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way,” he said in a statement to "Up."

CLGC did not return calls seeking comment.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined to comment on the memo. But he responded to its characterization of Republicans as defenders of Wall Street by saying, “My understanding is that President Obama is the single largest recipient of donations from Wall Street.”

On “Up” Saturday, Obama campaign adviser Anita Dunn responded by saying that the majority of the president’s re-election campaign is fueled by small donors. She rejected the suggestion that the president himself is too close to Wall Street, saying “If that’s the case, why were tough financial reforms passed over party line Republican opposition?”

The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry -- that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party. “Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism,” the memo says. “…This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.”

The memo outlines a 60-day plan to conduct surveys and research on OWS and its supporters so that Wall Street companies will be prepared to conduct a media campaign in response to OWS. Wall Street companies “likely will not be the best spokespeople for their own cause,” according to the memo.  “A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.”

Part of the plan CLGC proposes is to do “statewide surveys in at least eight states that are shaping up to be the most important of the 2012 cycle.”

Specific races listed in the memo are U.S. Senate races in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Mexico and Nevada as well as the gubernatorial race in North Carolina.

The memo indicates that CLGC would research who has contributed financial backing to OWS, noting that, “Media reports have speculated about associations with George Soros and others.”

"It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.”