From editor Joey Skaggs: I recommend this piece from The January/February 2010 issue of Tikkun written by Christopher Hedges about the cultural phenomenon of celebrity-ism. Parts are excerpted from his 2009 book, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Celebrity Culture and the Obama Brand, by Christopher Hedges

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, armies of corporate lobbyists grease the palms of our elected officials, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia, and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, this product is duping us into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us?

Read the rest of this article here.

University of Colorado at Boulder Falls Prey to Philip Morris’ Strategic Philanthropy
Submitted by Anne Landman
Center or Media and Democracy / PRWatch.org
December 4, 2009

The University of Colorado at Boulder has accepted a $12.1 million grant from cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM) to put on “Life Skills Training” (LST) programs in middle schools, nominally aimed at reducing students’ use of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs.

Notwithstanding that a federal court in 2006 found Philip Morris guilty of engaging in 50 years of public fraud and racketeering, a peer-reviewed study of tobacco industry documents conducted by the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education looked at why tobacco companies so robustly promote Life Skills Training. They found that since 1999, PM and Brown & Williamson have both worked to disseminate Life Skills Training programs into schools across the country. Why? As part of their effort, the two companies hired a public relations firm to evaluate the program. The evaluation showed that LST was not effective at reducing smoking, after either the first or second year of implementing the program. Despite this, the tobacco companies have continued to eagerly award grants to implement the program. (more…)

Submitted by W.J. Elvin III:

How to make someone disappear into thin air? No problem. Take in an evening of CIA magic…

CIA Magic: The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
Tuesday, 20 October; 6:30 pm
International Spy Museum, Washington DC

“Magic and Intelligence are really kindred arts.”
— John McLaughlin, former deputy director of central intelligence

In the early days of the Cold War, the CIA initiated a top-secret program, code-named MKULTRA, to counter Soviet mind-control and interrogation techniques. Realizing that its officers and agents might need to clandestinely deploy newly developed pills, potions, and powders against the adversary, the CIA hired America’s most famous magician, John Mulholland, to write two secret manuals on sleight-of-hand and covert communication techniques.

Twenty years later, virtually all documents related to MKULTRA—including Mulholland’s manuals—were thought destroyed. Only recently, a surviving copy of each manual, complete with photographs and illustrations, was discovered. In their new book, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, H. Keith Melton, internationally renowned espionage historian, and Bob Wallace, former director of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services (OTS), reveal for the first time Mulholland’s complete illustrated instructions for CIA officers on the magician’s approach to manipulation and communication.

This eye-opening evening will explore the rich overlap between stage magic and espionage and reveal the “never before seen” secrets of how the magicians’ art also enhanced the spy’s craft.

Tickets: $20 per person. The Museum Complex is located at 800 F Street, NW – between 9th and 8th Streets, Washington DC

Editor’s Note: The manipulative, deceitful and very effective tactics I have used over the past 40+ years as an artist, activist and culture jammer to shed light on institutional, corporate and media efforts to mislead the general public have now been fully co-opted by the organizations victimized by them. It’s interesting to see the pendulum swing. Kudos to Ann Landman for this insightful and very useful article aimed at unmasking corporate and political tricksterism that blatantly utilizes disinformation to sway public opinion. One hopes the general public becomes more aware and is willing to fight against this insidious hype, hypocrisy, propaganda, and disinformation. JS

Attack of the Living Front Groups: PR Watch Offers Help to Unmask Corporate Tricksters
by Anne Landman
PRWatch.org / Center for Media and Democracy
August 28, 2009

Fake “grassroots” groups have started springing up like toadstools after a rain, and this time they’re coming at us from every angle: they’re on TV, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube: “Americans for Prosperity,” “FACES of Coal, “The “Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights,” “Americans Against Food Taxes,” the “60 Plus Association,” “Citizens for Better Medicare,” “Patients First” … It’s making our heads spin! Issues affecting some of the country’s biggest industries, like health insurance reform, a proposal to tax sodas and sugary drinks, and the FDA’s possible reconsideration of the plastic additive Bisphenol A, have boosted corporate astroturfing up to a dizzying pace. With all these corporate fronts coming out of the woodwork, how can citizens tell true grassroots organizations from corporate fronts operated by highly-paid PR and lobbying firms? Here are some tips to help readers spot this kind of big-business hanky-panky.

What is a “front group,” really? (more…)

Update, August 26, 2009: Nicholas D. Kristof writes an Op Ed about Wendell Potter:

Update, July 21, 2009: Here are several more articles about the battle for health care reform:

From John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy / PRWatch.org:

Wendell Potter, the Center for Media and Democracy’s Senior Fellow on Health Care, was interviewed for most of an hour by Bill Moyers on his Journal program Friday, July 10th.

Wendell Potter spent more than 20 years as a public relations executive for two large health insurers – Cigna and Humana – but left the industry after witnessing practices he felt harmed American health care consumers. In his own words:

“I am speaking out about how big for-profit insurers have hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and how the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health care reform legislation members of Congress are now writing. I was in a unique position to see not only how Wall Street analysts and investors influence decisions insurance company executives make but also how the industry has carried out behind-the-scenes PR and lobbying campaigns to kill or weaken any health care reform efforts that threatened insurers’ profitability.”

(more…)

Coal Group Is Linked to Fake Letters on Climate Bill
by Stephanie Strom
The New York Times
August 4, 2009

A trade group representing coal producers and power companies says that it indirectly hired a lobbying firm that sent fake letters to lawmakers purporting to be from nonprofit groups opposed to climate-change legislation.

The group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said in statement Monday that it was considering legal action against the lobbying firm.

On Tuesday, staff members across Capitol Hill combed through constituent mail in search of other fake letters. The search began after three members of Congress said they had received them. (more…)

And That’s Not the Way It Is
by Frank Rich
The New York Times
July 26, 2009

WHO exactly was the competition in the race to be the most trusted man in America? Lyndon Johnson? Richard Nixon?

Not to take anything away from Walter Cronkite, but he beat out Henry Kissinger by only four percentage points when a 1974 Roper poll asked Americans whom they most respected. The successive blows of Vietnam and Watergate during the Cronkite ’60s and ’70s shattered the nation’s faith in most of its institutions, public and private, and toppled many of the men who led them. Such was the dearth of trustworthy figures who survived that an unindicted official in a disgraced White House could make the cut.

In death, “the most trusted man in America” has been embalmed in that most comforting of American sweeteners — nostalgia — to the point where his finest, and most discomforting, achievements are being sanitized or forgotten. We’ve heard much sentimental rumination on the bygone heyday of the “mainstream media,” on the cultural fractionalization inflicted by the Internet, and on the lack of any man who could replicate the undisputed moral authority of Uncle Walter. (Women still need not apply, apparently.) But the reason to celebrate Cronkite has little to do with any of this and least of all to do with his avuncular television persona. (more…)

Hoax Film Made by Nazis
by Jorge Luis Marzo:

These three clips are part of an SS film shot at Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp for Jews in Prague, in 1944. Entitled “The Fuhrer gives a city to the Jews,” it was a hoax film made by Nazis intended to demonstrate that widespread news about the extermination of Jews in the East was false. The most unbelievable thing is that, in order to create a credible plot, the entire film was directed by Jewish filmmaker Kurt Gerron, himself a prisoner, and shot and performed by the very inmates, under the threat of being sent to Auschwitz. The camp was painted, remodelled and inmates received extra rations of food, etc..

The Fuhrer gives a city to the Jews, Part 1

A copy of the film was sent to the Red Cross in Geneve (Switzerland). A few days later, the whole camp’s population was sent to Auschwitz and murdered in the gas chambers.

I got this footage from the Jewish International Council in NYC. The film has been used by some negationist pro-Nazi groups to deny the Holocaust. So, for any use of these film clips, it is very important to explain the full context.

For Film Parts 2 and 3 (more…)

Propaganda.com
by Evgeny Morozov
The New York Times Op Ed
March 29, 2009

This year’s report on “enemies of the Internet” prepared by Reporters Without Borders, the international press advocacy group, paints a very gloomy picture for the freedom of expression on the Web. It finds that many governments have stepped up their attacks on the Internet, harassing bloggers and making it harder to express dissenting opinions online.

These are very disturbing trends. But identifying “Internet enemies” only on the basis of censorship and intimidation, as Reporters Without Borders has done, obfuscates the fact that these are only two components of a more comprehensive and multi-pronged approach that authoritarian governments have developed to diffuse the subversive potential of online communications.

Many of these governments have honed their Internet strategies beyond censorship and are employing more subtle (and harder to detect) ways of controlling dissent, often by planting their own messages on the Web and presenting them as independent opinion.

Their actions are often informed by the art of online “astroturfing,” a technique also popular with modern corporations and PR firms. While companies use it to engineer buzz around products and events, governments are using it to create the appearance of broad popular support for their ideology.

Their ultimate ambition may be to transform the Internet into a “spinternet,” the vast and mostly anonymous areas of cyberspace under indirect government jurisdiction. The spinternet strategy could be more effective than censorship — while there are a plenty of ways to access blocked Web sites, we do not yet have the means to distinguish spin from independent comment. (more…)

Hundreds of Israeli Websites Hacked in ‘Propaganda War’
by Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading
December 31, 2008

Attackers deface sites with anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. messages as bombings escalate in Gaza; U.S. Webmasters warned to be vigilant

It didn’t take long after Israel’s bombing of Gaza began for cyberwarfare to erupt as well: More than 300 Israeli Websites over the past few days have been hacked and defaced with anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. messages in an online propaganda campaign, a security expert says.

Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a co-chair of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, warned in his blog that U.S. Websites should be prepared for similar attacks. “In the current situation, the hackers supporting Gaza clearly believe Israel AND the US are culpable. That means American webmasters may wish to be especially vigilant right now,” Warner blogged.

The attacks on Israeli sites occurred within a period of 48 hours, in what Warner calls a “Propaganda War.” (more…)

Clean Coal for Christmas
by Sheldon Rampton
Center for Media and Democracy / PRWatch.org
December 11, 2008

Viral emails have become a pleasant staple of the holiday season. A couple of weeks ago, I sent one myself to a few friends and family — an “Elf Yourself” video featuring me with my wife and one of our cats. (You can find it on my personal website if you’re interested.) “Elf Yourself” includes an understated advertising message for its sponsor, OfficeMax, but the dancing elves are kind of cute, and I figured my loved ones are strong enough to handle an occasional bit of commercialism.

It’s a different story, though, with the “Clean coal carolers” video shown here that was just released by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a front group for the coal industry. This latest PR ploy features animated lumps of coal singing Christmas carols with the wording changed to deliver pro-coal propaganda.

The “Clean coal carolers” video appears on the ACCCE website, which lets you adorn each lump of coal with a festive holiday cap or scarf, and then have them sing a song of your choosing, from options that include “Clean Coal Night,” “Abundant, Affordable,” “O’ Technology” and “Deck the Halls.” Here’s a sample of the lyrics to “Frosty the Coalman”: (more…)

Pentagon May Have Mixed Propaganda With PR
by Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
December 12, 2008

The Pentagon’s inspector general said yesterday that the Defense Department’s public affairs office may have “inappropriately” merged public affairs and propaganda operations in 2007 and 2008 when it contracted out $1 million in work for a strategic communications plan for use by the military in collaboration with the State Department.

“Without clearly defined strategic communications responsibilities, DoD may appear to merge inappropriately the public affairs and information operations functions,” the inspector general said in a report released yesterday. Strategic communications programs, which have become a major part of the Pentagon’s information operations carried out in the “war of ideas” in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, should be under the oversight of the undersecretary of defense for policy, the report added.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs “should only perform strategic communications responsibilities related to its public affairs mission,” the report said. It called attention to a May 2005 Defense Department publication titled “Public Affairs,” which stated that public affairs and information operations “differ with respect to the audience, scope and intent and must remain separate.” (more…)

The 2008 Falsies Awards: In Memory of the First Casualty
by Diane Farsetta
Center for Media and Democracy / PRWatch.org
December 10, 2008

There’s nothing quite like a hotly contested election. The candidates have their devoted supporters and angry detractors. Then there are vigorous debates over the issues, while some people question the integrity of the entire process.

We speak, of course, of the Falsies Awards.

This year marks the Center for Media and Democracy’s (CMD’s) fifth annual Falsies Awards. The Falsies are our attempt to shine an unflattering light on those responsible for polluting the information environment over the past year. We’re happy to report that more people — nearly 1,450 — voted in this year’s Falsies survey than ever before! We’re also bestowing special recognition on one of this year’s “winners.”

Falsies recipients can collect their prizes — a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, our two cents and a chance to atone for their spinning ways by making a detailed public apology — by visiting CMD’s office in Madison, Wisconsin. This year’s Gold and Silver Falsies go to masters of war deception, while the Bronze Falsie recognizes a massive greenwash campaign. The first-ever Lifetime Achievement Falsie goes to a serial corporate front man, while a determined (if at times laughable) attempt at nation re-branding wins dishonorable mention. Then there are the Readers’ Choice Falsies and Win Against Spin Awards, nominated by our survey participants.

That’s a lot to cover, so without further ado, the winners of the 2008 Falsies Awards are…

Grassfire’s Blitzkrieg of Fear Aimed at President-Elect Obama
Center for Media and Democracy / PRWatch.org
November 19, 2008

Source: Buzzflash website, November 19, 2008

Analyst Meg White examines the “blitzkrieg of fear mongering and misinformation” being whipped up against President-elect Barack Obama. “One phalanx in the fight belongs to Grassfire.org. … Grassfire sent out an e-mail designed to scare people into joining its ‘army that is ready to take on Obama’s agenda.’

…The e-mail lists nine ‘threats to our liberties’ presented by the incoming administration. The common thread through all of these threats is alarmism. … Grassfire is anything but grassroots. The 501(c)4 is listed as a front group on the (SourceWatch) site, and SourceWatch notes that public relations for Grassfire are handled by Shirley & Banister Public Affairs, whose president, Craig Shirley, was part of the team that created the infamous Willie Horton ad. Shirley and Banister represent like-minded clients such as Ann Coulter, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and the National Rifle Association. Grassfire is one of many groups amassing armies to fight everything Obama tries to do, no matter where it falls on the political spectrum.”

Media Lens Media Alert:

Intellectual Cleansing, Part 3:
Self-Deceits Held In Common – Groupthink
MediaLens.org
October 15, 2008

We have seen how the propaganda system is filtered by a range of carrot and stick pressures: professional training, selection for obedience, promotions and demotions, sackings, legal pressures, and the rest. The final piece of the jigsaw is much more elusive and mysterious.

In his book Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception psychologist Daniel Goleman examined the human capacity for self-deception. According to Goleman, we build our version of reality around key frameworks of understanding, or “schemas”, which we then protect from conflicting facts and ideas. The more important a schema is for our sense of identity and security, the less likely we are to accept evidence contradicting it. Goleman wrote:

Foremost among these shared, yet unspoken, schemas are those that designate what is worthy of attention, how it is to be attended to – and what we choose to ignore or deny… People in groups also learn together how not to see – how aspects of shared experience can be veiled by self-deceits held in common. (Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, Bloomsbury 1997, p.158)

Goleman concluded:

The ease with which we deny and dissemble – and deny and dissemble to ourselves that we have denied or dissembled – is remarkable.

(more…)