The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote PDF
Preview The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote
Contents Cover Title Page Author’s Note Introduction Chapter One Birth of the Modern Smear: Spies, Bork, and the Clintons Chapter Two David Brock’s Smear Frontier Chapter Three The Smear Industrial Complex: Smear Merchants and Scandalmongers Chapter Four Media Matters (but Money Matters More) Chapter Five Plausible Deniability: Conjuring an Astroturf Reality Chapter Six Transactional Journalism: The Black Market Information Trade Chapter Seven The Anti-Smear Candidate (and the Disloyal Opposition) Chapter Eight The Road to the Conventions Chapter Nine General Election Chapter Ten Brave New World of #FakeNews (and Chilling Efforts to Censor It) Epilogue: The Smear Gone Global Acknowledgments Index About the Author Also by Sharyl Attkisson Copyright About the Publisher AUTHOR’S NOTE The content of this book is drawn from extensive reporting and research as well as my own opinions, experiences, observations. Some proceeds from this book are being donated to the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida. A donation was also made to Project Censored. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Introduction Nearly every day, my overloaded email in-box is peppered with pleas from viewers asking—no, begging—me to investigate tales of the implausible and unbelievable. They’re convinced that the truth is being hidden from them on a massive scale. That someone is manipulating what they see on the news and online. Conspiring to hide select facts and advance particular narratives. Colluding on plots to smear certain people. Their suspicions are correct, even if their notion of truth is often confused. In fact, the confusion is often by grand design. At the end of campaign 2016, one story they urge me to investigate is #Pizzagate. It’s a twisted conglomeration of unthinkable accusations about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her inner circle. “News” of this shocking scandal has been circulating on the Internet, and conspiracy theorists believe the mainstream press is covering it up. The allegations are whispered about and forwarded through social media, quasi-news sites, blogs, and videos posted by nameless sources. The stories are filled with names of real people and places, blended with fabricated tales of child rape, a porn ring, and a pizza parlor supposedly trafficking in underage sex through a basement tunnel. A mysterious video posted under the moniker “Anonymous” promises that the final week of the campaign will reveal irrefutable evidence of indictable crimes. The sources of this as-yet unrevealed information, according to the video, have been contacted by the FBI, which is getting ready to sweep in and make arrests. I’m busy working on pressing stories for my weekly news program, Full Measure. But I poke around in case there’s anything to any of it. I look at the websites. I check out the videos. I consult sources who might know if there are real law enforcement investigations under way. I quickly detect telltale signs of misinformation. Meanwhile, Donald Trump faces his own parade of false accusations, and I’m getting emails about those as well. Viewers want to know why I’m not reporting on the story about him having raped a child. I look into that one, too. There’s a lawsuit pending, and the players involved are at least as dubious as the ones promulgating #Pizzagate. Still, the Trump story gets picked up by the likes of the New York Daily News, Politico, BuzzFeed, New York magazine, the Independent, and the Atlantic. As cameras gather for a news conference to hear the sordid tale from the supposed rape victim, she evaporates. There are more concocted stories—that Trump’s New York City modeling agency was “caught trafficking young girls and hiding them in basements”; that Trump is a secret “plant” who entered the presidential campaign as a pettifogger, surreptitiously working to get Clinton elected; and that he’s a stooge of Russian president Vladimir Putin in a “Manchurian candidate” scenario—a reference to the 1962 film about an American soldier who was brainwashed into carrying out communist plots. Not a day goes by without the voting public getting pummeled by countless narratives—some based on grains of truth; others wholly invented for the audience. Racist, Wall Street lackey, crooked, liar, cheat, white nationalist, socialist, womanizer, misogynist, corrupt, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, basket of deplorables, fraudster, loser, alt-right, delusional, dangerous, mentally ill, pay-for-player, and tax cheat. Assisted by ideologues, shady political operatives, and dark Internet outfits seeking moneymaking clicks, Campaign 2016 shatters all records in the smear department. In this environment, the ability to execute a character assassination becomes more pivotal than any other singular campaign strategy. Operatives spring into action, exploiting the latest technology and tactics. Once relegated to grocery store tabloids, smears now figure prominently in most every mainstream news publication. Reporters pursue sordid narratives with the fervor of Jimmy Olsen chasing an exclusive for the Daily Planet. Smears become embedded in the fabric of our everyday existence. So common, we barely flinch at the most audacious claims. With distrust of the news media at an all-time high, a skeptical public looks to alternative information sources and becomes easier to bamboozle. It’s in this space, devoid of principles, where smears and fake news thrive. It’s no longer a stretch for news consumers to believe that the press is covering up important stories or is in the tank for corporate and political interests. We didn’t get here overnight. The past two decades have served as an ideal incubator for an industry of smears and fake news. The tools and tactics have evolved from old-school to high-tech. Incredible amounts of money change hands, yet some of the most damaging smears can be accomplished with little more than an idea and an Internet connection. By 2016, a Pew Research Center report found more than 44 percent of the American adult population got its news on Facebook, which had 1.09 billion active daily users. Some of that news is true. Some of it’s not. Today, an entire movement can be started with a few bogus Twitter accounts and 140 characters or less. “You don’t have to spend millions on political ad buys anymore,” observes one operative in the business. “You can spark wildfires with just a tiny little stick now, which is a new thing.” What, exactly, is a smear? That depends on who you ask. One man’s smear is another man’s truth. In simple terms, it’s an effort to manipulate opinion by promulgating an overblown, scandalous, and damaging narrative. The goal is often to destroy ideas by ruining the people who are most effective at communicating them. What you may not know is that a lot of this manipulation is done through methods that are utterly invisible to the average consumer. Paid forces devise clever, covert ways to shape the total information landscape in ways you can’t imagine. Their goal is to fool you. Public ideas are meticulously orchestrated to appear random. Op-eds printed in major news publications are ghostwritten by paid agents in the name of shills who rent the use of their signature. Private eyes dig up dirt on enemies by dumpster-diving for embarrassing information and compromising material. Fox News host Tucker Carlson cites his own dicta for a successful modern- day smear. First, it must be inherently interesting and, preferably, salacious. That means anything of a tabloid nature—sex, greed, or venal sin. Second, the smear has to be explainable in a sentence or two. Even better if it can be encapsulated in a catchy phrase. “War against women.” “Crooked Hillary.” “Gun show loophole.” And finally, the smear must confirm what a lot of people want to believe. If it’s too disconnected from the realm of the desirable or credible, it won’t work. For example, Carlson says, smearing the pope by claiming there’s video of him worshipping Satan probably wouldn’t work. It’s too far from the realm of what most people would consider credible. But link a Catholic figure to a male prostitute and that may be enough in the minds of the audience to make them think it might be true. It confirms their preexisting suspicions. Repeat it often enough and it becomes undeniable—something “everybody knows.” Professor Mark Feldstein of Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland is author of Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture. Before becoming a professor, Feldstein was an award-winning investigative reporter and producer at ABC, NBC, and CNN. As a journalist who stepped on toes of the influential and political, he says he found himself the target of many smear campaigns by powerful interests—“beaten up, subpoenaed, sued, and detained.” In 1998, as
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