Some newspapers have become unwitting conduits for campaign propaganda
Monday, August 23, 2004 at 03:03PM
TheSpook
Thanks to some nifty Internet technology, the
campaigns of President Bush and John F. Kerry are making it easy for
their supporters to pass off the campaigns' talking points as just
another concerned citizen's opinion. Pro-Bush or pro-Kerry letters
bearing identical language are flooding letters-to-the-editor columns.
The Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y., for example, ran a
letter last month from a local reader that stated, "New-job figures and
other recent economic data show that America's economy is strong and
getting stronger, and that the president's jobs and growth plan is
working." The exact same phrasing also appeared in letters printed in
about 20 other daily newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
the Idaho Statesman and the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. It wasn't a
remarkable coincidence. The letters -- known as "AstroTurf" for their
ersatz quality -- were generated by a special cut-and-paste form on
Bush's campaign Web site. [more ]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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