Astroturf: President Bush's "genuine" leadership with the economy.

The BBQ Pit
1

Does the above quote sound familiar to you? That wouldn’t be too surprising. You might have read it in your local paper, probably in the letters to the editor. I did.

What’s uncanny is that that same phrase appeared in many papers across the United States over the past couple of weeks. That exact phrase. What’s more uncanny is that there were several phrases that were repeated in these several dozen letters to several dozen newspapers. The letters did vary somewhat in their exact phrasing, and were signed by different people, but they were all basically the same letter. The exact same letter.

How can that be? Is this a spontaneous groundswell of Republican activism that’s suddenly sweeping our country? Are citizens from coast to coast simultaneously realizing that they all want the exact same thing from Washington, and that that thing is more of the same from President Bush? Well… no. What that thing is is astroturf, or a “fake grass-roots” campaign.

As this article shows, there’s nothing new about this strategy. However, that doesn’t make it any less sleazy. What’s truly nefarious about this recent letter-writing campaign is the effort made to make it seem like the work of numerous individuals. Who’s behind it? A site called www.gopteamleader.com. The concept is that you sign up to be a Team Leader and you’re given all sorts of suggestions as to how to help push the Bush agenda. One idea is to fire suggested letters off to various media outlets. The text is provided for you and is packed with catchy phrases and grousing about the so-called “marriage penalty” and about how class warfare is hurting America’s priveliged few.

This is evil; it hurts the value of our newspapers as a medium of fact and opinion. It’s dishonest; it gives an impression of a unified opinion where a unified opinion doesn’t really exist. This does reveal that the followers of the Bush agenda aren’t as passionate about it as they would have you think, or as well-informed.

What papers received the versions of this gem? Dozens. Here are a few that actually printed these letters:

Daily Herald (Columbia, SC)
Press Gazette (Green Bay, WI)
News Sun (Chicago, IL)
The Manhattan Mercury (Manhattan, KS)
The Lynchburg Ledger (Lynchburg, VA)
The Jersey Journal (Jersey City, NJ—my home!)
The Star Press (Muncie, IN)
Merced Sun-Star (Merced, CA)
Tucson Citizen (Tucson, AZ)
The Santa Barbara News Press (Santa Barbara, CA)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitusion (Atlanta, GA)
The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL)
The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
The Albany Pilot (Albany, NY)
The Dallas Morning News (Dallas, TX)
USA Today
The Financial Times
The International Press-Tribune (Paris, France)
Wausau Daily Herald (Wausau, WI)
Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, CA) (Note: the editorial staff has already printed letters from readers condemning the GOPspam project.)
The Times of South Mississippi (southern Mississippi)
Knox News (Knoxville, TN)
The Beacon News (suburban Chicago, IL)
The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, CA)

There are probably others, but I think that’s a pretty healthy list. Want to find more? Just do a Google search on “Bush demonstrating genuine leadership” and you’ll certainly find them. It’s very easy to expose this kind of scam, with help from the internet.

I’m going to write the Jersey Journal about this. If any of the above papers can be considered local to you, I urge you to do the same. Let them know how you feel about such cheap tricks. Tell them… well, why don’t you put it in your own words? Even if they don’t run your letter, I’m sure the editors would appreciate being tipped off to this scam. I can’t imagine any editor would appreciate being tricked like this.

It would be impossible to stop all such campaigns. However, if a letter looks like a cheesy mass-mailing to you, pop a couple of its snappier phrases into a search engine and see what you come up with. And by all means, act! This is where you as an ordinary citizen can actually make a difference. Exposing liars and sneaks can do as much as or more to stop a bad cause than protest marches. I’m insulted that anyone would try to pull this crap. If you’re also appalled by such abuse of a medium, I hope you’ll join me in saying so—again, saying so in your own words.

2

One of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s columnists caught on to this, too. Unfortunately, it was after they printed the letter.

3

Inboxer Rebellion meets the Grand Old Party. I love it.

4

Eh, nothing new. The Democrats do it, too. When I worked in Congress, I worked for a Dem and we would write up some points on an issue and have a few supporters send the slightly varied letters to the various local newspapers.

They do it in Parliament, too. Was working for some Lib Dems and we would write up a letter, send it to a supporter, they’d sign their name and send it in.

Unless they are making up names and forging signatures, I don’t see the big deal. The person gets to read it and if they don’t agree with it, they don’t have to sign off on it. But by all means, organize people to protest if you don’t agree.

5

Yeah, I figured it was just a matter of time before someone had to say, “Well, the Democrats do it, too.” Yes, they do, but this recent Republican campaign is a good example of just how wrong this method of trying to trick public opinion is. It’s one thing to exhort people to support a particular cause, but it’s quite another to do so in a way designed to fool others into thinking that these form letters are natural.

I’ve been handed form letters for causes before. Amnesty International does it, too. They use form letters, urge you to tweak them a bit, and send them off to the oppressive regime of your choice. While I’m all for criticizing oppressive regimes, those regimes typically think that they’re in the right, so you need to convince them. The problem with this is:

  1. Said oppressor will receive hundreds of similar-sounding letters from people and realize that they’re not actually the result of furious individuals inspired to condemn him, and
  2. The writers of these letters really don’t learn anything about what they’re talking about when they don’t actually write what they’re saying.

This tactic is wrong, it’s counterproductive to whatever cause you’re supporting (or opposing,) and it breeds marginally involved sheep bleating out dittos and sending them en masse to media around the world. Sure, this is all legal, but it’s still wrong. Just because it’s not against the law doesn’t mean it’s okay to do it.

6

And how does that differ from, say, Amnesty International printing letter for signatures? I certainly did that when I ran my college AI group.

I don’t like it any better than you do. But organizing and haivng a certain level of discipline in the ranks works for both parties, for lobbying groups (AARP and NRA are pros at this), AI and many many others.

7

Haha, yeah, we used to get those in Congress. We’d just make a note of it in the database and send them a form letter back. :smiley:

But I don’t see what the big deal is, so long as the person who sent the letter in agrees. I mean, really, it’s just a letters to the editor thing, they could easily choose different letters with the same viewpoint if they wanted to, but more originality. It’s just a non-issue for me.

8

Fact? I thought newspapers stopped reporting the facts back around the time when the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.

[/Cynic mode]

9

Keep in mind, too, that these media of “fact and opinion” run these letters where?

The Letters to the Editor, which is the proper forum for opinion pieces.

It’s just a shorthand way for people lock-stepping along with any group can get their message out. Don’t you think most columnists don’t also follow “talking points” from time to time? They just know how to re-word the thing.

Same ol’ same ol’, if you ask me. The OP is just rankled because it’s his ox that’s getting gored.

10

[quote]
**I’m going to write the Jersey Journal about this. If any of the above papers can be considered local to you, I urge you to do the same. Let them know how you feel about such cheap tricks. Tell them… well, why don’t you put it in your own words? Even if they don’t run your letter, I’m sure the editors would appreciate being tipped off to this scam. I can’t imagine any editor would appreciate being tricked like this.

[quote]
**

Hmm…

Would that be like this?

Sounds like your “Just write in” campaign is, itself, astroturf-esque.

This has been going on, in both parties, and in corporate (and anti-corporate) interests for years. When Ben Nighthorse-Campbell ran for the first time as a Republican after switching parties in 1994(?) there was a minor scandal in Colorado as a number of campaign workers, making calls from Campbell’s opponent’s headquarters started flooding phone-lines of radio talk shows when he was on with the same scripted questions: “I’ve voted Republican all my life, but your changing parties has made me decide to vote Democrat for the first time ever. I won’t vote for a turncoat. How do you justify…yadda…yadda.yadda…”

:: shrug :: People who make decisions based on what a caller to a radio show says or based on a letter to the editor or even based on what a post on an internet web site says deserve what they get. I don’t see the big deal, unless you’re going on the assumption that “the masses are asses”. Anyone who gets their facts from those bastions of journalistic integrity: the editorial page and letters to the editor columns is beyond help anyway.

And regarding the “evil” comment, I must say: Chance? Seek help. Really. Your grasp of reality is tenuous.

Let’s think about evil for a moment: Pol Pot? Evil. Stalin? Evil .Hitler? Evil. Miracle Whip? Bad, but not necessarily evil. Murdering nuns and orphans? Evil. A couple o’ people xeroxing letters that they probably agree with and sending 'em out to newspaper editors? Not so much.

Strangely, Mother Jones(!!!), of all publications has done an interesting and balanced piece about it.

Fenris

11

Here is some <cough, cough> “genuine leadership” on the economy from the Bush White House: thinking out side the box :rolleyes:

12

Well THAT’s a total load of BS, about Bush showing leadership with the economy. (rolling on the floor laughing my butt off). Reminds me of “1984” when as the news sources are singing the praises of Big Brother and how beneficient he is to the populace, Winston Smith realizes that people are actually going hungry.

13

I really do not know about the method,
but it really shows the value of the "free’ press.
They are nothing more than parrots:
feed them (with stories) and they sing Your songs.

Henry

14

No, Henry, you don’t know what you are talking about. This isn’t the Administration writing newspaper articles or anything, it’s them sending points to volunteers who then write a letter based on those points. They then go into a “Letters to the Editor” page (if they are chosen by the editors to be printed) which is in the Opinion section of the newspaper - usually with several other letters, many times arguing the opposite side of an argument.

Please hold your sarcastic comments until you actually understand what is happening and can make them in a relevent context.

15

I pointed out already that it really isn’t that different. I suppose that the only difference would be that if you addressed letters to regimes you were hoping to change, form letters would be much more likely to be ignored. If you snuck these letters into newspapers under the pretense that they were written by different people, you’d be flooding local papers with professionally written press releases. But what if it’s for a good cause? Well, just about everyone’s cause is good; just ask them. It’s one thing to encourage members of your group to write letters; it’s quite another to dictate to them what to write.

It corrupts the whole point of a letter to the editor. It’s dishonest to pretend that a professionally written press release is the product of a groundswell of national sentiment on an issue. It’s fine for a group to encourage its members to speak out, but stirring up an army of robots like this undermines the value of the free press.

I’m sure congresspeople don’t care for them, either—as evidenced by the disdain you expressed for them and your shipping out of form letters. While it does seem pointless to flood a senator’s office with hundreds of identical form letters, I don’t really mind this because it’s not an abuse of the free press, but rather an abuse of staffers who have to haul sacks of mail around.

And that’s where they ought to be, should a newspaper choose to run them. But I feel that if a letter was written by the Republican National Committee, it should be signed by the Republican National Committee, and presented to the papers’ editorial staffs as such.

Sigh… Of course it is. As I said very clearly in my post, it’s fine to encourage people to write letters, but these pre-written form letters with all the party’s main points selected for the “authors” are wrong. If John Smith signs a letter “John Smith,” then John Smith damn well ought to have written it. I believe that people should write about what bothers them, not just about what bothers the party leadership or the heads of their favorite lobbies. Astroturf campaigns are obscene parodies of political activism. Mobilization of mobs, if you will, instead of an open forum of different ideas.

Consider how people react on the Straight Dope when someone barges in and posts a copied-and-pasted screed about their favorite issue, and with no original text of follow-up. Is this warmly welcomed? Should it be? Would you hang around a message board where people “debated” by posting one copied article in response to another? Think about it.

The masses don’t have to be asses. The point is that if you’re going to accept that it’s okay to influence opinion by chanting the same liturgy over and over, fine. But readers should at least be aware of what’s going on, and where these carefully crafted “individual opinions” are actually coming from. Maybe it’s okay with you and some others that the media be cynically mocked this way, but I don’t like seeing this abuse. Moreover, when campaigns like this are set up, people should be made aware, so that they realize the innate flimsiness behind the ersatz opinion being presented.

By the way: thanks for the link on writing to stamp out the pro-Bush media subversion. I like how that site not only has a more comprehensive list than mine of duped newspapers, but also has guidelines advocating writers to think for themselves.

Maybe the internet, with all its ready access to information, will help to beat back this monster of astroturf, which is by no means nothing new. Or maybe I’m just being too optimistic about this. Well, I’d rather be a failed optimist than a cynic surrounded by failure, enjoying the bragging rights to say, “I didn’t do anything to help, but anyway, I was right!”

16

You’re being ridiculous with this “pretending there is a massive groundswell of support” thing. Who are they fooling, really? The populace? Probably not, as they only read one newspaper and would see only one letter. Second, how are they pretending? The people who are sending the letters support the president’s policies. Are you denying this? So those letters are still indicative of support.

And I don’t know anyone who has had his or her opinion changed by a letter to the editor.

Second, how is this perverting the free press? The press isn’t being forced to run these letters. They are in the opinion section, not the fact-finding, investigative section of the newspaper, so it’s not like they are in a highly regarded, people-expecting-the-highest-standards-of-accuracy section of the newspaper.

Frankly, you are getting your panties in a bunch over nothing.

17

I hardly think this is nothing. This is a problem that’s been going on for a long time, and I believe it should be stopped.

Sure, all these people support the president. 100%. No need to work out what their opinions are; they know who they support and believe he’s right all the time. No need to think about that.

Don’t you think there’s a reason that most newspapers’ editorial boards have a policy not to run anything on the op-ed page that was previously printed? The newspapers welcome original opinions from readers, and prefer to avoid being used as a tool for this kind of lobbying effort.

This cheapens the value of the editorial page, which is why the policy of avoiding such letters is so common in the first place. Whether anyone’s opinion is swayed by these scams or not is hardly the issue. Newspapers should be better than mouthpieces of lobbyists. This is worth fighting for.

18

Well, I obviously disagree…but, again, if you believe it is worth fighting for, go for it. That’s how things get done in this country.

19

All right, Neurotik—score one for the loyal opposition. Which, in this case, is both of us.

I have to say that fighting for this would be a lot easier if I were talking about pushing for legislation. I’m just pushing for a better attitude toward an institution. Talk about tilting at windmills… Still, I don’t think I’ll be able to perfect this world before I leave it. I do plan on leaving it in better shape than I found it, though.

20

Sure, it should be stopped now that the groundswell is in favor of a president whose policys you don’t care for.

If it’s been going on for a long time, it was just as wrong for the DNC to do it, or Amnesty International, or the Sierra Club, or whoever.

I stand by my original contention: you’re rankled because it’s your ox that getting gored.