Tag Archives: WIkipedia

The Power of Astroturfing

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How Astroturfing and Other Media Manipulation Compromise Your Ability to Get Truthful Information

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola 
  • March 29, 2024

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Ninety percent of news media are controlled by six corporations. As a result, the vast majority of what you read, see and hear is part of a carefully orchestrated narrative created and controlled by special interest groups
  • “Astroturf” is the effort on the part of large corporate special interests to surreptitiously sway public opinion by making it appear as though it’s a grassroots effort for or against a particular agenda
  • Wikipedia is astroturf’s dream come true. Many pages are controlled by anonymous Wikipedia editors on behalf of special interests who forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published October 28, 2017.

Ninety percent of news media, be it television, radio, print or online, are controlled by six corporations. As a result, the vast majority of what you read, see and hear is part of a carefully orchestrated narrative created and controlled by special interest groups.

When you combine that with other astroturf and public manipulation schemes that hide the identity of these special interests, the end result is, to use investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson’s term, a Truman-esque fictitious reality, where medical journals, doctors, media and presumably independent consumer groups all seem to be in agreement. The problem is it may all be false.

Attkisson is a five-time Emmy Award-winning anchor, producer and reporter whose television career spans more than three decades. In 2009, she blew the lid off the swine flu media hype, showing the hysteria was manufactured and completely unfounded. At the time, I interviewed her about these findings. I’ve included that fascinating interview below.

In 2014, she left CBS to pursue more independent venues of investigative journalism, and wrote “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington” — an exposé on what really goes on behind the media curtain.

Video Link

Why Everyone Must Be Aware of Astroturfing

The featured video is a TEDx Talk Attkisson gave in 2015, in which she discusses the methods employed by special interest groups to manipulate and distort media messages. For example, astroturfing — false-front “grassroots movements” that are in fact funded by political parties or private industries — are now “more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress,” she says. She explains the term “astroturf” thus:

“It’s a perversion of grassroots, as in fake grassroots. Astroturf is when political, corporate or other special interests disguise themselves and publish blogs, start Facebook and Twitter accounts, publish ads and letters to the editor, or simply post comments online, to try to fool you into thinking an independent or grassroots movement is speaking.

The whole point of astroturf is to try to [give] the impression there’s widespread support for or against an agenda when there’s not. Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion by making you feel as if you’re an outlier when you’re not …

Astroturfers seek to controversialize 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.”

Wikipedia — Astroturf’s Dream Come True

If you’re like most, you probably rely on certain sources more than others when it comes to information. WebMD, for example, dominates for health information, Snopes for checking the latest rumors and Wikipedia for general facts, figures and details.

Attkisson has a great deal to say about Wikipedia, calling it “astroturf’s dream come true.” Wikipedia is advertised as a free encyclopedia, where information is added and edited by the public. Anyone can add to or edit any given Wikipedia page. Or so they say.

“The reality can’t be more different,” Attkisson says, explaining that many pages have been co-opted and are controlled by anonymous Wikipedia editors on behalf of special interests. “They forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda,” she says. “They skew and delete information, in blatant violation of Wikipedia’s own established policies, with impunity.”

Even the smallest factual inaccuracies are impossible to correct on these agenda-driven pages. As just one example, in 2012, author Philip Roth tried to correct a factual error about the inspiration behind one of his book characters cited on a Wikipedia page. His correction was repeatedly reversed and, ultimately, he was told he was not considered a credible source!

Worse, a study1 comparing medical conditions described on Wikipedia with published research found that Wikipedia contradicted the medical literature an astounding 90% of the time. So, be aware — Wikipedia is NOT the place for accurate and reliable medical information.

Who’s Who and What’s What?

The extent to which information is manipulated is enormous. Let’s say you hear about a new drug for an ailment you have, or your doctor recommends it, and you decide to research it to be on the safe side. Ultimately, you conclude it is safe and effective because everywhere you look, the information seems to support this conclusion. You feel good knowing you’ve done your homework, and fill the prescription. What you don’t know is that:

Facebook and Twitter pages speaking highly of the drug are run by individuals on the payroll of the drug company
The Wikipedia page for the drug is monitored and controlled by a special-interest editor hired by the drug company
Google search engine results have been optimized, ensuring you’ll find all those positive sources while burying contradicting information
The nonprofit organization you stumbled across online that recommends the drug was secretly founded and funded by the drug company
The positive study you found while searching online was also financed by the drug company
The news articles reporting the positive findings of that study sound suspiciously alike for a reason — they’re reiterating information provided by the drug company’s PR department; hence, you will not find any contradictory information there either
Doctors promoting the drug and making derogatory comments about those who worry about side effects are actually paid consultants for the drug company
The medical lecture your own personal doctor attended, where he became convinced the drug is safe and efficacious, was also sponsored by the drug company

How to Identify Astroturf

Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The extent of the control and manipulation goes even deeper than this. Even the U.S. government, regulatory agencies and public health organizations are colluding with industry in a variety of different ways.

So, what can you do? How can you possibly decipher the truth when the truth is so well-hidden beneath layers of astroturf? As noted by Attkisson, recognizing the telltale signs of astroturf is key. And once you know what to look for, you’ll start to recognize it everywhere you look. Telltale signs and hallmarks of astroturf include the following:

  • Certain key message lines repeatedly crop up. For example, the line “talk to your doctor” is highly suggestive of a PR message for a drug, even if what you’re reading doesn’t look like an advertisement
  • Use of inflammatory and derogatory language. Keywords to look for include crank, quack, nutty, lies, paranoid, pseudo and conspiracy
  • Astroturfers will often claim to debunk “myths” that are not myths at all
  • They will attack people, personalities and organizations rather than address the facts or concerns in question
  • Astroturfers are skeptical of those exposing wrongdoing rather than the wrongdoers. As noted by Attkisson, rather than questioning authority, astroturfers question those who question authority

Astroturfing in Action

Video Link

A perfect example of astroturfing occurred in 2015, when the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) — a pro-GMO front group — attacked Dr. Mehmet Oz for reporting on the now scientifically established hazards of glyphosate.

Mainstream media swallowed and regurgitated the vicious propaganda without any critical thought whatsoever. Slate magazine publicized the attack with the headline “Letter from Prominent Doctors Implies Columbia Should Fire Dr. Oz for Being a Quack.”

The letter accuses Oz of repeatedly showing “disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops.” The letter was signed by Dr. Henry I. Miller and nine other “distinguished physicians.”

What the media failed to address is that Miller is a well-known shill for the GMO industry. In his capacity as its frontman, he was caught misrepresenting himself during the Anti-Prop 37 campaign in 2012, pretending to be a Stanford professor opposing GMO labeling, when in fact he is not a professor at Stanford.2 The TV ad had to be pulled off the air because of this misrepresentation.

Learn to Identify Shills and Front Groups

Miller also has a long history of defending toxic chemicals such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), in addition to defending Big Tobacco. He’s even penned articles suggesting radioactive fallout might be beneficial for health, while claiming “Organic agriculture is to the environment what cigarette smoking is to human health” — apparently momentarily forgetting he’s defended the safety of cigarette smoking.3

Miller’s true colors were also revealed in August 2017, when he was fired by Forbes magazine for submitting articles ghostwritten by Monsanto. The evidence4 against Miller emerged during the court-ordered discovery process of a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto by people who claim they developed Non-Hodgkin lymphoma as a result of glyphosate exposure (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, used by farmers and home gardeners alike).

The documents, more than 700 pages in all, were posted online by the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman (now known as Wisner Baum).5 Faced with evidence they’d published material under Miller’s name that was in fact ghostwritten by Monsanto, Forbes not only fired Miller but also removed all of his work from their site. Some of the other nine physicians that signed the letter against Oz are also less than distinguished. As noted by U.S. Right to Know:6

“One was stripped of his medical license in New York and sent to federal prison camp for Medicaid fraud. Yet Dr. Gilbert Ross plays up his M.D. credentials in his role as acting president of [ACSH]. Ross was joined on the Columbia letter by ACSH board member Dr. Jack Fisher.

So what is ACSH? Though some reporters treat it as an independent science source, the group has been heavily funded by oil, chemical and tobacco companies, and has a long history of making inaccurate statements about science that directly benefit those industries — for example, claiming that secondhand smoke isn’t linked to heart attacks [or that] fracking doesn’t pollute water …

These facts are relevant in stories about scientific integrity. The scientific accuracy and motivations of the accusers matter when they are publicly challenging the scientific accuracy and motivations of somebody they are trying to get fired. We urge reporters and editors to take a closer look at the sources selling them story ideas, and to act as better watchdogs for the public interest.”

In short, the attack on Oz was orchestrated not by “concerned physicians” but rather by industry shills whose job it is to attack anyone who embraces a more natural approach to health and/or raise damning questions that might hurt the industry’s bottom-line.

Video Link

Corporate Conflicts of Interest Killed Investigative Journalism

Download Interview Transcript | Video Link

I interviewed Attkisson about her book, “Stonewalled” and the downfall and deterioration of true investigative journalism in 2015. I’ve included that interview again for your convenience. It delves a lot further into the issues brought up in her 10-minute TEDx Talk.

For example, direct-to-consumer drug advertising has created a situation where drug companies in particular wield enormous power over media. The industry spends billions of dollars each year on advertising, and this financial windfall is typically enough for any media outlet to bend to its advertisers’ whims and desires.

Attkisson refers to this as “soft censorship.” It’s when a media outlet’s sponsors wield power at the corporate level over the types of stories and topics journalists are allowed to cover, and the slant they must take when doing so. It’s important to realize that you simply will not get the truth from the media on certain topics for this very reason.

My mission is to arm you with information that is not easily obtainable in the mainstream media about things that influence your health, for better or worse. All of my articles are carefully referenced and I rely on peer-reviewed published science and firsthand interviews with experts in various fields. My advice to you is to develop a keen eye for the hallmarks of astroturfing, and to dig deeper when faced with claims that “the science is settled.” More often than not, it’s anything but.

from:  https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/03/29/astroturfing-media-manipulation.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art3HL&cid=20240329_HL2&foDate=true&mid=DM1549869&rid=2082323638

Jade Helm, PsyOps, & The Media

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As ALWAYS — DO YOUR RESEARCH!

Jade Helm as Itself a Psy Op

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Art by David Dees.

By: Jay Dyer

For most consumers of alternative news and media, the lineup of the players constitutes the tyrants and their systemic control, and the enlightened underground, with both sides fighting the great battle of winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the public.  For the alternative news and information community, the possibility of large-scale psychological operations within alternative media itself are generally outside the spectrum of the possible.  Indeed, crowds today are sill cheering on Assange and his Vaudeville Whistleblower Roadshow with Bradley-Chelsea Manning, and more recently finding themselves intellectually snowed in by our last hero, Snowden.

Jade Helm 15

In 2015, the focal point has become the Jade Helm 15 training operation across at least 7 states, with SOCOM running the training exercise for realistic military training. The brief document lists role-playing involving Texas and Utah as “hostile” areas, with insurgents in Southern California and other states like Colorado, California and Nevada as “friendly.”  On the surface, the exercise gives credence to the ultimate fears and paranoia of tea party and militia groups – clearly the U.S. government is prepping for everything from “martial law,” to “economic collapse,” and everything else under the sun that can be gleaned from a Google search and baseless YouTube speculation.

Fending off the mainstream media’s dishonest portrayal of the patriot and alternative media’s fears, Alex Newman of The New American concludes:

“Of course, critics of Jade Helm and the Obama administration should stick to facts that can be proven, rather than speculation. Most have done that, including many of those being dishonestly smeared by the deceitful media. However, the establishment press has an even more serious responsibility and duty to do the same — stick to the facts, do not deceive readers, question those in power, and adhere to basic journalistic ethics. Instead of sticking to the facts and being honest, though, establishment propagandists masquerading as journalists have once again shown the world why they cannot be trusted. As such, it is no surprise that so few Americans trust the “mainstream” press and are flocking to the alternative media by the millions.”

Common Sense Show host Dave Hodges has argued the end goal of Jade Helm is the imminent roundup, gulag confinement and gun confiscation of all Americans who have been marked as rebellious, with bank account confiscations, martial law and false flags just around the corner.  Infowars reporters Joe Biggs and David Knight have argued similarly that the threats are rather constant, slow build ups to condition the American public into the acceptance of moving towards a third world, banana republic scenario.  However, what all these portrayals have not delved into is the possibility that Jade Helm 15’s “leak” to the alternative news and patriot community itself might be a psychological warfare operation.  In order to understand this possibility, it is necessary to understand the purpose and goal of PsyOps.

Psychological Warfare Operations

Psychological warfare operations are at once mysterious, yet fairly well-known.  Most educated readers are familiar with World War II propaganda or the notion of “black operations,” but more precise and technical ideas of PsyOps are not as well known.   Retired Maj. Ed Rouse explains of the goals of PsyOps:

BAM!

“Psychological Operations (PSYOP) or Psychological Warfare (PSYWAR) is simply learning everything about your target enemy, their beliefs, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. Once you know what motivates your target, you are ready to begin psychological operations.

Psychological operations may be defined broadly as the planned use of communications to influence human attitudes and behavior … to create in target groups behavior, emotions, and attitudes that support the attainment of national objectives. The form of communication can be as simple as spreading information covertly by word of mouth or through any means of multimedia.

A psychological warfare campaign is a war of the mind. Your primary weapons are sight and sound. PSYOP can be disseminated by face-to-face communication, audio-visual means (television), audio media (radio or loudspeaker), visual media, (leaflet newspapers, books, magazines and/or posters). The weapon is not how its sent, but the message it carries and how that message affects the recipient.”

With that basic definition in mind, we can consider the possibility of Jade Helm 15 itself as having multiple potential uses.  Rather than the simple, binary dialectic of tyrannical fascist system versus liberty-loving, God-fearing patriot, the effect of Jade Helm 15’s “leak” upon the public and their reaction are far more interesting and relevant than the operation itself.   In fact, if we think back to recent years, alternative media outlets were in a tizzy over National Level Exercise 09, and then over NLE 11, etc.  In neither case did imminent apocalyptic doom manifest, but what did occur was a labyrinth of fractal speculation and orgiastic frenzy of bloggers, YouTubers and eschatological doomsayers, as these “leaked” exercises took on a life of their own.

From the perspective of PsyOps, the potential of Jade Helm to “learn everything about your target enemy, their beliefs, their likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses,” etc., would thus have numerous applications here.  On one level, the inter-contextual dialectic of tyrannical military versus veterans and patriots is the out playing of the intended war gaming scenario.

Multi-level Game Theory and Algorithmic Tracking

On a higher, meta level, the intention is to gather game theory-style data on the target audience, which in this case is not merely the alternative media and tea party niche, but also the mainstream media and its response to the tea party response, and back and forth.  Like a game of Pong, the game theorist can sit back and watch mass trends, movements and reactions between these two sides with social media and search engine algorithmic tracking.

Titan Supercomputer.

For example, a Raleigh-based firm boasts of its ability to track “suicide bombing” with its collection of Pakistani bombing information.  WNCN reports:

“In analyzing the information, they realized that they have the blast signatures for the terrorist organizations. “I can tell you who did the attack with 93 percent accuracy, based on the way they make the bombs,” Usamani said.  They looked at what they call geo-political indicators, which includes things like political events, weather patterns, even the date on the calendar.  Burns said there are more than 150 such indicators. “You have to combine all of those,” he said. “You have to determine which combination is going to develop the risks for a particular area.”

Despite limitations in this type of software, numerous companies have arisen with the technological capability to offer some form of predictive algorithm programs to service law enforcement and intelligence agencies in “pre-crime.”  One of the many goals of Jade Helm style operations that are consistent, ongoing military praxis would be the overcoming of these limitations and moving closer to the unachievable accuracy of 100%.

In other words, perfection, or the nearest thing to, requires a lot of practice.  Jade Helm is therefore an exercise that is far more relevant for data collection in terms of risk management and game theory for intelligence agencies and front tech companies, than anything to do with martial law, imminent gun confiscation or the blood moon asteroid crashing into the Wal-Mart turned FEMA camp guillotine gulag.

In the wake of ongoing exposure of mainstream media’s consistent usage of staged, faked, and computer-generated “news,”  alternative media outlets and consumers should be reminded of the possibility of alternative media falling into this same pattern of sensationalizing and disregarding facts for ever increasingly clickbait, tabloid-style online media gimmickry in both alternative and mainstream sources.

When considering the possibility of large-scale psychological operations in relation to purported “leaks” and “whistleblowers” who become the darlings of mainstream media and begin negotiating book and movie deals, John Young of Cryptome.org gave an analysis concurrent with the above to RT in 2011:

If the military wanted to keep Jade Helm secret, it could have been kept secret.  The decision to run a mass drill in several states was intentionally done and purposefully allowed to “leak.”  The consequences of such a public revelation are much more useful for war gaming and future predictive responses than any imminent threat of martial law.  Just like Assange and Snowden, Jade Helm is the establishment’s middle finger in the face of the ridiculous naiveté of the Tea Party crowd.

from:    http://jaysanalysis.com/2015/05/28/jade-helm-as-itself-a-psy-op/

Skeptics & Wikipedia

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Wikipedia Graphic

Wikipedia: Captured by Skeptics

 

The Wikipedia Problem

 

by the Editors

 

Wikipedia currently is the area in which dogmatic skeptics are most successful and influential. One of these activist groups is called Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, founded by Susan Gerbic. Another leader of the online skeptical movement is Tim Farley, who runs the website Skeptical Software Tools.The situation is particularly bad in any areas to do with parapsychology, alternative and complementary medicine, and on the biography pages of scientists involved in investigating these areas.

The Wikipedia skeptics work in teams (contrary to Wikipedia rules) and most are well trained. They generally operate under pseudonyms. It is not necessary to have any particular skill or expertise to become an editor. Anyone can edit. But it is necessary to understand the complex rules of Wikipedia. The skeptical activists are well versed in the rules, and are able to bully and outwit editors who are trying to ensure that articles are balanced and fair. When fair-minded editors oppose the skeptic teams, they are accused of defying the skeptical consensus, and warned that they will be banned from editing. If they persist they are indeed banned. Many such editors have been driven away, to the detriment of Wikipedia and its users. For a detailed case study, see Wikipedia, We Have a Problem.

Although Wikipedia’s official policy is that articles should represent a neutral point of view, skeptics have infiltrated the administration of Wikipedia and have managed to get parapsychology defined as a pseudoscience, along with many aspects of alternative and complementary medicine. The skeptic teams then claim that any editor opposing them is contravening the neutral point of view policy, because these subjects are defined as pseudoscience. These teams are committed to a kind of scientific fundamentalism, and take an extremely narrow view of science, even narrower than that of more mainstream skeptical organizations. Even the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry does not dismiss all parapsychology as pseudoscience: indeed some leading skeptics, like Professor Chris French, have explicitly stated that they regard it as a real science (French, C. C., & Stone, A. Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Unfortunately, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, is a supporter of the skeptical extremists. In response to the systematic distortion to Wikipedia entries on holistic medicine, the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) organized on online petition to Jimmy Wales through change.org asking for a balanced and scientific approach to these subjects. There were 7,000 signatures. In response, Wales called practitioners of alternative medicine “lunatic charlatans.” He resisted calls for change by saying that Wikipedia’s policies are “exactly spot-on and correct.”

So beware! Until Wikipedia can be reformed or replaced, it is essential to treat its skeptic-infested pages with extreme skepticism.

from:    http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/examining-skeptics/wikipedia-captured-by-skeptics/

Save Internet Freedom

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The Internet on Strike

What happened when major sites went on strike to offer a taste of a censored Internet.
posted Jan 18, 2012

 

Google homepage protests SOPA

Google used its homepage to protest SOPA and PIPA.

Update, Jan. 19: Following the blackout protests, 18 Senators—including 7 former sponsors of the bill—withdrew their support for the Protect IP Act, leaving it without enough votes.

Today, if you tried to find an apartment on Craigslist, Google photos of cute cats, or look up the 14th president on Wikipedia, you surely noticed something strange. These sites, cornerstones of our Internet lives, are blacked out today—and they’re not alone. A massive digital strike is underway, all in protest of what sounds like friendly legislation: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and its peer, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate.

So why is the Internet on strike? Because what’s at stake in the bills, opponents say, is a lot bigger than LOLCats. According to the ACLU, the legislation “would not only impact unlawful infringing content, but also a wealth of completely legal content that has nothing to do with online piracy.”

SOPA would allow owners of intellectual property to cripple foreign sites that are using their copyrighted material illegally (for example, by demanding that search engines not index them, or that ad agencies not contract with them). But since this process would be governed by the “good faith belief” that sites are infringing, rather than judicial review, there’s a lot of worry that it would be misused.

Gizmodo explains:

Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a “good faith belief” that they’re hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission. […]

SOPA also includes an “anti-circumvention” clause, which holds that telling people how to work around SOPA is nearly as bad as violating its main provisions. In other words: if your status update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obligated to remove it. Ditto tweets, YouTube videos, Tumblr or WordPress posts, or sites indexed by Google. And if Google, Twitter, WordPress, Facebook, etc. let it stand? They face a government “enjoinment.” They could and would be shut down.

The resources it would take to self-police are monumental for established companies, and unattainable for start-ups. SOPA would censor every online social outlet you have, and prevent new ones from emerging.

In fact, SOPA has been having a rough road of late: the Obama administration came out against it, knocking it off course for the time being, and three co-sponsors of the bills withdrew their support as the Internet blackout (which the L.A. Times estimates to include some 10,000 websites) began. But PIPA is still set for mark-up next week.

And so the protest continues. Google, in a petition it’s circulating, states, “There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs.” A group of artists sent an open letter to Congress, explaining that “copyright law exists to promote the arts, but the new penalties in PIPA could be used against the new social media channels we depend on to make a living, and endanger freedom of expression.”

from:    http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/brooke-jarvis/the-internet-on-strike