The Wingnut Propaganda Mill Is Already Working Overtime

In light of yesterday's story about "Clinton Cash," Digby has a good one in today's Salon where she points out this is far from the first time the "respectable" media merely regurgitated what they were fed by the right-wing propaganda mills. Let's take a little stroll down Memory Lane, shall we?



Trudy Lieberman of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote one of the earliest pieces about this Citizens United campaign called “Churning Whitewater”:

ClintonWatch, a newsletter dedicated to “Proving Character Does Count in a President,” is sent to all media and contains tales and tidbits that have found their way into the nation’s news. The organization’s official newsletter, Citizens Agenda, sent to its 11,000 subscribers periodically, offers a morsel or two and boasts about the group’s success in siccing the media on to the Whitewater story. Citizens United’s newest information effort is a Whitewater Fax Bulletin, also called ClintonWatch, which is fed to the media almost daily. “Nobody seems to have all the answers, but by sharing our information with members of the media, we can start putting pieces together … We are making new discoveries every day,” Brown said in launching his new fax service in early March. One of the first Fax Bulletins was aimed at stirring up interest in Lot 7, which Bossie had told me was the next big story.

The March 1994 issue of ClintonWatch characterized the organization’s impact on Whitewater press coverage this way: “We here at ClintonWatch have been working day and night with the major news media to help them get the word out about the Clintons and their questionable dealings in Whitewater and Madison Guaranty.” Of course, Citizens United is not the only source of information on Whitewater. And reputable reporters do their own digging and doublechecking. Still, an examination of some 200 news stories from the major news outlets aired or published since November shows an eerie similarity between the Citizens United agenda and what has been appearing in the press, not only in terms of specific details but in terms of omissions, spin, and implication.


She went on to document some of the spin, omission and implications and showed how these stories made their way through the media ecosystem until it was taken as a article of faith that there must have been “something” there. This was 1994, still at the very early days of the administration. It was obvious what was happening but it didn’t stop the press from eagerly chasing every shiny object that David Bossie and other right-wingers threw in their path. That dynamic would characterize media coverage throughout the Clinton administration.


http://crooksandliars.com/2015/04/wingnut-propaganda-mill-already-working