Views » September 2, 2009 » Web Only

Will ‘Astroturf’ Groups Block Net Neutrality Reform?

By Megan Tady

Chris McGreal, a reporter for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, took to the road last month to report on how Americans living along Route 66—made famous in John Steinbeck’s fictional Grapes of Wrath journey—are faring during the recession.

You might think McGreal quickly encountered “real Americans” protesting President Obama’s “socialist” healthcare agenda by hurling insults at town hall meetings. Cable news channels are full of these images, which together portray the United States as a giant angry grassroots rally against reform-minded policies.

Odd, then, that McGreal reports this:

The outbursts against President Obama’s healthcare plans filling television screens, with opponents calling him a Nazi and accusing him of planning death committees to do in old people, are to a large degree manufactured by the same people who use similar tactics to oppose abortion.

McGreal has it right: There is no genuine mass uprising against healthcare reform or climate change legislation. But the industry groups and corporations who benefit from the status quo—and thus have the most at stake in these debates—want us to think otherwise. And they’ve developed a slick way of manufacturing dissent: creating fake grassroots—”astroturf”—organizations to do their bidding in our name.

Jim Hightower describes astroturf organizations as “the corporate version of grassroots…well-orchestrated PR efforts that put real folks out front, but are instigated, organized and funded by corporate interests and right-wing front groups.”

Astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks rent themselves out to combat policies that hurt major corporations, from ExxonMobile to AT&T. They were behind April’s Tea Bag rallies, which protested tax increases, and flew hot air balloons as part of a campaign to discredit climate change.

Now corporations—AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Qwest—are paying astroturf groups to derail one of the most important public policy initiatives of our time: Net Neutrality. The cable and telecom lobby is spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to become the Web’s new gatekeepers.

What is Net Neutrality?

Astroturf groups have set their sights on blocking the passage of a valuable new bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. The bill, introduced into the House in early August, would protect the Internet from telecommunications and cable companies who want to control access to online content—and thereby make more money.

The principle that protects the Internet freedom we now enjoy is Net Neutrality, which leaves us free to visit any website and create and share anything we can imagine. This “open” platform allows us to bypass the old corporate gatekeepers to create our own entertainment, and organize for social change without fearing that an Internet service provider like Comcast or AT&T will block our messages because they disagree with our politics.

Net Neutrality as a baseline rule for the Internet was stripped away by a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (PDF link) that effectively allowed phone and cable companies to discriminate against websites, applications or services that they didn’t like.

We must restore this guiding principle to protect and ensure a free-flowing Web for all. The new legislation would mandate that all ISPs adhere to Net Neutrality and refrain from controlling, blocking or slowing down online content.

Rolling out the astroturf

So who exactly is shilling for industry? Let’s connect the dots.

It’s no secret the five biggest cable and telecommunications companies want Net Neutrality to disappear. All five just happen to be members of the “pro-consumer” (read: astroturf) group NetCompetition.org, which is trying to make this nasty problem go away for them. Scott Cleland, who heads the operation, has made it his job to bash Net Neutrality, even likening it to socialism: “Just like the Soviet socialists, the net neutrality movement blatantly misrepresents the facts.”

And when FreedomWorks isn’t throwing a tea party, they’re throwing a tantrum about Net Neutrality. Take it from Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who leads the group: “The proponents of Net Neutrality have some very nice sound bites and flowery talking points that would lead you to believe that it’s about keeping the Internet free,” he writes. “I assure you nothing could be further from the truth.”

Who has paid FreedomWorks bills? AT&T.

Meanwhile, the American Consumer Institute—doesn’t that sound innocuous—is questioning the new Net Neutrality bill for consumers. Stephen Pociask, a telecom consultant and former chief economist for Bell Atlantic, is behind the site.

In 2006, when a similar Net Neutrality bill was introduced, this group actively worked to get lawmakers to vote against it.

Speak out or cede control

What’s the difference between a real grassroots organization and a fake one? Astroturf groups are paid shills who don’t openly disclose their funding sources, pretend they’re taking a stance in the public’s interest and manufacture events to make them appear to be backed by a public majority.

For too long, special interest money has polluted the waters of public discourse in America. And unfortunately, our entrenched corporate media system is all too willing to repeat astroturf messages, thereby legitimizing them and stifling genuine debate.

The open Internet lets us speak for ourselves—unlike nearly all other media platforms. If we speak out in support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act and drown out the din of astroturf groups and industry lobbyists, it will remain that way.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  It’s ironic that Megan Tady should grouse about “astroturf” groups, when in fact she works for one herself. “Free Press,” a DC lobbying group, carries water for Google—a large, monopolistic corporation—and is lobbying to have the Internet regulated in ways that would benefit Google and prevent new companies from being able to compete with it.

  The so-called “Internet Freedom Preservation Act” would do just this. In particular, the bill would prevent a newcomer from buying services that would accelerate delivery of its content to consumers. It thus would prevent newcomers from being able to deliver their data as speedily as Google, which is already big enough to have placed its servers in the network centers of large ISPs.

  Ms. Tady’s group has packed hearing rooms where issues on which it was lobbying—e.g. regulation of the Internet—were being discussed. (In one case—a hearing at Stanford University—it bused homeless people in from San Francisco and gave them remarks with which to harangue the Commissioners. That’s astroturfing!) And Free Press has “spammed” the FCC public comment system with thousands of identical letters claiming to be from concerned citizens. Worst of all, it has lied to the public about its intentions and motivations.

  Don’t believe the lobbyists who claim, without any substantiation at all, that ISPs such as AT&T and Time-Warner are interested in becoming “gatekeepers.” They’ve never done so, and have no interest in doing so because their subscribers would leave for other providers. The purpose of the scare stories is to invent bogeymen as an excuse to regulate the Net—which has flourished without regulation and in fact owes its existence to a lack of regulation.

  And be especially suspicious of inside-the-Beltway, lawyer-run, unaccountable Washington DC groups like Ms. Tady’s. Free Press refuses to reveal its funding sources (What does it have to hide?), maintains a “shadow organization” with an interlocking directorate as a tax dodge so that it can lobby Congress in ways that harm consumers, and operates under multiple different names, including “Save the Internet.” They’ve got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do before they accuse anyone else of being an astroturf group.

  Posted by cyberella2002 on Sep 13, 2009 at 5:07 PM

• register a new account »Posting Security

  To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.

  Username Password

    Remember me
  

  Retreive lost password »

Also by Megan Tady

• Consolidation Station: News ‘Sharing’ Erodes Journalism
  Television broadcasters in the Aloha State have been quietly embarking on an underhanded… morePosted on November 3, 2009
• Drowning Out the Noise Machine
  Journalism is breaking my heart. Or should I say, "journalism." Hate-mongering media extremists… morePosted on September 29, 2009
• Mr. President, Help Save the News
  In late July, former CBS news anchor Dan Rather sent murmurs through the… morePosted on August 5, 2009
• The Stupidity of ‘Smart’ Phones
  Apple's iPhone looks good enough to eat. I've yet to take a bite… morePosted on July 2, 2009
• Capitol Improvement
  If nonprofits are supposed to save journalism, why aren't their reporters allowed into congressional press galleries?Posted on June 2, 2009