Deception Watch: AstroTurf, Lobbying, and Dirty Politics
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-01 13:42:51 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-01 13:42:51 UTC
Media Bias
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The BBC has been accused of yielding to political pressure since the last election and allowing a right-wing bias to emerge in its journalism.
The serious criticism by a distinguished media professor suggests that the BBC has compromised its impartiality by depending too heavily on sources from business, the media, law and order and politics.
Covert Marketing
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Two-time "Worst Company In America" winner Electronic Arts isn't doing its publicity department any favors. The company's new freemium game Dungeon Keeper tricks frustrated players into leaving bad reviews on its own site, instead of on the Google Play Store, Gamasutra reports.
Politics
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Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., is defending his actions after he physically threatened a reporter at the Capitol after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
The confrontation began Tuesday when Michael Scotto, a reporter for New York cable news station NY1, asked Grimm about a Justice Department investigation into his campaign finances.
After cutting the interview short, Grimm told Scotto, "You ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this (expletive) balcony." He also threatened to "break (Scotto) in half."
NY1 posted video of the incident on its website.
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The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity (through its Wisconsin Reporter and Watchdog.org websites) has aggressively attacked the "John Doe" probe into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Its outlets have also published new information about the apparent targets of the investigation, but they have omitted an important detail: Franklin Center has close ties to individuals and groups that may be caught up in the John Doe.
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Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.
Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference) and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.
South Korea
Revisionism
Consumerism and Distraction
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This ad strongly promotes the values of consumerism, and implies that consumerism leads directly to happiness. In the ad, the girls bought these shoes, are wearing them, and are now fashionable, popular, and happy. This message encourages the belief that spending money and obtaining material goods is the only path to happiness for girls. This big lie will lower girls’ self-esteem and perhaps cause them to purchase unnecessary goods in their quest to appear cool and likeable.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 6 - Seeing Who Contaminates Linux With Slop (And Also Admits It)
- Today we begin looking at some culprits
- 2026: The Year Galleries Realised the Need to Flag or Cull Slop Images
- Society needs to shun slopfarms, people who use LLM slop (for anything at all), companies that use bots (which they dub "agents"), and so-called 'coders' who volley garbage into project and software hubs
- Software Freedom Day Celebrated in 5 or 6 Continent
- Software Freedom Day (SFD) 2026 was big this year
- Enjoy the Giving/Sharing, Not Taking
- We've long supported what we believed in, even with the little money we had
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- Links 21/09/2026: "Back On My Bicycle" and American Regime's War on Media Escalates Further
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 192 Out of 200: The Hired Guns of Garrett and Graveley Sent Us USB Sticks (One to Me, One to My Wife) Showing Lozza Talking to Garrett About Censoring/Deplatforming Techrights the Same Time Graveley Was Copy-Pasting Garrett's Lawsuit
- Next year we plan to bring this matter to the Court of Appeal
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 191 Out of 200: Garrett, Graveley and Lozza
- They talk to and coordinate with one another
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, September 20, 2026
- Gemini Links 21/09/2026: Digital Hoarder, GTD, Minimalism vs Digital Minimalism, Rejection of LLMs
- Links for the day
- Links 20/09/2026: "Google Now Asking For Users’ Video Selfies" and Energy Prices Set to Rise
- Links for the day
- Links 20/09/2026: Amazon Layoffs, Flock 'Buyouts' (Silent Layoffs)
- Links for the day
- USCIS and Microsoft Rumours: Curbs on Lowering Salaries by Importing Cheaper Replacements?
- It seems like Microsoft's mass layoffs and efforts to cheapen the workforce face obstacles
- Gemini Links 20/09/2026: "Music While Working" and Radio Silence
- Links for the day
- Clownflare Data From Canada
- We've like to think many people are attempting to install GNU/Linux over the weekend
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 190 Out of 200: Plagiarism, Back Doors, and Sabotage of Linux
- This can go on for a decade or longer
- Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 5 - Kernel Dependency on Plagiarism Giant Microsoft is a Death Blow to Any Kernel
- Microsoft is bringing copyright-infringing slop into Linux
- GNU/Linux Has Grown a Lot Lately
- Based on Clownflare
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 19, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, September 19, 2026
- Links 19/09/2026: Many Patents Become Candidates for Annulment and Linux [sic] Foundation Takes More Slop Money to Promote Malicious Bots
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 19/09/2026: The Fundamental Human Assets, The History of Gopher's "i" Type, and ROOPHLOCH 2026
- Links for the day
- Links 19/09/2026: "OpenAI and Microsoft Knew They Were Starting a ‘Doom Loop’ [of Mass Plagiarism 'Normalised' by Brute Force] for the web", Calling It "Hey Hi"
- Links for the day
- 8 Series Going on at the Moment in Techrights
- 4 series about SLAPPs and related matters
- Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 4 - Outsourcing to Microsoft, Approaching 10 Gigabytes
- Can we blame Microsoft for those DDoS attacks? Partly.
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 189 Out of 200: A Terrible Idea to Condemn Projects for Using Slop 'Code' When Your Own Employer Does This (and Profits From Every Company Doing So) or to Call Distros 'Not Secure' While You Advance Back Doors
- "I don’t want a back door. I want a front door."
- Software Freedom Day 2026 is Today, Week-long Celebration in Brazil
- In Brazil, Clownflare reckons about 1 in 20 laptops/desktops might use GNU/Linux already
- Red Hat Lost 2,000 Staff (Net Loss)
- Maybe by year's end it'll be a 20% reduction
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 18, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, September 18, 2026