[Video] Former CBS Journalist Reveals How Astroturfing And Media Manipulation Works

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Sharyl Attkisson was an investigative journalist with CBS, and she spoke at TEDx last year about how corporations promote their interests via “astroturfing”- the faking of grassroots movements, funded by political and corporate special interests in order to manipulate and distort the truth… whether the corporate message is promoted by the mass media, a “random” blogger, “Don’t Be Evil” Google, or a well-respected and peer-reviewed scientist.

She launches into her speech, citing a fictional example- based on her experiences as an investigative journalist:

“Consider this fictitious example that is inspired by real-life; say you’re watching the news and you see a story about a new study on the cholesterol-lowering drug called collextra. Studies say collextra is so effective that doctors should consider prescribing it to adult and even children who don’t yet have high cholesterol.”

“Is it too good to be true? You’re smart, you decide to do something your own research. You do a Google search you consult social media, Facebook and Twitter; you look at wikipedia, WebMD and a nonprofit website and you read the original study in a peer-reviewed published medical journal it all confirms how effective collextra is.”

She points out that the few negative reviews you see are explained away by the mainstream as quacks… or, perhaps a more appropriate term would be… “conspiracy theorists”.

You have done all your research. You have enough info to make a sound judgement. But what if even all that research wasn’t enough? What if even this mountain of research you stumbled upon was carefully constructed, and positioned so that you would be forced to come to a specific predetermined conclusion?

We’ve covered this sort of manipulation before, previously pointing out that Snowden had proven that the NSA hired trolls to manipulate discourse. If the government is doing it, is it any surprise that corporations also hire an army of social media bots to falsely sway discourse?

“One example is the Washington Redskins name. Without taking a position on the controversy, if you simply we’re looking at news media coverage over the course of the past year or by looking at social media, you probably have to conclude that most Americans find that name offensive and think it ought to be changed. But what if I told you seventy-one percent of Americans say the name should not be changed -that’s more than two-thirds,” said Attkisson (the survey behind that statistic notes that the 71% was shrinking- highlighting the efficacy of astroturfing at distorting opinions).

“Astroturfers seek to controversialise those who disagree with them; they attack news organizations that publish stories they don’t like. Whistleblowers who tell the truth. Politicians who dare to ask the tough questions, and journalists who have the audacity to report on all of it.”

She notes that even Wikipedia is compromised, as it is run by editors who may be bought by special interests. These astroturfers forbid and reverse edits that do not fit into their corporate-dictated narrative, while allowing edits that do- in complete violation of Wikipedia’s own policies.

“When a medical study looked at medical conditions described in Wikipedia pages and compared to actual peer-reviewed published research Wikipedia contradicted medical research ninety percent of the time

With regards to her earlier collextra example, she states that the social media accounts and Wikipedia page were created and monitored by paid professionals. The Google search results were also optimized by professionals paid by the company so that the non-profit created by the company gets boosted to the top of the results.

The doctors who said that collextra had no side effects, the ones who served on the government board that approved the drug? Also hired henchmen… I mean “consultants” for the drug company.

Then there’s the mainstream media:

“A couple years ago CBS News asked me to look into a story about a study coming out from the nonprofit National Sleep Foundation supposedly this press release coming out said the study concluded we are a nation with an epidemic sleeplessness and we don’t even know it we should all go ask our doctors about it. A couple of things struck me about that. First I  recognized the phrase ask your doctor is a catch phrase promoted by the pharmaceutical industry.”

“Second I wondered how serious an epidemic of sleeplessness could really be if we don’t even know that we have it. It didn’t take long for me to do a little research and discover that the National Sleep Foundation nonprofit and the study which was actually a survey… were sponsored in part by a new drug that was about to be launched on the market…I reported the study as CBS News asked but of course I disclosed the sponsorship behind the nonprofit and the survey”.

It turns out that none of the other media outlets bothered to do the research she had, and reported the press release without modifications.

 

Here are her top three tactics for identifying propaganda and astroturf:

1) The use of inflammatory language such as crank, quack, nutty, lies, paranoid, pseudo and of course conspiracy theorist- as opposed to hard evidence

2) Astroturfers often claim to debunk myths that aren’t myths at all- simply calling something a myth causes people to disregard the legitimate concerns brought up by the issue in question.

3) Astroturfers attack and controversialise the people and personalities surrounding an issue, rather than address the very valid points raised by them- addressing the issue itself would make them look bad, because they have few valid arguments to defend themselves with.

4) Instead of questioning authority, they question the reliability of and even ridicule those who do question authority- the Snowdens, Assanges and Mannings of the world. All their criticism is levied upon the people who first revealed evidence of wrongdoing, instead of the wrongdoers who are invariably given the benefit of the doubt.

Astroturfing is why one whistle blower fled to Russia for revealing NSA mass surveillance, one is trapped in an embassy for helping others speak out and the last is serving three and a half decades in maximum security for revealing the US military’s torture programs and mass execution of Iraqi civilians; their personal lives and integrity are criticized, their points left unaddressed.

Sharyl Atkisson resigned from CBS News in 2013 over its alleged political agenda. Read that caption in the CNN picture below and realize that she knows how astroturfing works first-hand.

sharyl-attkisson

Do you see how CNN misdirected its viewers, questioning the accuracy of her work- which CBS did not seem to have problems with until she chose to stand against it- rather than address her charges of bias?

Right or wrong, her attempt at voicing an alternative opinion swiftly left her “discredited” by mainstream media, which often called her a conspiracy theorist.

Now you know better than to fall for it again.
 
Sources: TEDx Talks, Tech Dirt, Mother Board, Daily Mail


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4 COMMENTS

  1. Question everything. Trust no one. Mainstream media brainwashes us, and parents, teachers, religious or political leaders and yes, even our peers are brainwashed as well. How can you rescue them from The Matrix when they don’t even know they’re inside of it?
    “You become far wiser by doubting your beliefs, and less wise by believing your doubts.”
    Lama Jair

  2. “Here are her top three tactics for identifying propaganda and astroturf” — this is actually incredibly useful! One of the most obvious and idiotic arguments going around is ignoring facts and calling something pseudoscience. This is especially effective because there Is a lot of pseudoscience topics being reported as fact. It is like a double whammy, idiocy reported as fact, and fact contradicted as invention. More than anything, no matter what one believes, there is a voice out there to feed anyone’s fire, because so many knuckleheads have been empowered. This is exactly why science, fact, and truth should be isolated, empowered, and publicized – but why would it be when idiocy sells so well, and news is based upon advertisement revenue, and not merit based truth? This site is far from innocent – borrowing its name and fame on the coattails of a nebulous organization, and publishing stories that are little more than advertisements for products (with links to their sale), and clickbait titles with stories that look like they were written by a translation program or bot. I actually do like this site though, because every now and then there is something worth reading.

  3. Come on, this is conspiracy theory stuff. Vaccines and autism?
    That’s been scientifically debunked so many times.
    I notice that she didn’t give any citations for her figures. 71% my ass.
    She is the astro-turfer.
    I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, BTW, I’m saying she is part of it.

  4. Well, whatever role this reporter plays, many of the situations she points out are real. Corporations, drug companies in particular, have always manipulated information, whether through commercials, visits to the doctor’s office offering samples, or through the internet. And we see the news media picking up a false story and every news agency repeating it as fact more times than we can count. And do we see whistleblowers receiving awards for bravery or losing their jobs and job prospects because of what they did? Clearly part if not all of her message is that we need to understand that this kind of thing is being done, and the public needs to question the information it gets and look deeper when getting to the truth is essential. It’s hard to argue with that, seems to me.

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