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Will ‘Astroturf’ Groups Block Net Neutrality Reform?
You might think McGreal quickly encountered "real Americans" protesting President Obama's "socialist" healthcare agenda by hurling insults at town hall meetings. Cable news channels are full of these images, which together portray the United States as a giant angry grassroots rally against reform-minded policies.
Odd, then, that McGreal reports this:
- The outbursts against President Obama's healthcare plans filling television screens, with opponents calling him a Nazi and accusing him of planning death committees to do in old people, are to a large degree manufactured by the same people who use similar tactics to oppose abortion.
McGreal has it right: There is no genuine mass uprising against healthcare reform or climate change legislation. But the industry groups and corporations who benefit from the status quo--and thus have the most at stake in these debates--want us to think otherwise. And they've developed a slick way of manufacturing dissent: creating fake grassroots--"astroturf"--organizations to do their bidding in our name.
Jim Hightower describes astroturf organizations as "the corporate version of grassroots...well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups."
Astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks rent themselves out to combat policies that hurt major corporations, from ExxonMobile to AT&T. They were behind April's Tea Bag rallies, which protested tax increases, and flew hot air balloons as part of a campaign to discredit climate change.
Now corporations--AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Qwest--are paying astroturf groups to derail one of the most important public policy initiatives of our time: Net Neutrality. The cable and telecom lobby is spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to become the Web's new gatekeepers.
What is Net Neutrality?
Astroturf groups have set their sights on blocking the passage of a valuable new bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill, introduced into the House in early August, would protect the Internet from telecommunications and cable companies who want to control access to online content--and thereby make more money.
The principle that protects the Internet freedom we now enjoy is Net Neutrality, which leaves us free to visit any website and create and share anything we can imagine. This "open" platform allows us to bypass the old corporate gatekeepers to create our own entertainment, and organize for social change without fearing that an Internet service provider like Comcast or AT&T will block our messages because they disagree with our politics.
Net Neutrality as a baseline rule for the Internet was stripped away by a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (PDF link) that effectively allowed phone and cable companies to discriminate against websites, applications or services that they didn't like.
We must restore this guiding principle to protect and ensure a free-flowing Web for all. The new legislation would mandate that all ISPs adhere to Net Neutrality and refrain from controlling, blocking or slowing down online content.
Rolling out the astroturf
So who exactly is shilling for industry? Let's connect the dots.
It's no secret the five biggest cable and telecommunications companies want Net Neutrality to disappear. All five just happen to be members of the "pro-consumer" (read: astroturf) group NetCompetition.org, which is trying to make this nasty problem go away for them. Scott Cleland, who heads the operation, has made it his job to bash Net Neutrality, even likening it to socialism: "Just like the Soviet socialists, the net neutrality movement blatantly misrepresents the facts."
And when FreedomWorks isn't throwing a tea party, they're throwing a tantrum about Net Neutrality. Take it from Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who leads the group: "The proponents of Net Neutrality have some very nice sound bites and flowery talking points that would lead you to believe that it's about keeping the Internet free," he writes. "I assure you nothing could be further from the truth."
Who has paid FreedomWorks bills? AT&T.
Meanwhile, the American Consumer Institute--doesn't that sound innocuous--is questioning the new Net Neutrality bill for consumers. Stephen Pociask, a telecom consultant and former chief economist for Bell Atlantic, is behind the site.
In 2006, when a similar Net Neutrality bill was introduced, this group actively worked to get lawmakers to vote against it.
Speak out or cede control
What's the difference between a real grassroots organization and a fake one? Astroturf groups are paid shills who don't openly disclose their funding sources, pretend they're taking a stance in the public's interest and manufacture events to make them appear to be backed by a public majority.
For too long, special interest money has polluted the waters of public discourse in America. And unfortunately, our entrenched corporate media system is all too willing to repeat astroturf messages, thereby legitimizing them and stifling genuine debate.
The open Internet lets us speak for ourselves--unlike nearly all other media platforms. If we speak out in support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act and drown out the din of astroturf groups and industry lobbyists, it will remain that way.
- Posted in
9 Comments so far
Show AllSpeaking of propaganda....this guy should ghave gotten of Route 66 then, because a majority of Americans are opposed to Pelosi's plan. Fact.
Now if all he asked was ..."do you favor health care reform" he would have gotten the answer he said he got.
Believing your own lies is the start of decline or a sign you are halfway down the cliff. Does he think no one noticed the sea of Purple Shirts at those meetings...and given preferential entry at that?
As to the Internet Neutrality question, he could very welll be right.
Writing as the owner / operator of two web comics that does not have any corporate backing whatsoever, Net Neutrality is a vital issue. What is especially offensive is these giant telecoms wish to profit off of the infrastructure that tax $ paid for in much the same way the public airwaves have been hijacked by the likes of Fox, Viacom, GE, etc. It is no surprise that the viewing public has migrated to the Internet: it is the only media space where they can find stuff of their choice. Now the likes of Qwest, AT&T, Verizon, etc. are ponying up the $ to mega-scumbag Dick Armey and his ilk for another obfuscation campaign so that they can become the corporate gatekeepers, with all the attendant power and money that comes from the position. Simply put...THIS MUST NOT STAND!
www.wunderman-comics.com
We must keep net neutrality to insure that the internet can get the truth out to the people despite the big business biases of the mainstream media acting as they do as echo chambers for the status quo, when not baking a return to the dark ages of these astroturf fruitcakes in all the Cro Magnonnesse.
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We must keep net neutrality to insure that the internet can get the truth out to the people despite the big business biases of the mainstream media acting as they do as echo chambers for the status quo, when not baking a return to the dark ages of these astroturf fruitcakes in all the Cro Magnonnesse.
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I signed. The Internet is the only thing that stands in the way of the New World Order.
I contend that there are nearly 6 billion people that can stand in the
way of the NWO.... if they weren't so carefully splintered.
"There is no genuine mass uprising against healthcare reform or climate change legislation."
Then why are our congressional leaders listening, knowingly, to such a foul-mouthed minority consisting of mostly unreliable voters?
Far more dangerous to Americans is organized gang stalking.
After being tortured and harressed by right wing religeous gang stalking for 2.8 years , my obervations and detailed study of the ppeople doing this to me has brought me to one conclusion.
Its these fake astroturf groups. They have money, they have right wing corporate support, law enforcemnet and first responders, Verizon and Brightouse , Infragarud, Fusion Centers, all power house right wing controled groups.
They hire and organize astroturf and gang stalking to crush dissidents.You know left wing liberal free thought.
The department of justice is well aware of these organized thugs, and get plenty of complaints, but they do nothing.
Because this country has been run by a right wing white house 30 of the last 40 years. And every tool and cronie is in place to stop free thought, dissidents and progressive agandas.
All law enforcemnet agencies are mostly Republican supporters, they are beholden to thier republican masters who have held power with fear, election stealing, lies , gang stalking , propoganda and astoturf groups.
Most of them are fake christian gun toten lunatics.
We need to break up thier power and choke hold on our country , and send them back to the stones ages with bibles and guns in hand.
If our country and our democracy is to survive , we need free thought, invention and innovation, modern new sources of energy and a national health care system that covers and treats everyone, pre-exisiting conditions or not.
Unlish American ingenuity, create high tech jobs in energy and new jobs for the health care industry to handle 50,000,000 new patients.
End the Wars and lets spread the news to the christian nut jobs, you had republicans in office for 30 years, not one tried to repeal the abortion laws.
Hello, anyone home, your republican capitalists have run our country into the ground, held back wages, given every loop hole and advantage to insurance companys and large corporations and spit on constitutional law.
I am sick and tired of the religous right wing in this country hanging on to one book as their guide to life in general.
Give me a break, if was not for science, we would all still be living in log cabins and going to the biggest building in town every sunday,Church.
How about some words from our Jesus following ministers about the evils of war.Thier silence on the issue of war is deafening.
WWJD... If Jesus were here walking amost us, he would first clean house at all his churchs.
What hypocrites, they should not be allowed to dictate any policy in a modern world.
It's ironic that Megan Tady should grouse about "astroturf" groups, when in fact she works for one herself. "Free Press," a DC lobbying group, carries water for Google -- a large, monopolistic corporation -- and is lobbying to have the Internet regulated in ways that would benefit Google and prevent new companies from being able to compete with it.
The so-called "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" would do just this. In particular, the bill would prevent a newcomer from buying services that would accelerate delivery of its content to consumers. It thus would prevent newcomers from being able to deliver their data as speedily as Google, which is already big enough to have placed its servers in the network centers of large ISPs.
Ms. Tady's group has packed hearing rooms where issues on which it was lobbying -- e.g. regulation of the Internet -- were being discussed. (In one case -- a hearing at Stanford University -- it bused homeless people in from San Francisco and gave them remarks with which to harangue the Commissioners. That's astroturfing!) And Free Press has "spammed" the FCC public comment system with thousands of identical letters claiming to be from concerned citizens. Worst of all, it has lied to the public about its intentions and motivations.
Don't believe the lobbyists who claim, without any substantiation at all, that ISPs such as AT&T and Time-Warner are interested in becoming "gatekeepers." They've never done so, and have no interest in doing so because their subscribers would leave for other providers. The purpose of the scare stories is to invent bogeymen as an excuse to regulate the Net -- which has flourished without regulation and in fact owes its existence to a lack of regulation.
And be especially suspicious of inside-the-Beltway, lawyer-run, unaccountable Washington DC groups like Ms. Tady's. Free Press refuses to reveal its funding sources (What does it have to hide?), maintains a "shadow organization" with an interlocking directorate as a tax dodge so that it can lobby Congress in ways that harm consumers, and operates under multiple different names, including "Save the Internet." They've got a lot of 'splainin' to do before they accuse anyone else of being an astroturf group.