The New York Times’ portrait of Richard Berman (photo: Luke Sharrett)
The New York Times (2/9/14) had a great piece of reporting about how a phony think tank can turn dollars into political influence. Unfortunately, the piece also included the usual but-the-other-side-does-it-too routine, which is often media’s way of deflecting accusations of bias. But it winds up being a bias of its own.
The subject was right-wing corporate PR provocateur Richard Berman, who has a shell nonprofit that exists to promote corporate causes like opposing a minimum wage increase. The group profiled in the Times, Employment Policies Institute, gets media play because they have the money to promote themselves. But, as Times reporter Eric Lipton shows, there’s not really any such group. Donations to the “Institute” wind up being funneled to his PR business, which uses the money to make ads. No one actually works at the “Institute” at all; its office is his PR firm. (The “research director” of the “Institute,” Michael Saltsman, is actually a vice president at the PR firm.)
Slam dunk, great investigation–except that the Times seems to want readers to think “both sides” do it:
The campaign illustrates how groups–conservative and liberal–are again working in opaque ways to shape hot-button political debates, like the one surrounding minimum wage, through organizations with benign-sounding names that can mask the intentions of their deep-pocketed patrons. They do it with the gloss of research, and play a critical and often underappreciated role in multilevel lobbying campaigns, backed by corporate lobbyists and labor unions, with a potential payoff that can be in the millions of dollars for the interests they represent.
Of course interest groups exist, and they publish research on topics they care about (and ones that their funders care about, too).
But is there an example of a similar operation on the left? Money going to a nonexistent organization in order to profit a PR company? That’d make the Times story even more explosive than it already is. But the best they can do is this:
The left has its own prominent groups, like the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute, whose donors include nearly 20 labor unions, and whose reports, with their own aura of objectivity, consistently conclude that raising the minimum wage makes good economic sense. But none has played such a prominent and multifaceted role in recent months as the conservative Employment Policies Institute.
More to the point, neither of these groups are shell organizations that serve only to funnel money to a PR company. Both the Center for American Progress and the Economic Policy Institute have substantial staffs with serious credentials that do actual research. So it’s not clear what they’re doing in this article–other than to deflect charges of political bias away from the Times.
If the story is about a corporate front group that buys its way into the public debate, that seems like a story all by itself. No need to waste time falsely suggesting that other groups are running a similar game.
Interesting how no other reactionary think tanks such as Heritage, or “centrist” entities like Brookings, merit inclusion in these insinuations, innit?
Not to mention that labor unions actually represent large numbers of people, and therefore their views are important in themselves anyway–unlike those of for-profit corporations, which are almost invariably dominated by a tiny number of principal owners.
This article is actually pointing out that the liberal-leaning organizations DO GOOD and represent “We, the People” and include researchers, etc. … whereas the Employment Policies Institute is one of those “fake” groups that funnels money to Berman’s PR group. The essence of this article is in pointing out that the conservatives always claim “both sides do it” when actually, this isn’t true. The conservatives funnel money into whatever benefits the elite FEW whereas the liberal-leaning organizations work on BEHALF of many people and the WORKERS in this country. I think some people were a little confused by how this article was written.
Lately, in my wanderings around the Net, (and this takes into effect, things like Net Neutrality) Corpse-erations do not want debate, that may lead to agreements within the proles, and the last thing you want is the Proles to stand up for themselves. It upsets the Inner Parties supply of infinite money, and makes them angry.
What they insist on instead is Supposedly “your own words” as long your parroting the script they give you. Usually it is few words, that trigger the ‘bellowing’ effect from people who honestly, have no clue about what they really believe in. They do not understand the words they toss around.
I think one of the best websites I have seen recently, had the “50 signs” your watching too much Fox Network. The last one was ‘You grew up in America and think you actually understand what real tyranny is.’
So ya see, on the one hand, we got this one group that thinks that the poor are just a bunch of slackers, and that those who can’t claw that one job away from the other four people trying for it just didn’t try hard enough for it. Let ’em get a little hungrier, spend a little more time on the streets, get a little more desperate. They claim to think that if rich people had more money they would create more jobs.
“The Republicans moan, the Republicans bitch:
The rich are too poor and the poor are too rich.”
And they hate anything that stands in the way of the rich getting richer OR the poor getting poorer.
And then there’s another group that thinks that the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor.
So, the “media” reports carry arguments on both side of the question.
And the “media” allots the space given to each side in what it feels is a perfectly fair way: each side is given as much space as it can afford.
I just want to say, and maybe I’ve touched on it before. But first I have to get this out:
AAAAARRRRRGGGGHGHHHH!!!!! Why is the media/journalists allowed to NEVER do their jobs yet are paid big bucks to ACT like they are journalists doing just that? Michael Hastings, poor guy was almost all alone, but still adhered to what is the truth, basically because he respected, honored, and cared about his audience, enough to never condescend to those whom he knew were reading his articles.
As the corporate media projects that it’s objectivity they’re pushing insomuch as to them they’re telling both sides, with their ‘Dems said this and Reps said that’ and as their tried and, actually untrue, tit for tat ninnyhammered nabobbed nonsense, nixed by anyone with a sliver of a brain(sorry for the n-words string, as it wasn’t intended, making it sorta like stuttering, I guess)and while two sides may appear to co exist exist, there is a better argument of the two and it’s hardly if ever, in 4 decades now, a Republican’s position. And yes, though I’m a liberal, a Progressive, I don’t rubber stamp every argument as true and correct or even a short statement thought so by my fellow libs, so anyone who thinks I do can just suck on it. But it does not mean what I just said is biased, my being that I’m a liberal, which likely means I do try to see the biases in my view, and correct it. Once I overheard a shrink speak about her patient saying, “Yes, sometimes he’s quite lucid.”(for some reason I felt one who was mentally ill couldn’t think very clearly at all)and it serves as a guide to avoid jumping to conclusions made by those deemed astute and savvy as expert(yes, seems even non-experts can make a good point or two) in their area of knowledge, as just as a mentally ill person can judge clearly now and then and be brilliant in what they say, so too can the opposite be true, as experts also have their blind spots, and we should, each of us basically, adhere to the line in Desiderata, “…listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, they, too, have their story.”
HOWEVER most libs do try, IMHO, to think clearly and make their views known without subterfuge, dishonesty and outright lies, when the corporate media fluffertainment gets done, liberals who listen ends up thinking, “That’s not at all what they said, or meant, and it’s not at all like the other side of the GOP ‘blather’-ment taken by the corpse media as an argument worthy of discussion.”
And further, if one were to consider this::
Take most any issue, ANY issue, you need not know what the issues are, particularly to do with politics, you can rest though, assured that the Tbagging-Rethug-uglies-nutty-CONJOBserviceTURDives-unrealistic-religiousRightsycophancying-GOP putrid pundits as spokesmen, and party members will take the side of THE most absurdly ridiculous unreasonable&likely insane&lobotomised position available&possible to them&each&every member of this special strain of goobers will end up espousing the very same atavistic caveman nuttiness from their GOP-Goober filled-nonsensical-blathering-bubble of totally lying batshit belching vomitous vitriolic bullshit they can muster, while thinking ‘they’ are really onto something here. Perfect GOP example, Ted Cruz, as the fine model of GOPness, has been doubly lobotomised, he speaks as though they removed both hemispheres of his brain, how is it he can still stand up?Well, if an entire GOP membership has gotten this far with the main requirment being the left hemisphere of their brains being lobotomised while pledging to love the religious Rights devoid of any values stance, and they somehow get elected repeatedly, so chances are swell that even their supporters/followers have met the basic requirements, no? Speak to a Tea Party POOPER lately? Even the name they co-opted was a cause against a private company, not the gov’t, yet just as the tax rally for high taxes that were actually the lowest for quite some time, they grabbed a name they felt showed what they stood for, yet seems they were unable to see the difference, as I said, all, lobotomised.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to write so much.
When the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and ‘thinktank’ are in the same line I want to upchuck, for they are NON-thinktanks. I once was a mimeographer who ran off copies of reports done by the scholars, PhDs and flat out smartest guys I knew, were referred to as Consultants, THEY really were a Thinktank, but never thought of as leaning left, or right, but studied topics of all kinds. and I would glance over/read/proofread the studies and catch errors(spelling/grammatical, mostly, but I loved the praise, as it was done after the team of linguists proofreaders read it, and, in effect, I proofread the proofreaders, only English, though)and sometimes the proofers would get irritated that I caught their errors, me, the lowly teen still wet behind the ears guy.
“The wills of poor are made weak&meek;
It is they the rich fervently seek;
For they are the meat;
That the rich do eat.”
paraphrased from the movie Cloud Atlas.
I know nothing of this.But if he defered funds to his private use he should be in jail.The tea party is at this time under assault by the president who is trying to remove their non profit stat.Long story short when you read the briefs it would eliminate most right wing funding and leave most left.ha hahahahahahahah Yeah that is gonna pass.
Raymond….You claim to be a progressive.How so?Or i should say what to you- would be a progressive in the classic sense?
It’s disappointing to know the New York Times cowers to big money at the expense of ‘real journalism’, bringing profound negative impacts to representative government and awful consequences to the public at large. Please read ‘Goodbye to All That’, Reflections of a GOP Operative who left the Cult, by Mike Lofgren. In this scathing article, Lofgren pulls no punches on who is the primary culprit for our sorry state of affairs.
Dan Im from the other side of the coin.I left the Dem cult.And the article you put forward that basically states the Republicans were crazy to ever try to block a debt ceiling raise without concurrent cuts???What does one say to a person like you….and him?Yesssssss master.Go on and spend till the stars burn from the sky.Borrow and print till the last sunrise appears over a free land of freee men.Yes master.Are you out of you ever lovin freakin mind?17 trillion in debt.170 trillion in unfunded liabilities you group of slack jawed morons you!