Left-wing bloggers were put on the defensive today as a report in The Weekly Standard revealed that The Finland Station, a left-leaning website known for its political commentary and analysis, is in fact a wholly-owned subsidiary of DCI Group, a political consultancy paid to run “Astroturf” campaigns for the likes of the Sierra Club, the ACLU, the SEIU and Howard Dean. Articles from prominent left-wing bloggers such as Atrios, Chris Bertram, and Josh Marshall have been featured on TFS in the past. The Weekly Standard demonstrated that TFS often chose its issue areas based on the consulting deals its owners had made with various clients, timed articles to coincide with astroturf campaigns, and ran pieces by representatives of its clients alongside articles by freelance commentators — including well-known left-wing bloggers. For example, in conjunction with a campaign paid for by the Free Software Foundation, TFS printed a column promoting free software as the New Socialism. Such columns were then picked up and cross-promoted by the foundation without mentioning the flow of money between the parties.
From the monthly archives:
November 2003
There have been some fairly furious reactions out there to the various postings by “me”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000848.html and others concerning “TCS”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/index.html yesterday, most of which don’t merit a reply. I would, though, like to invite those who have suggested that I’m reluctant to read or to link to sites which disagree with my own political beliefs to peruse my postings on CT (or earlier, on “Junius”:http://junius.blogspot.com/ ). They’ll see that their suggestion is misplaced. But I do see that my rather brief explanation of my unwillingness to write for TCS — “too right-wing for me” — was misleading. After all, if the Daily Telegraph offers me a column, I’ll happily accept. TCS, though, isn’t just a broadly conservative media outlet but a site that relentlessly pushes a particularly narrow agenda — “where free markets meet technology” — in a style reminiscent of “infotainment” or those articles you sometimes start reading that look like the proper thing but have “paid advertisment” discreetly tucked-away somewhere. And I felt that I didn’t want either to lend respectability to such an outfit or, conversely, to have my own undermined by association with it. (I’m still puzzled by the Curmudgeonly Clerk, by the way, “who opines”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/archives/2003_11.html#000593 that my deciding not write for TCS reflects an “unhealthy politicization of personal decisionmaking”. Is there something wrong with allowing one’s values to inform one’s personal decisions?)
I don’t know how I missed this story.
– Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, is on the terrorist watch list. This is apparently because of his association with another terrorist suspect, who is currently in custody. Arar has denied any connection with terrorism.
– He was traveling to Canada, where he’s lived for 15 years and has a family. He stopped in John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, where he was detained by U.S. authorities.
(Please do click through if you’re not familiar with this story.)
Today, Howard Kurtz quoted a story about the discovery of the remains of Howard Dean’s brother in Laos. He then commented:
I wonder if the remains would have been found if Dean wasn’t running for president.
I have been trying all day to imagine what Kurtz could have meant by that, but everything I come up with is ludicrous. Suggestions are more than welcome. (via Atrios)
“Glenn Reynolds”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/012601.php tells us that he just doesn’t get Nick Confessore’s “article”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.confessore.html on TCS’s connections with the Astroturf purveyors of the DCI Group. Reynolds says that he’s never felt pressure to write articles in a certain way, or on certain subjects. He then goes on to treat us to some ponderous sarcasm, effectively dismissing Confessore, Marshall et al. as conspiracy theorists. Now, accusations of conspiracy theory are a bit rich from someone who “bought into”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/008089.php#008089 Den Beste’s crackpot explanations of European opposition to the war. But that’s a side issue. Reynolds (deliberately?) misses the main point of Confessore’s article. I’m quite happy to believe Reynolds when he says that he never felt any pressure to change his writing. But Confessore doesn’t say (or imply) that every article for TCS is driven by a corporate agenda. If Confessore’s insinuations are on the mark (and he’s amassed some fairly convincing circumstantial evidence to support his claims), one may easily imagine why a crowd of flacks might solicit articles from independent outsiders. They provide useful camouflage for the corporate shill-pieces that are written to order. To put it in terms that Glenn can understand, there’s a better than even chance that he’s been a “useful idiot”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/006824.php. I wonder how it feels.
For amusement I was traipsing through the OECD health stats for various countries, and I was stunned by one of the things that springs out of the data – health care systems that are government run or funded tend to be cheaper despite being just as effective in every respect, and more effective in some respects. I’m sure someone somewhere has analysed the data properly, but even a crude analysis suggests the empirical case for having a government run or funded health care system is quite strong.
I’ve received lots of useful feedback on my earlier cloning post, and on at least one point, the risks involved in cloning, it’s clear I need to revise and expand my remarks. But first another little defence of cloning that popped into my mind.
I just got some voting slips for participant proposals for the TIAA-CREF accounts that I have. I assume many readers of this blog have similar accounts, which is why this might be interesting.
One of the proposals was to stop investing in all companies that support gun control. It almost goes without saying that this is a Very Bad Idea, and one that I’d strongly recommend people vote against. I doubt the proposal has much chance, but just in case a few gun-lovers with college jobs get behind it, it is worth taking the time to vote it down.
A few weeks back I posted on cruelty to animals and was surprised to receive an inquiry about whether I’d be willing to write on the subject for “TechCentralStation”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/ . I declined (too right-wing for me). Reading “Nicholas Confessore’s article on the site and its backer”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.confessore.html , I’m doubly glad I did. The bloggers who write for the site are mainly conservatives and libertarians, but not exclusively so (liberals such as “Matthew Yglesias”:http://www.matthewyglesias.com/ have featured there). I wonder if any of them will regret their choice in the light of Confessore’s exposure of TCS as being little more than a corporate lobbying operation? (via “Brad DeLong”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ ).
UPDATE: I should, of course, link to “Andrew Northrup”:http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/002201.html#002201 on this one.
Who knew that the book publishing world was so full of bizarre criminal intrigue? If this were fiction, an editor would laugh at the absurdity of a villian whose alias was Melanie Mills but whose name in fact turned out to be Roswitha Elisabeth von Meerscheidt-Hullessem. Real life, having no moral to impart or plot to resolve, has no such difficulties.
I’m not sure why Josh Chafetz thinks it ironic that the distribution the Guardian‘s Dear George letters doesn’t line up with data from opinion polls (data that the paper itself reports on). The mix of letters printed in a newspaper should be broadly representative of the correspondence it receives, not public opinion in general. Guardian readers are more likely than not to oppose Bush’s policies and this seems to be a minority view at present. While that might make Josh happy, I don’t see how it’s ironic.
Like Tim Dunlop I am a little disgusted but not at all surprised to hear that President Bush will not be addressing Parliament on his visit to Britain. According to ABC News, “such a speech could invite the kind of heckling the president received when he spoke to the Australian Parliament last month.” One might have thought that a leader with thicker skin might have told the begrudgers to “Bring it on.” Bush’s aversion to explaining himself to people who might talk back is well known, of course, but it seems insulting to treat the representative body of your staunchest ally in this way. Some Tories appear to think so, too, though most of the anglospheroids seem content to bash Red Ken instead.
Needless to say, the spin on the visit — see the same ABC news story — is that Bush is in London to “address” and “confront” those who doubt his policy in Iraq. He’ll just be doing this without, you know, addressing or confronting anyone.
I was searching for the journal The Information Society yesterday on our library’s online catalog system. I had looked up the journal the day before so I knew that we had a subscription to it. Regardless, yesterday I kept getting “Your search found no matching record”, which was incredibly frustrating given that I had just browsed the journal the day before. Finally, I decided to try the search without the “the” in the title. I’m not sure why that occured to me, but I gave it a try. Surprise-surprise, searching simply for information society specified as the Journal Title worked.
The News Quiz is back on BBC Radio 4. This week’s is particularly good (despite the absence of the peer-less Linda Smith) for two reasons: 1) They are all barred by a court injunction from talking about the main news story which isn’t a news story because its only a rumour that no-one has printed (or have they?) but has already been denied and 2) a BBC newsreader had to fill in for Sandi Toksvig at the last minute and is, by terms of her employment, prohibited from expressing an opinions, which she refrains from doing extremely well.