Anonymous cowards are buying the 2010 election

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/10/18/anonymous_attack_ads/index.html


Monday, Oct 18, 2010 18:15 ET
Anonymous cowards are buying the 2010 election
TV, radio stations cashing in on attack ads from shadowy groups, mostly aiming at Dems. We must pursue their names
By Dan Gillmor


It's beginning to penetrate the public consciousness that the 2010 elections are being purchased, mostly for Republicans, by a shadowy group of wealthy cowards. These anonymous buyers are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into attack ads, mostly against Democrats, via organizations that launder their money into an increasingly corrupt political system.

snip//

Journalists, by and large, are nowhere near up to the task of sorting out truth from lies in this media avalanche, and they barely care enough even to attempt to learn who's behind the onslaught. A few news organizations have devoted some resources to the issue during the past few weeks, such as the New York Times, NPR and Rachel Maddow's team at MSNBC. Naturally, there's been near-silence from the media companies profiting the most from the lies, namely the local TV and radio stations that have been absolutely raking in cash this summer and fall.

The American public knows something is wrong. Several new polls show a deep unease with a system that allows anonymous but wealthy cowards to pollute the airwaves with their lies and deceptions. But if people don't have a clear sense of how vast this pollution has become, it's because they haven't been given the data.


snip//


If I could be media czar for a day, I'd get every newspaper behind this project:

* The first step would be, with the public's help, to visit every station, get a copy of every log of political advertising, and then compile numbers at local, state and federal levels.

* The next step would be to see who's benefiting from the spending, i.e. who's not being attacked, and disclose that.

* Then, see if the spenders are following the law in how they describe what they're doing with the money; as NPR observed, the gaps in the forms showed that the spenders were blatantly flouting even the minimal disclosure requirements.

* Then get every media outlet that cared to trumpet the results for their own regions and the nation.

That's the easy part, unfortunately. Learning how much is being spent, and on whose behalf, won't uncover the names and businesses of the anonymous cowards who are pouring so much cash into buying a new Congress. But perhaps, just perhaps, wider understanding of the vastness of this enterprise would generate sufficient public outrage to force some changes later on.

It's getting harder to be optimistic about our future. I fear that the corruption of the public sphere has become so overwhelming, and the public's helpless acceptance such a dead weight for reform, that no amount of disclosure will help.

But if we don't even try, we're lost.

[elocs]

1. Yes, it's harder to be optimistic as the American Empire spins and spirals to its inevitable end,

as happens with all empires which hold fast to their delusion that they will go on forever. People can envision their own demise, empires cannot.

Well, it was a noble experiment. Sometimes.