Falsies on Parade: The Worst Spinners of 2006

Here at the Center for Media and Democracy, we've made our year-end list, and our readers have checked it 1,204 times. That can only mean one thing ?- it's time to announce the winners of the coveted 2006 Falsies Awards!

The Falsies are our way of recognizing the most heinous polluters of the information environment over the past year.

Golden Falsie: The ABCs of History
The most false of Falsies goes to the American Broadcasting Corporation. ABC used the fifth anniversary of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States as an opportunity to rewrite history, broadcasting "The Path to 9/11," a six-hour "docudrama" written and produced by conservative filmmakers. The made-for-TV blockbuster placed the lion's share of the blame for the attacks on alleged failures of the Clinton administration. None other than Rush Limbaugh talked up the movie, noting that its screenwriter, Cyrus Nowrasteh, was a personal friend.

Silver Falsie: Front Group for Fake News
In April 2006, the Center for Media and Democracy issued "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed," a report that documented television stations' use of public relations videos designed to look like real reporting. Dozens of TV stations across the United States aired pre-packaged video news releases (VNRs) or canned satellite media tour (SMT) interviews, and failed to tell viewers that a company had funded the segment. Subsequently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched an investigation of these incidents.

Bronze Falsie: Neutralizing Net Neutrality
In two reports, Common Cause exposed more than a dozen front groups for telephone and cable companies. These groups hide their industry ties and often "claim to represent huge numbers of citizens, but in reality their public support is minimal or nonexistent," Common Cause wrote. Such campaigns "deliberately mislead citizens, and they deliberately mislead our lawmakers, who are already charged with the difficult task of making sense of complex telecommunications policies."

Dishonorable Mentions
Not-so-Swift Veterans for Freedom: A group calling itself "Vets for Freedom" claimed to be "non-partisan" in early 2006, when it appeared out of the blue and began placing op-ed pieces in the New York Times and other major publications. An investigation by citizen journalists at SourceWatch and by the Buffalo News blew the VFF claim of non-partisanship out of the water. For instance, the Buffalo News revealed in June that former White House flack Taylor Gross, who left Scott McClellan's office in 2005 to start his own PR firm, represented VFF and pitched them to papers as non-partisan journalists who would embed for these newspapers and report accurately and cheaply for them from Iraq. The Wall Street Journal reported that VFF was being handled by Republican strategist Dan Senor, and its website turned out to be the work of the Donatelli Group, the same Republican consulting firm that previously set up Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to attack John Kerry in 2004.

Putting a Tiger in Your Think Tank: As columnist George Monbiot noted in September 2006, journalists and media outlets routinely fail to ensure adequate disclosure of funding sources when interviewing supposed experts on global warming. "While the BBC would seldom allow someone from Bell Pottinger or Burson-Marsteller on air to discuss an issue of concern to their sponsors without revealing the sponsors' identity, the BBC has frequently allowed International Policy Network's executive director, Julian Morris, to present IPN's case without declaring its backers. IPN has so far received $295,000 from Exxon's corporate headquarters in the US." Exxon gave at least $6.8 million to nonprofit groups in 2005, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (also funded by the American Petroleum Institute, Ford and General Motors), which recently ran television ads arguing that carbon dioxide, widely seen as the main global-warming gas, is "life." Another Exxon operation, the DCI Group, anonymously distributed a video on YouTube mocking Al Gore's campaign against global warming. The White House has also helped spin the global warming discussion. An investigation by science writer Paul Thacker found that the White House was "controlling access to scientists and vetting reporters. ... After Hurricane Katrina, NOAA press officers had to get clearance from the Department of Commerce for scientists to discuss global warming and hurricanes with the press."

Reading, Writing and Recruitment: Military recruiters are placing advertising in schools, on airplanes and TV. Carus Publishing, which publishes magazines for children ranging from preschoolers to teenagers, is promoting military careers to elementary- and middle-schoolers. Their May 2006 issue of Cobblestone magazine, titled "Duty, Honor, Country," was unabashedly pro-military, appearing as if it were the product of military recruiters trying to market enlistment to children. An accompanying teachers' supplement recommended that teachers "invite an Army member, Army recruiter, and/or a war veteran to come and speak to your class." Another proposed activity: have students "pretend they are going to join the Army. Have them decide which career they feel they would qualify for and write a paper to persuade a recruiter why that should be the career they should be allowed to train for in the Army."

Wal-Mart Hypocritics on Paid Critics: On behalf of Wal-Mart Stores, employees of the Edelman PR firm posed as "grassroots" bloggers on two Wal-Mart-sponsored websites, for the Working Families for Wal-Mart front group and paidcritics.com, which ?- rather ironically ?- slams the "paid critics [who are] smearing Wal-Mart." Edelman's Kate Marshall praised a Wall Street Journal editorial for exposing "Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch as front groups of the union leaders." If you can take more hypocrisy, read the Advertising Age article on how Edelman "is being aligned with a newly coined word for its present crisis" over walmartingacrossamerica.com: "flog," for "fake blog." AdAge points out that Edelman helped write the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's (WOMMA's) code of ethics, which states, "Never obscure your identity." In another blunder for Wal-Mart, its hiring of former civil rights leader Andrew Young as a Working Families for Wal-Mart spokesman turned embarrassing when Young had to resign after making disparaging remarks about small local stores owned by Jews, Koreans and Arabs.

Reader's Choice Awards
Many of our readers felt that President George W. Bush or members of his administration (Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld in particular) deserved an award for deceiving the public about the war in Iraq. One reader called Bush the "Chief Liar in Charge. Everything that has come out of this foul creature's mouth has been an unmitigated lie."

The Fox News Corporation ?- in particular, Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly ?- also received quite a few nominations for, in the words of one reader, "turning out an entire segment of totally misinformed Americans who think they know the truth and are militant to those on the 'left' whom they perceive as hostile to the better interests of America. They have fomented unrest in this country by exploiting our divisions for political and financial gain."

Rush Limbaugh was also a popular candidate. One reader felt he deserved the award for his services as a "liar, propagandist for the far right and for what he did in regard to Michael Fox." Other nominees included think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, PR firms, such as the Lincoln Group and Russo Marsh & Rogers, and lobbyists, such as Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist.

Hoisted On Our Own Petard?
As in the past, this year's Falsies survey prompted a couple of readers to suggest that we deserved the award ourselves. One person wrote that the Center for Media and Democracy deserved it for "portraying themselves as a watchdog for clean government, when in fact they are nothing but a front group for the Democratic Party." Another wrote that we have been "consistently silent about the story that is by far the most significant PR story in America: The mainstream media's complicity in lying and distorting facts and information about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. While Lebanon was being mercilessly bombed by Israeli forces, this disgraceful organization continued to put out emails highlighting stories that were utterly irrelevant in comparison. You all are the worst of the worst as far as I'm concerned."