Why does Newsvine Allow Political PR Organizations to Seed "Astroturf" Content?

On the bright side individual opinions do count at Newsvine and we'll get to see what the community thinks of being a profit center for an industry rag.

Where ever that balance lands it's not a managing editor driving users to his publication from here!!

We'll see if any of you have the gray matter to either read the COH or realize that Mr. Salvatore isn't violating it:

3. Newsvine is for collaborative discovery and discussion of the news, not self-promotion. Posting full articles which also appear on your blog is acceptable but seeding your own stuff is not.

Mr. Salvatore is managing editor of this publication. COH 3 applies only to seeds from a person's blog not a publication's website. Here's Mr. Salvatore's archive of pieces. Now either find an instance of where he seeded one of his own articles or stfu.

OTHO, this lefty has a history of seeding stuff from his own blog but in the minds of the intellectual Stalinists here that's apparently just peachy keen.

Excellent catch PH,

We definitely cannot allow Newsvine to be used as an advertising base for websites, regardless of their positions...

We'll see if any of you have the gray matter to either read the COH or realize that Mr. Salvatore isn't violating it:

Calvin begs to differ.

Bill,

It's his news site, that is self-promotion. (You can see Calvin affirm this below.)

Len Hart is also violating the CoH by self-seeding. I'll report him as well.

Not everyone gets caught right away. If you help police the vine and turn in violators too, we'll be able to catch more Len Harts and fsalvatos together.

Thank's for the clarification, CT. Perhaps an amendment to COH No. 3 is in order to make this point more explicit.

As it reads now it led me to believe that so long as you weren't seeding your own bylined stuff if it was cool. Kinda confusing.

intellectual Stalinists here that's apparently just peachy keen.

OTHO, this lefty has a history of seeding stuff from his own blog but in the minds of the intellectual Stalinists here that's apparently just peachy keen.

I'm still having trouble on why this was ever a right/left issue though. I think most of us saw it as a right/wrong issue. I guess some of us can't help but reduce it down to an argument.

I'm still having trouble on why this was ever a right/left issue though. I think most of us saw it as a right/wrong issue. I guess some of us can't help but reduce it down to an argument.

The point Bill Harrison made clear to me was he agrees with some spammer paid off by the corporate-fascists enough to freak out when the guy is exposed. But then again, maybe I'm a 'Stalinist' ;-)

But then again, maybe I'm a 'Stalinist' ;-)

I thought that shaving the beard cured that! :~)

Take it up with Len Hart, Bennoboy. Tell me where this seed takes you.

I'd say that Len Hart is violating the CoH. Many of his seeds all come from the same source on blogspot. No friends, no articles written. There's nothing wrong in an of itself with not having friends or writing articles, but taken as a whole it speaks volumes.

What Damian said. The guy is just not doing it the Newsvine way.

I hope that this definition of "sarcasm" will be reviewed, as not a synonym for "irony", and the use of it will be seen as inflammatory when it is appropriate.

sarcasm |ˈsärˌkazəm|
noun
the use of irony to mock or convey contempt : his voice, hardened by sarcasm, could not hide his resentment. Source: New Oxford English Dictionaries.

Ooh, Burson-Marsteller now my ears really perk up and interesting who a top political client is, Hillary,

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. ..

In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

Black is only one cannon in B-M's Republican arsenal. Its "grassroots" lobbying branch, Direct Impact--which specializes in corporate-funded astroturfing--is run by Dennis Whitfield, a former Reagan Cabinet official, and Dave DenHerder, the political director of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign in Ohio. That's not all. B-M recently partnered with lobbyist Ed Gillespie, the former head of the Republican National Committee, in creating the new ad firm 360Advantage, which is run by two ad men for the Bush-Cheney campaigns and which includes a few prominent Democrats. Its first project was a campaign for the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine against "liberal bias" in the media.

The firm defended Procter and Gamble's Olestra from charges that it caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. Penn invented the concept of "inoculation," in which corporations are shielded from scandal through clever advertising and marketing. Selling an image, companies realized, was as important as winning a legislative favor....

Penn kept his foot in the political world through the Clintons. In 2000 he became the chief architect of Hillary's Senate victory in New York, persuading her, in a rerun of '96, to eschew big themes and relentlessly focus on poll-tested pothole politics, such as suburban transit lines and dairy farming upstate.

Oooooohhh, how sinister. Since BKSH & Associates has its offices in my building I'm sure to confront Charlie Black with this dark conspiracy the next time I see him.

It's not conspiracy Bill, it's pure greed, business devoid of ethics to manipulate public opinion for a fee.

LOL. Do you think various organizations should have no right to have their views presented to the government vis-a-vis legislation that affects them? You know that whole lobbying that thingy that started out in the lobby of the Willard Hotel way back when and what the Founders called the beauty of competing interests.

Indeed, and it was Sigmund Freud's own nephew, Edward Bernays, who first fully appreciated the gravity of psychological manipulation for a fee. He's what we might call the "father of spin" and he even wrote a book about it : Propaganda, ISBN 0970312598 (1928).

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it," Bernays argued. He called this scientific technique of opinion molding the "engineering of consent."

Personally, I'd prefer informed consent by free will rather than paid manipulation. It's one reason I don't have my television on every waking moment. Turn it off! You'll especially notice in six months to a year just how the TV manipulates your thinking. Are you in control of your own mind? Or are they?

From Propaganda:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."

Well my problem with companies like Burson-Marsteller is the way they blur the line between spin and bold faced lies. This is not in the publics interest and does not keep the citizenry properly informed, so it sabotages the democratic process.

It is a common fallacy that we act in any way independently. We are completely subject to untold drivers of our behaviors which are constantly remolded minute by minute. And not just by advertising, but by policy, by social milieu, by family and friends. It is a common problem as to whether we are actually affected by those things for which we have recognition of their potential influence, as opposed to those things which pass unnoticed beneath our perception and yet unknowingly deeply influence us.

For every source we can perceive, there are so many others that pass unquestioned and embed in our psyche. Our purported and much vaunted freedom is nothing more than a facade to distract us from the actual state of our being.

I so love paranoia!

That's what Factcheck.org is for. Political campaigns have consisted of spin from the gitgo. It's the job of the informed voter to read and investigate and not base one's vote on some campaign ad that runs on commercial breaks of American Idol and Dancing With the Stars.

...and not base one's vote on some campaign ad that runs on commercial breaks...

...but alas, that is the American way.

Bill, the debate is nothing to do with the question of groups having the right to lobby, to extrapolate this thread to that scale is ludicrous. The matter in hand is the debate over whether there is any place on Newsvine for content generated, directly or otherwise, by PR companies. The consensus seems to be that there is not. I haven't seen you refute this idea in principle, neither have I seen anyone here directly attack the right wing political stance you are so proud of. All that has happened is that you have flamed the thread and some people have risen to it. Contribute to the argument or I call you troll, sir.

...Ohhh, Bill Harrison, Ribeye done called you out... Well, what say you sir?

Very interesting that Ribeye has been on Newsvine since the Beta days, Despite a record that shows no posts and very few votes and/or comments, Ribeye clearly knows of some of the personalities on Newsvine and their political leanings.

I am always conscious that Newsvine comprises far more than those who are actively writing, seeding and engaging. The power and value of Newsvine's lurkers should never be underestimated.

If Burson-Marsteller was around for the Third Reich they would be their to represent them, That is one strange group of "unique people on a interesting vision" yikes..scary

Do you think various organizations should have no right to have their views presented to the government vis-a-vis legislation that affects them?

Not any more then an individual has rights, but how many common people can afford the bribes, or are able to pay lobbyist to present there cases?

Compared to individuals it's a big darn one to be dumped in our pond.

Never too late to enjoy a bit of cooked goose. :~)

You're right, Pamela. This happened to one of Forest's articles the other day. Once he removed the Newsvine tag, the article showed up on the front page.

It's to keep meta articles off the front page. Articles about Newsvine should include the newsvine tag for just that reason.

You can also simply contact the Newsvine staff if you see a violation of the COH. There are occasional articles like this that get some action, but there are probably lots more that nobody notices. Articles are by far less reliable for correcting problems than simply talking to Calvin or someone else on the staff.

No, I meant sending them an email actually. Just go to Help, then Contact Us. There's a drop down for the reason for the contact, and one of the options is "Report spam or a malicious user". Put in your concerns and they should get back to you.

Using the "newsvine" tag keeps an article out of the "Columnists." It does not, as far as I can tell, keep an article out of it's chosen category. If "none" was chosen, it will not appear on the front page.

There are always attempts to circumnavigate this function by not adding the "newsvine" tag when publishing an article about Newsvine, but it's truly unnecessary. If published to appropriate groups (Metavine, Newsvine Community, etc.), then this type of content usually gets plenty of exposure.

And it's received this amount of attention for a reason--you've done a great job.

It is outstanding and to a fine point it is an original article and a heck of a scoop. We hear complaints that the Administration can't gather enough intelligence but between the political marketing and corporate think tanks it seems the Board Room's have us pegged down to the blogs, 'sup with that?? Does DC cause amnesia??

It's not DC as we know this stuff happens from sea to shining sea. I'm inclined to think that it's money that causes amnesia... lots and lots of money. Money is power.

Round of applause to one and all greens; keep making us proud and we'll try to do the same!!

Ha! I'd probably fall over if I knew how many Greenhouse (!) I've submitted. *blushes*

37, 823.

Ha! I'm just hoping they don't keep track.

I've been counting.

You leave more comments on my tracker than anyone, and it's never stuff I want to read.

37, 823.

37, 823. Wait a min. Is that as in 37 thousand ???? No wonder I have never seen the front page of Newsvine, its all laughalls fault !