Vets For Freedom NewsLadder Is Up. It's Fair And Balanced (Really).

by: Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Wed Jul 23, 2008 at 10:14 AM CDT

Watching Freedom's Watch: A Classic Front Group

by: Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Tue Feb 19, 2008 at 07:36 PM CST

As a team that has spent a tremendous amount of time, especially over the last four years investigating and exposing these groups, here is a little history about where front froups came from.

The modern political front group actually got its start about 50 years ago in the tobacco industry. As the Surgeon General targeted cigarettes and scientific studies were being publicized about the dangers of cigarettes, the tobacco industry, quite simply, created their own front groups in order to counter the real groups.

They said, "Doubt is our product," and they used well-funded front groups to fool the public into believing there were "two sides" to the story that tobacco use cased cancer and other diseases.

What are the characteristics of those groups that help define a front group today?

Well, for one, the proponents are paid mercenaries, not concerned citizens.

Just as John O'Neill received $50,000 in August 2004 from the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth and Admiral Roy Hoffman's foundation received $100,000 in early 2005, the people working for Freedom's Watch are not tireless grassroots advocates, they are paid professionals.

The second characteristic of these groups is that they are launched fully-formed and well-funded, often directly from Washington, D.C. The funding comes from few sources, and the front group is designed to push yet mask the agenda of these few funders. The day that Freedom's Watch launched out of DC, it had $15 million in the bank and completed TV commercials.

Contrast this with say, MoveOn.org, which was launched from an online petition by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades in California and grew into an organization as thousands upon thousands of concerned regular citizens joined. Or VoteVets, launched by Jon Soltz living in his office in New York.

Movements come from outside in, ground up. Front groups are launched fully formed, top down.

One of the clearest ways to see this is to look at the traffic that two sites receive.

If you head on over to www.alexa.com and compare MoveOn with Freedom's Watch, you'll see a clear fact - Freedom's Watch doesn't get any traffic - there is no support from the ground up, there is only the front, from the top down.

Finally, while Joan and Wes have always been and always will be involved with MoveOn, just as VoteVets is always going to be Jon Soltz's group, the heads of front groups like Freedom's Watch will change.

It appears that Bradley Blakeman is now the President, former George Bush spokesperson. He wasn't the head of it when it launched. And six months from now, it will be someone else.

The donors and the missions of front groups remain, the employees change, a lot.

To find out more about Freedom's Watch, visit www.freedomswatch.newsladder.net.

Join the Watching Freedom's Watch Facebook Group

This is our previous post in this series, Watching Freedom's Watch: The Donors.

Op-Ed Or Op-Lie?

by: Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Tue Jul 03, 2007 at 09:02 AM CDT

What could be more important than dealing with the threat of global warming? Exposing the companies and groups that continue to try and distort the issue for financial gain and holding the media accountable for their role and complicity in the continuing distortion of the truth.

Let's be perfectly clear. Global warming is a scientific fact - it is not a political issue. But a few  corporations are bringing in incredibly high profit margins from the status quo.  These profits depend on Americans and people worldwide burning more and more oil instead of working to put less carbon into the air.  So they pollute the "marketplace of ideas," deceiving people by spreading the lie of doubt that global warming is a real problem. 

Just as Big Tobacco was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars denying for decades that cigarettes caused cancer while hundreds of thousands died from their product each year -- spreading the same lie that the science was not clear -- so too is Big Oil willing to invest heavily in the global warming deniers. 

Dr. Allan Brandt Helps Us Put The Smoking In Politics.

by: Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Tue Jun 26, 2007 at 00:46 PM CDT

Over at Smoking Politics, we tell and re-tell and constantly point out that the right wing strategy of lie big, ignore the facts and shoot the messenger wasn't created out of thin air, it was started with great success by the tobacco companies almost a century ago.

The clearest current example of the attempts to muddy the water on whether cigarettes actually cause cancer, oh wait, that was the last example, now they're muddying the waters with Global Warming.

As Al Gore's Book Hits Number One, ExxonMobil's Front Group Attacks.

by: Dave Johnson and James Boyce

Thu May 31, 2007 at 08:29 AM CDT

The Assault On Reason is a remarkable look at where we are as a country, and where we might end up if we don't alter course. It also is remarkable for this day and age because it was written entirely by Mr. Gore, without the aid of a ghostwriter - something that has not been noted much.

"The Assault On Reason" is an important book that examines how decisions are made in American politics in our day and age.  It discusses how changes in our world have made us less reliant on reason and logic and this, in turn, has that led to serious policy mistakes like ignoring global warming, and the Iraq war and occupation.